By NICK ZEGARAC

By the time Joseph L. Mankiewicz premiered All About Eve (1950) he had already won a pair of back to back Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Screenplay on A Letter To Three Wives the year before; a towering achievement that was to be impressively matched by this film – perhaps his most perfectly realized screen creation.

In his day, Mankiewicz work was often criticized as lacking cinematic staging – the perception being that his characters are too intelligent for film audiences, their dialogue and nuances more theatrical in mood and tempo. The point is valid only superficially, for the subtext in any Mankiewicz movie is far superior to any misperceived ‘lacking' in camera prowess. Indeed, Mankiewicz was to muse years later that in his movies it was the actors – rather than the camera – that were required to act!

In this respect then, All About Eve remains the quintessentially urbane and sophisticated melodrama about show folk; a critique of the Teflon-coated smug superiority held dearly within the theatrical establishment turned on its end. The film is a microcosm for viperous social climbers and cutthroat sensationalists seething with venom and insecurity.

After first choice to play grand diva Margo Channing actress Claudette Colbert injured her back, Mankiewicz turned to larger than life screen diva, Bette Davis to assuage into the part. It was a move not entirely embraced by 20th Century-Fox whose top brass were well aware that Davis's last few movies had pointed to a definite downturn in both her popularity and boxoffice.

Davis was herself nearing forty and suffering from the same anxieties as her fictional character. Indeed, since her release from Warner Bros. (the studio that had groomed her into superstardom), Davis discovered that she had quietly become unemployable overnight. Thus, in the many lean years that were to follow Davis would acknowledge "…not everything I do is quality, but I chose the best from what I am offered."

From Mankiewicz however, Davis had nothing to fear. His screenplay delivers a revealing look at base classicism and greed behind all that publicly glitters. His critique of human fallibility is bang on and with Davis in the driver's seat Mankiewicz is guaranteed a star who completely understands his material. Reflecting years later on the temporary resuscitation of her film career at Fox, Davis generously acknowledged Mankiewicz for his faith in her – "I owe it all to Joe. He resurrected me from the dead."

After a brief prologue at the Sarah Siddon's Society, exclusively narrated by sinister poisoned pen columnist, Addison DeWitt (George Sanders), the rest of the film's narrative is told entirely in flashback. Margo Channing (Davis) is preparing after her last stage performance to see lover/director, Bill Samson (Gary Merrill) off to Hollywood. Despite their considerable age difference, Bill worships the ground Margo walks on though neither Bill's commitment or his love are enough to convince Margo that she is perhaps making a terrible error in judgment by loving one man so completely.

Margo's continued success on the stage is largely due to her enduring friendship/partnership with celebrated playwright Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe) and his wife, Karen (Celeste Holm). However, her private life is almost exclusively managed by Birdie Coonan (Thelma Ritter); an ever-devoted house maid with a sharp tongue but soft heart who will soon become the first to discover a traitor in their midst.

Into this close knit community arrives the Judas; backstabber Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) masquerading as a doe-eyed ingénue. After ingratiating herself into Margo's hallowed company with a sob story of pure fiction, Eve systematically goes about manipulating Margo's alliances and friendships; all the while playing the part of a respectful personal secretary. Instead, and with her eye firmly on the prize, Eve has plans to topple Margo from her throne as the first lady of the American theater.

Eve's ace in the hole is Addison DeWitt, whom Eve erroneously believes she can extort to her best effect as she has done with the others. Addison, however, has more than Eve's career advancement on his mind – a prospect Eve entertains only peripherally to maneuver herself into a position of power within Margo's circle of friends. However, Eve quickly discovers that there is nothing as venomous nor as dangerous as a man just as unscrupulous as her.

Behind the scenes, Davis and Baxter did not get on – a tension brought to its boiling point when both were nominated as Best Actress in the Oscar race. Neither won – leading Davis to forever consider herself robbed. In retrospect, she probably was.

Davis as Margo is – as Addison might have concluded for himself - perfection itself; a stunning tower of the ‘fire' and ‘music' Mankiewicz describes in his screenplay. When Davis as Margo forewarns her guests in the film's most memorable moment to "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night" her tone is fraught in shades of dark moody bitterness and wily comedic devilry – as though she despises not only her own place in the world but is also laughing at it from the inside.

