​The year 2016 in Blu-ray: cornucopia for collectors

Last summer marked the ten-year anniversary that the Blu-ray home video format has been on the market. Despite the fact that many people are switching to online streaming options for watching movies, and others continue to remain satisfied with DVD or even VHS quality, the high-definition Blu-ray format has built a solid collector base and has become the medium of choice for discriminating viewers, especially those with home theatres and HD projectors.

As in the past two years, 2016 saw an impressive array of classic, foreign, independent, and cult films released to Blu-ray in superior high-definition editions that look and sound comparable to theatrical presentations. With a few notable exceptions, the major studios concentrate almost exclusively on recent box-office hits.

Several smaller labels made up for this by licensing and releasing a surprising number of obscure titles aimed at specific niche markets, even early 3-D. Here are some notable titles new to Blu-ray in the past 12 months.

Box sets have been prominent among the year’s outstanding Blu-ray releases. Universal Home Entertainment released impressive restorations of five Marx Brothers comedies from 1929-1934, “The Cocoanuts,” “Animal Crackers,” “Monkey Business,” “Horse Feathers,” and “Duck Soup,” along with a new 80-minute documentary and three vintage TV interviews.

Universal released outstanding transfers of their classic monster movies of the 1930s-40s, beginning with “Frankenstein” and “The Wolf Man” and all of their sequels (with some crossover between the two collections). Their other monster series will likely follow in 2017.

Kino Video released an amazing box set called “Pioneers of African American Cinema,” containing 16 full-length features from 1920 through 1946, 12 shorts from 1915 through 1940, plus rare surviving fragments and trailers from other films, an archival 1978 interview with two sisters who worked at the Cotton Club, and more.

One of the most interesting of several box sets released by The Criterion Collection was “Wim Wenders: The Road Trilogy,” including the films “Alice in the Cities” (1974), “Wrong Move” (1975), and “Kings of the Road” (1976). Mill Creek Entertainment released a pair of interesting William Castle double features: “Homicidal” (1961) with “Mr. Sardonicus” (1961), and “13 Ghosts” (1960) with “13 Frightened Girls” (1963).

A rare classic released individually by Universal was the newly-restored 3-D version of “It Came From Outer Space” (1953) including its original, amazingly effective stereophonic soundtrack. This iconic sci-fi thriller of an amateur astronomer’s encounter with shipwrecked aliens was based on a thoughtful Ray Bradbury story.

Milestone Films released to Blu-ray a restoration of an extremely rare independent film made in 1920 Oklahoma, “The Daughter of Dawn.” The cast is made up entirely of Comanche and Kiowa of the area enacting a fictional story while recreating ancient Native American traditions that had been suppressed for decades but elders still remembered.

Flicker Alley released two recently-restored film noir classics, “Too Late for Tears” (1949) and “Woman on the Run” (1950), as well as the fine Gary Cooper-Clara Bow silent drama “Children of Divorce” (1927) and a couple more in their series of restored Cinerama travelogues.

Kino has had a huge year of vintage films released to Blu-ray, including many rarities in high definition for the first time. The French serial “Fantomas” (1913) may be somewhat primitive cinematically but incredibly is among the sharpest-looking Blu-ray transfers of any film ever, looking as though it was filmed yesterday.

Fritz Lang’s “Spies” (1928) and “Woman in the Moon” (1929) are two other outstanding HD silents from Kino. They’ve also put out an extremely strong slate of classic film noir, including “The Chase” (1946), “Road House” (1948), “He Ran All the Way” (1951), “99 River Street” (1953), and “Storm Fear” (1955), among others.

Superior Fox Westerns from Kino include William Wellman’s “Yellow Sky” (1948), Henry Hathaway’s “Rawhide” (1951), and more. They also put out a colorful restoration of “The Vikings” (1958) starring Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis and fine-looking discs of the delightful Fred Astaire-Leslie Caron musical “Daddy Long Legs” (1955), “Chandu the Magician” (1932) with Bela Lugosi, and Ray Milland’s notable post-apocalyptic drama “Panic in Year Zero” (1962).

The Warner Archive Collection stepped up its releasing of Blu-rays with wonderful HD editions of “To Have and Have Not” (1944), “The Big Sleep” (1946), “Key Largo” (1948), “Susan Slept Here” (1954), “Love Me or Leave Me” (1955), and “Silk Stockings” (1957), to name a few. Many of these include rare short films from their library as HD bonus features.

Twilight Time released a variety of interesting Blu-rays, with the new 3-D restoration of Rita Hayworth’s “Miss Sadie Thompson” (1953) topping the list, as well as the excellent noir “Where the Sidewalk Ends” (1950), the fun Vincent Price-Diana Rigg horror thriller “Theatre of Blood” (1973), Woody Allen’s brilliant self-reflective “Stardust Memories” (1980), the gripping Andrei Konchalovsky thriller “Runaway Train” (1985) starring Jon Voight, John Huston’s version of “Moby Dick” (1956), and the legendary Robert Aldrich thriller “Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte” (1964) with an all-star cast led by Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland.

Among the Criterion Collection’s numerous notable and beautifully-restored Blu-ray releases were the iconic Glenn Ford/Rita Hayworth film noir “Gilda” (1946), the early Jean Renoir drama “La Chienne” (1931), Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid” (1921), Orson Welles’ memorable version of Falstaff “Chimes at Midnight” (1965), the two Japanese “Lady Snowblood” films (1973-74) that greatly inspired Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” movies, and the low-key Kenji Mizoguchi drama “The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum” (1939).

Olive Films has been concentrating lately on all-but-forgotten pop action films, comedies, and dramas from the 1980s, 90s, and 2000s, plus a few recent foreign films, but has snuck in some interesting and rare classics like Michael Curtiz’s Hungarian-made silent “The Undesirable” (1915), Cecil B. DeMille’s rarely seen “The Captive” (1915), the underrated film noir “Try and Get Me!” (1950), Stanley Kramer’s well-done Sidney Poitier-Bobby Darin social drama “Pressure Point” (1962), a stunning-looking edition of James Stewart’s “Strategic Air Command” (1955), and many more.