4 BRAND NEW FACTORY SEALED DVDS
SAM ELLIOT & TOM SELLECK DVD LOT
LOTS OF GREAT WESTERNS
REGION 1 (U.S. & CANADA) NO BOOTLEGS
Last Stand At Saber River
Tom Selleck rides into Western adventure in grand, gritty style as Paul Cable in Last Stand at Saber River, from the novel by Elmore Leonard. Tom Selleck shows a harder side of his persona as a disillusioned Confederate who returns home in the waning days of the Civil War in this adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel. His wife, Suzy Amis, isn't ready to forgive him for leaving his family behind for the "adventure" of war, and his children hardly remember him. Haunted by his actions in the war and caught in a power struggle in the Arizona territory, Selleck's soul-scarred survivor makes a last stand to protect the only thing left that matters to him--his homestead and his family. The film has its share of gunfights, showdowns, conspiracies, and Civil War rivalries, and even a runaway stagecoach, but its power lies in the somber exploration of how misunderstandings and conflicts tear at a marriage during such a volatile time, when ideals are set against duty to family. Director Dick Lowry's lean style makes the most of the gorgeous landscapes, and he creates a strong dramatic tension in the bubbling undercurrent between Selleck, who leaves behind the jovial character of his Louis L'Amour Westerns for a man hardened and embittered by war, and Amis, an excellent actress who brings to life a woman who shoots, speaks her mind, and harbors resentment just as well as any brooding male hero. Keith and David Carradine costar as Union wranglers who hold a grudge against the Confederate veteran. One of the most mature TV Westerns ever made.
The Shadow Riders
The Civil War is over and the Traven brothers are going home. But what Mac (Tom Selleck, Quigley Down Under) and Dal (Sam Elliott, Tombstone) find upon their arrival is a town ravaged by Confederate rebels who've refused to surrender. Swearing to fight the Yankees to the bitter end, the guerillas have kidnapped the Travens' younger sisters - as well as Dal's sweetheart, Kate (Katharine Ross, Shenandoah) - and plan to sell them to a brothel in Mexico to raise money for guns and bullets. Determined to rescue their loved ones, Mac and Dal bust their Uncle Black Jack (Oscar(r) winner Ben Johnson, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, The Last Picture Show, 1971) out of prison and head south of the border, where they aim to finish a war they thought had already ended. When the Western slipped into theatrical oblivion in the late 1970s, many of the best examples of the genre began appearing as made-for-television films. After the success of The Sacketts, from the Louis L'Amour novel, producers quickly reunited stars Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott in another fine adaptation of a L'Amour Book, The Shadow Riders. As brothers Mac and Dal Traven, sporting blue and gray uniforms, respectively, they wind their way home at the close of the Civil War to discover a band of confederate rebels have ravaged their town and kidnapped their sisters and brother and Dal's feisty sweetheart (Katharine Ross). With the help of their outlaw uncle (Western stalwart Ben Johnson), whom they must break out of prison, they track the guerrillas to the Gulf Coast and down into Mexico for a final, fatal showdown. Veteran director Andrew McLaglen sets this TV movie on a loping pace and a jovial tone, defined largely by Selleck's easygoing performance and the jocular comic relief of rascally Johnson. Elliott provides the intensity, at times positively ferocious under his heavy brows and burning, sunken eyes. The mood is occasionally too comic, but McLaglen delivers the goods in a series of gritty action sequences, proving that old Western directors don't die, they just drift on over to the small screen. Western icons R.G. Armstrong and Harry Carey Jr. and 1950s leading lady Jane Greer also appear in key roles.
The Desperate Trail
Amiable con man Jack Cooper is on a westbound stagecoach, headed for the next batch of suckers who will mistake him for an easy mark. Fiery Sarah O'Rourke rides the same coach, handcuffed to lawman Bill Speakes and headed for the hangman. In a few hours, all should reach their destinations. But the trail they travel takes an unexpected turn: Cooper and O'Rourke are soon off the stage and running for their lives. The law ends and the chase begins in a very alive tale of wanted-dead-or-alive fugitives (Linda Fiorentino and Craig Sheffer) pursued by a marshal (Sam Elliott) who's a law unto himself. Though The Desperate Trail is hardly a modern Western, this mixture of frontier adventure and con-man conniving is inflected by the plot twists that have driven the post-Tarantino era of low-budget crime thrillers, at least through the first half of the film. It opens with a stagecoach ride that becomes a thrilling runaway escape from bandits, but the passengers are not what they seem and the films spins into a game of one-upmanship between a pair of slick outlaws thrown together by fate. Craig Sheffer, a con man duded up like an Eastern hick and smiling like a chump, spars with lady outlaw Linda Fiorentino, a tough gunslinger with a gift for bluff, while she eludes driven lawman Sam Elliot, whose passion for justice is personally motivated. Through a series of schemes and ambushes (including a Wild Bunch-inspired free-for-all where the posse hits more civilians than criminals), the bickering duo slowly reveal their secrets as the posse closes in. Elliot is perfectly cast as the hate-filled marshal, whose burning dark eyes and simmering persona are unleashed in his ruthless villain with a personable drawling manner, and director P.J. Pesce stages fine action scenes.
You Know My Name
In six months, the population of Cromwell, Oklahoma, has climbed from 500 to 10,000. Boom times have come to the oil-rich town. So has a new breed of criminal. You Know My Name is the fact-based story of Bill Tilghman, a lawman and former partner of Wyatt Earp confronted by an emerging era when outlaws run whiskey instead of cattle and are likely to tote a tommy gun as carry a six-gun. An ideally cast Sam Elliott plays Tilghman, whose life takes on a newfangled wrinkle of its own. Tilghman makes a moving picture of his Old West exploits; and the success of that silent film, The Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws, spreads his reputation like a brushfire. But that reputation may mean nothing to a thug (Arliss Howard) who hides behind a badge. Cromwell, Oklahoma, 1924: an oil boomtown full of saloons, cathouses, mud-and-crude-oil streets, bootleg whisky, and gun-toting roughnecks. Technology had overpassed the Old West, in the form of Model T's and oil rigs, but the mentality had stayed much the same. Add to that a population that's a bit tweaky from a combination of cocaine and morphine that had been going around, and you have a recipe for trouble. Enter Marshall Bill Tilghman, a contemporary of Wyatt Earp. Tilghman had made a silent film, The Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws, and on the strength of his reputation had been called into service as chief of police in the hopes of restoring order to a lawless community. In this fact-based story, Sam Elliott plays Tilghman, a larger-than-life character who was one of the last of a dying era. Many Prohibition agents became renegades in the '20s; Tilghman's nemesis was Wiley (Arliss Howard), a rogue agent strung out on drugs and dealing in bootleg liquor himself. Howard's performance is as overwrought as Elliott's is restrained; together the two offset each other well. The flinty Elliott brings a measure of warmth to his role, especially in his relationship to his wife and kids; he's perfectly cast as the man on the cusp of a new age. As a modern-era Western, You Know My Name rises well above its made-for-cable roots to stand as a good character study and action picture.