If Davis always harbored a hint of bitterness at losing the Oscar, she could at least take temporary comfort in the afterthought that her fleeting romance with costar Gary Merrill – a whirlwind of ‘fire and music' culminated in an even more short lived marriage. Today, All About Eve remains as fresh and ever present in the mind. In a culture where words like ‘instant classic' are carelessly bandied about with reckless disregard for their actual meaning, All About Eve is most deserving of that moniker on a multitude of levels. It is a perfect movie!

The same cannot be said for Fox's third reissue of the movie on DVD; a tired regurgitation of the transfer already available under its ‘studio classic' line. The chief concern herein is that the B&W image retains not only a considerable amount of grain throughout, but that its weak contrast levels render the entire grayscale blandly. There are no solid or deep blacks – just varying tonalities of gray. Whites too are never bright – just a high register of gray.

Occasionally the image appears a tad too softly focused. Fine details can be nicely realized, though rather inconsistently rendered. The audio is presented in both original mono and re-channeled stereo.

The biggest improvement on Fox's latest DVD incarnation is in the extras included. Not only do we get the two individual commentary tracks, AMC Backstory about the making of the film and several brief shorts that were included on the Fox Studio Classic series disc; Disc 2 of this latest offering also includes 4 newly produced featurettes: ‘Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz' a beautiful retrospective on the director's career, another on his personal life, a reveal of Mankiewicz's inspiration for ‘the real Eve' and a special featurette on the Sarah Siddons Society. (Incidentally, at the time of the film's release, there was no Sarah Siddons Society. Mankiewicz made it up. A few short years later, the ‘Society' was formed.)

After the unexpected success of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) – a grand guignol costarring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, director Robert Aldrich decided that a reunion of sorts was in order. Ironically, prior to that film's release, Davis and Crawford were considered has-beens in Hollywood – a perception echoed to Aldrich by Jack Warner. "I won't give you a dime for those two washed up old broads!"

Eventually, Warner begrudgingly green lit Aldrich's film, though he steadfastly refused the director rights to shoot it anywhere on the Warner Bros. backlot. When ‘Baby Jane' proved a runaway smash, Warner was suddenly chummy with Aldrich, Crawford and Davis all over again.

‘Chummy', however, was not the way anyone associated with the project would have described the daily climate on the set. Davis despised Crawford and as the shooting schedule progressed her animosity blossomed into full blown hatred. Hence, ‘Baby Jane' became a war zone for Bette to vent all of the hostility she had harbored toward Crawford.

Although neither actress relished the experience, the movie's success necessitated a follow-up project. By now, Aldrich was working at 20th Century-Fox on another dark story by Henry Farrell about two women locked in dire conflict; one a deranged aged socialite, the other her scheming cousin. Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte (1964), with its brooding noir melodrama and schemes of shocking murder would be the project to reunited Davis and Crawford on the screen. It was not to be. After shooting most of her exteriors on location, Crawford astutely assessed that Davis' disposition towards her had hardly softened and shortly thereafter faked a bought of pneumonia to get out of her contract.

To quell nervous tensions on the set, Aldrich approached long time Davis friend and co-star, Olivia de Havilland with the project. Davis approved and so did de Havilland. With little to no preparation, de Havilland seized the reigns of the part, turning in a masterful performance while smoothing over all of the personal animosities that Davis had harbored toward Crawford.

Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte opens with an extended prologue set on a massive southern plantation in 1927. Boorish plantation owner, Samuel Eugene Hollis (Victor Buono) is confronting married man, John Mayhew (Bruce Dern) in his parlor. Seems John and Hollis' teenage daughter, Charlotte (Davis) have been carrying on a romantic liaison that has blossomed into a proposal of marriage. Disgusted by the prospect that his virginal daughter should want to run off with a married man, Hollis threatens Mayhew with certain death should he pursue Charlotte any further.

That night, at a debutante party on the plantation, John breaks Charlotte's heart by telling her that they can never be married. He is brutally murdered in the conservatory and an emotionally scarred Charlotte stumbles into the ballroom, her virginal white gown soaked with John's blood. But did Charlotte kill her lover?

From here, the narrative takes a quantum leap into the present. Charlotte is a mentally unstable middle-age frump, trapped in the decay of her late father's plantation, slated by city developers for demolition. Her one true friend is Velma Cruther (Agnes Moorehead); a dotty, and very crotchety housemaid. To ease Charlotte's conscience and help save the family home, Velma reluctantly sends for Charlotte's snooty cousin, Miriam Deering (de Havilland).

Miriam's arrival is met with considerable interest by Charlotte's physician and Miriam's former flame, Dr. Drew Bayliss (Joseph Cotten). In fact, it doesn't take long for Miriam and Drew to concoct a diabolical plot that will rid them both of Charlotte's instability while making them both very rich. Using Charlotte's haunted/unchanged love for John, Miriam and Drew resurrect his ghost about the plantation – spooking Charlotte at every turn with memories that appear to come to life and threaten her very existence. The frame up works – particularly after Miriam does away with Velma, who had begun to have her own suspicions.

Miriam decides that Charlotte must be driven completely mad to be certifiable. In a twist so manipulatively evil that it is best left unmentioned herein for first time viewers to discover on their own, Charlotte believes that she has accidentally murdered Dr. Bayliss and implores Miriam to help her conceal her ‘crime.'

Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte is diabolically entertaining. The screenplay by Henry Farrell and Lukas Heller is top notch and terrifying. Casting is superb. Though Davis clearly distinguishes herself amongst the crowd, she does not dominate the film. De Havilland holds her own, brilliantly playing against type as evil incarnate, as does Cotten, whose oily lothario is as utterly repugnant as he is entirely compelling. In the final analysis, the film gets its shocks and thrills the old fashioned way – through exemplary writing, staging and acting.

Fox has reissued Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte as part of its tribute to Bette Davis 100th birthday. It had previously been available as part of their Studio Classic Series (SCS). Unfortunately, there are discrepancies between these two competing versions. The new disc's aspect ratio has been reformatted from its original 1:66:1 to 1:85:1 with a noticeable expansion of visual information to the left and right of the film frame that is not in keeping with the director's original vision. Furthermore, contrast levels on this new edition have been considerably bumped up – the result being a loss of fine detail in the middle register of the grayscale's tonality. Considerable reduction of age related artifacts in the original SCS edition are the only plus that this reviewer can deduce in image refinements on this newer minting. The audio is presented in both original mono and re-channeled stereo with minor differences.

However, perhaps the biggest disappointment on this reissue is Fox's inexplicable and obtuse choice to remove Glenn Erickson's thorough audio commentary from its extra features – replacing it instead with an isolated score and three featurettes: two newly produced and one vintage promotional short subject. There is also a stills gallery and theatrical trailer included on the new version.

Star billing in ensemble acting is always tricky business. In Jean Negulesco's Phone Call From A Stranger (1952) – a uncanny amalgam of noir styling, conventional melodrama and a touch of screwball comedy - it becomes downright confusing. Shelly Winters is given above the title credit even though Gary Merrill has infinitely more screen time. The script by Nunnally Johnson and I.A.R. Wylie is a tedious mishmash of clichés and uncertainties with a few brief nuggets of hidden surprise that seem to come out of nowhere.

The story concerns David L. Trask (Merrill) an attorney running away from his home life after he discovers that wife Jane (Helen Westcott) has been unfaithful. Telephoning Jane from the airport, David next buys his ticket under an assumed name. He is ‘picked up' by lonely ex-actress/former stripper Bianca Carr (Shelley Winters) while waiting for their flight in the terminal and thereafter also becomes friends with two other passengers; traveling salesman Edmund Hoke (Keenan Wynn) and Dr. Robert Fortness (Michael Rennie).

The flight takes off under a terrible storm and is grounded in Vegas overnight. Dr. Fortness confesses a deep dark family secret to David, whom he is hoping will be able to provide some much needed legal council. It seems that one night not so very long ago the good doctor departed a fashionable party with fellow colleague, Dr. Tim Brooks (Hugh Beaumont) en route to treat a patient at a nearby hospital. Unfortunately, David's cockiness and the influence of alcohol contributed to a head on collision where Brooks and all of the passengers in the other vehicle were killed instantly.

Lying on his hospital bed, Fortness tells presiding physician, Dr. Luther Fletcher (Harry Cheshire) that it was Brooks, not he who was driving the car. Fortness' story is backed by his dutiful wife, Claire (Beatrice Straight) even though she knows the truth about the accident. The secret eventually tears Fortness' family apart.

Meanwhile, inside the airport terminal, Edmund is proudly passing around a picture of his wife, Marie (Bette Davis). * Aside: the photo is actually an airbrushed image with Davis' face pasted onto the body of a bathing beauty pin-up. Bianca jokingly tells Edmund that he is far too lucky to have Marie as his wife. Fortness agrees. For both Fortness and Bianca, Edmund is misperceived as boorish, grating and nonsensical. However David finds Edmund – if not enlightening – then, at least amusing.

With weather conditions all clear, their plane takes off the next morning only to suffer ice build up on its engine and wings. It crashes, killing all but three on board. David is the only member of his troop to survive and he spends the rest of the film's running time reluctantly contacting the family members of Dr. Fortness, Edmund and Bianca to relay their final hours and provide closure and solace to each family.

In Fortness' case, David is able to reunite Claire – who had become estranged from her husband - with their embittered son, Jerry (Ted Donaldson). In Edmund's circumstance, David learns that Marie has been paralyzed for many years following an ill-fated elopement with her lover that Edmund forgave.

The most peculiar of all reconciliations, played out in flashback like a bad screwball moment ripped from another film, involves David's brief interaction with nightclub proprietor Sallie Carr (Evelyn Varden) and Bianca's estranged husband, Mike (Craig Stevens). Possessive mother-in-law, Sallie hated Bianca's independence – fabricating a persona for her that reads more that of the heartless vixen. Sensing Sallie's relish in demonizing Bianca, David fabricates a bit of his own wish fulfillment about Bianca's audition with Rodgers and Hammerstein; thereby deflating Sallie's claim that her daughter-in-law was a no good useless failure.

As film entertainment, Phone Call From A Stranger is acutely convoluted; it's plot suffering from too many half ideas that never meld into one complete narrative. Merrill does his usual laconic ‘world weary' loner routine with aloof disenchantment. He doesn't seem terribly engaged, but rather trudging from one plot point to the next with a ‘am I there yet?' mentality that, at times, is rather oppressive.

Bette Davis is wasted in her near cameo. Truly, Davis' acceptance of the part of Marie (something any actress could have played blindfolded) has to be one of the all time cinema curiosities. How desperate for work was she? Winters is a bit long in the tooth to be the tart with a proverbial heart of gold but she pulls it off for the most part. Wynn overplays his hand with a painful example of ham acting. In the end, the characters and the plot do not gel the way they should. The results are mediocre at best.

Fox Home Video provides a beautiful DVD transfer. The B&W image exhibits exceptional tonality in its grayscale. Blacks are deep and solid. Whites are nearly pristine. Contrast levels are perfectly balanced. Age related artifacts are rare and do not distract. The audio is mono as originally recorded and presented at an adequate listening level. Extras are limited to an interactive press book and lobby and stills gallery.

Despite its subject matter – that of political intrigue in the court of Elizabeth I, and a cast that includes Bette Davis, Richard Todd and Joan Collins, Henry Koster's The Virgin Queen (1955) is a turgid unremarkable recanting of English history made fictional for the benefit of a good romantic yarn.

Davis had already shaved into her hairline once before to play the enigmatic English ruler for 1939's The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. Then, the wordy foreplay between Davis and costar Errol Flynn had been based on a magnificent stage play from imminent playwright Maxwell Anderson that had managed to generate sparks beneath the Elizabethan collars and cuffs.

On The Virgin Queen, the script by Mindret Lord and Harry Brown is rather uninspired – moving its characters like chess pieces about this board of faux history. Originally, Lord and Brown had wanted to write a story, not about Elizabeth, but Sir Walter Raleigh. Davis' involvement on the project necessitated a rethinking of that idea and hence the resulting film developed along the lines of a tailor-made vehicle for Davis' talents.

The story opens with the arrival of Lord Leicester (Herbert Marshall) on foot at an inn after his carriage has been trapped in the mud. To the inn's carousing inhabitance Leicester offers a small purse of gold as remuneration if they will help him get on his way as quickly as possible. Sir Christopher Hatton (Robert Douglas) laughs off the suggestion that he sully himself even in service to the Queen. Sir Walter Raleigh (Richard Todd), however, takes heed of the proposition as a means of positioning himself with an audience at court.

The ploy works. Raleigh meets Elizabeth (Bette Davis) and the two shares an initial intimacy of sparring remarks overheard by one of the Queen's ladies in waiting - Beth Throgmorton (Joan Collins). Beth immediately catches Raleigh's eye though she, recognizing his opportunistic streak, discourages Raleigh's advances at every turn. Raleigh next asks Elizabeth for three ships that he will sail in England's name to the new world for treasure. Unable to convince Elizabeth of the feasibility in his plan, Raleigh sulks off like a petulant child. However, Elizabeth's loss is Beth's gain.

A quite romance develops between Beth and Raleigh – a pas deux thwarted when Elizabeth has a sudden change of heart. She grants Raleigh a commission to build one ship to suit his own fashion and purpose – The Golden Falcon – which she also grants him to sail to the new world in England's name. Driven by ego, Raleigh temporarily forsakes Beth to toil on the designs of his grand vessel with friend, Lord Derry (Dan O'Herlihy). Meanwhile, court spy, Chadwick (Jay Robinson) alerts the Queen of a cautious secret; that Beth and Raleigh have not only become lovers, but have, in fact, married without her consent and that Beth is currently with Raleigh's child.

Furious, Elizabeth orders Raleigh's imprisonment as a traitor. Learning of Beth's pregnancy too late, Raleigh instructs Lord Derry to flee with his wife into the Scottish highlands. The pair is captured on the road by Sir Christopher and Derry is killed in the resulting duel. Locked in the Tower of London, Raleigh faces certain death – more so after Elizabeth arrives to command that he repent for his sins against the crown only to discover that he is more obstinate than ever. In reply, Elizabeth cannot bring herself to kill Raleigh. Instead, she commands him to board the Golden Falcon with Beth and bring back to her the promised riches from the new world.

The inconsistencies between history and fact are many and obvious, beginning with Lord Leicester's initial befriending of Raleigh at the inn. Lord Leicester was in fact Robert Dudley (played by Errol Flynn in 1939's Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex) – the Queen's great love during her youth whom she was forced to behead after Robert's determination to rule England by marriage threatened Elizabeth's own political safety.

In direct comparison to The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, The Virgin Queen is a more restrained and subdued production in totem. Its sets are less spectacular, though not perhaps its costumes. Davis is in fine voice and temperament as Elizabeth – pouring out equal portions of womanly contempt and authoritarian command. Richard Todd makes a valiant enough Raleigh, though he is not the man of history as much as he has been forced into that romantic mold of interest to all women who fancy their heroes in tights and a cod piece. In the final analysis, The Virgin Queen is second tier entertainment; just another period drama from a vintage when such offerings were plentiful.

Fox Home Video's anamorphic Cinemascope image exhibits a rather appealing visual presentation. Colors are rich, bold and vibrant. Flesh tones are a tad pasty at times. Fine details are generally realized, though image sharpness is often less than stellar. Age related artifacts are absent for a very smooth quality throughout. The audio is 5.1 Dolby Digital remastering of the original 6 track stereo. Dialogue is directionalized. Music cues have a very nice spread. Extras include an isolated music track and ‘making of' featurette.

Based on Marryam Modell's mystery novel, Seth Holt's The Nanny (1965) emerges as a rather disjointed thriller in which bewilderment and uncertainty generate more questions than answers. Initially, the project had been proposed to Greer Garson – who wisely could not see her way to playing either dowdy or demonic and thus bowed out of the film. In restructuring the novel into movie format, screenwriter Jimmy Sangster omitted Modell's references to possible sexual abuse, thus diffusing much of the logic for all the tension that was to follow.

Bette Davis is ‘Nanny' – a proper English governess and housekeeper employed at the home of the Queen's messenger, stoic Bill Fane (James Villier) and his emotionally fragile wife, Virginia (Wendy Craig). The two are supposed to retrieve their son, Joey (William Dix) from a nearby sanitarium where the boy had been placed for observation and disciplinary reformation after the death of his sister, Susy (Angharad Aubrey).

The institution's headmaster, Dr. Beamaster (Maurice Denham) informs Bill that Joey is far from cured. In fact, Joey has recently accelerated his devilish pranks to terrorize the institution's matron Mrs. Griggs (Nora Gordon). Joey reluctantly returns with Bill and Nanny to the family's fashionable London flat, but he is increasingly bitter, rude and condescending to everyone – particularly Nanny and his mother.

Joey's allegations – that Nanny is evil and out to poison him – seem unfounded conjecture at best. Indeed, Nanny goes out of her way to be kind to Joey. Meanwhile, Joey befriends Bobbie Medman (Pamela Franklin) the randy teenage daughter of Dr. Medman (Jack Watling) who is their upstairs neighbor. Bill is called away on weekend business. That evening, Virginia succumbs to a curious poisoning of her meat pie at dinner and is rushed to hospital by Dr. Medman to have her stomach pumped. Virginia's sister, Pen (Jill Bennett) is called by Nanny to baby-sit for Joey.

So far, the narrative makes perfect sense with Joey being perceived as the evil in the Fane family home. Ah, but then screenwriter Sangster interjects a few plot twists which damage the credibility of his entire story. First up is a flashback sequence in which the audience is privy to Susy's death. Previously, Joey has told Bobbie that Nanny forcibly held Susy's head underwater in the bathtub.

Instead, the flashback reveals that the child lost her footing on the tub's edge while trying to retrieve her doll – falling unconscious into the tub with the curtain drawn. Making ready a bath for the children, Nanny – who was not home at the time of the accident – starts the water without drawing open the curtains first. The tub fills with water and the child drowns accidentally. This big reveal deflates the prospect that Nanny is deliberately homicidal.

The second problematic element that Sangster infuses into the latter half of the film has to do with a rather sudden and unexpected escalation in violence directed at the family by Nanny. It begins with the reveal that Pen suffers from a heart ailment that requires her to take a daily regiment of pills in order to survive. Waking in the middle of the night, Pen – who does not believe Joey's claims about Nanny – suddenly becomes suspicious when she finds Nanny standing in the kitchen with a pillow. Pressed to the point, Nanny reveals that the pillow is for Joey's bed. Pen suffers an attack and Nanny, rather than saving her life, carries her to bed where she patiently waits for her to die. Nanny attempts to break into Joey's bedroom where he has barricaded himself and smother him with the pillow. He is spared such a fate at the last minute and Nanny is brought to justice.

What is most confusing about these final few moments in the film is that they shift the onus of evil incarnate away from Joey – who until then has been the sole purveyor of diabolical mischief that he genuinely seems to derive pleasure from – to Nanny – who has displayed not one iota of referenced tendencies to do harm to the family unit.

The screenplay by Sangster offers no explanation for Nanny's psychosis – no logical reason why she should suddenly turn on her lifelong commitment to the Fane family whom she has been involved with since Virginia's rearing. If anything, the flashback reveal of Susy's accidental death weakens the story's credibility that Nanny is our villain. If anything, Nanny is a tragic figure – the wrong person at the wrong time whose actions unintentionally takes the life of an innocent child, but haunts her memory for the rest of film.

In truth, the character of Joey is the most problematic aspect of the film. As played by Dix, Joey is entirely unlikable or, for the most part, unredeemable. Take for example Joey's emotionless response to being informed by Dr. Medman that his mother has been poisoned and will have to be rushed to the hospital. Herein, a ‘normal child' might have seized the opportunity to inform Medman of his suspicions about Nanny and use the situation more wisely for leverage. Instead, Joey's aloofness and lack of allegations play more like an extension of some innately perverse need to be self-destructive, conniving and manipulative.

Bette Davis's performance is exemplary throughout – the very embodiment of English propriety and decorum. Pamela Franklin is enigmatic in the few brief scenes that she appears. The least affecting turn comes from James Villier – more menacing than fatherly and quite suspect for the chills and thrills until the screenplay jettisons him from the duration of the story. In the final analysis, The Nanny is diluted entertainment.

Fox Home Video's DVD is disappointing at best. The anamorphic B&W image is faded throughout. Blacks are dull gray. Whites are dirty. Film grain is present as are age related artifacts. Contrast levels are weak and inconsistently rendered. The audio is mono but has a muffled characteristic at the beginning that renders some of the dialogue virtually inaudible. The orchestral music over the main title is shrill. Extras include a restoration comparison, TV spots, trailers and interactive press book.

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