Darn Good Westerns – Volume One (VCI DVD)
Picture: C Sound: C
Extras: C Main Films: C+
VCI has
issued yet more B-movie Western genre films, something they have done better
than just about any company around, having built a fan base of fans that know
they are putting out much material. They
have amusingly begun another series with the funny title Darn Good Westerns. This
first volume has a young Sterling Hayden film called Hellgate (1952) and a sepia-toned novelty called Panhandle (1948) that are interesting
novelties.
The rest
of the discs are filled with extras to fill out the space DVD affords the owner
and that will make collector’s happy.
Otherwise, non fans will find it programmer fodder, but you can do
worse.
The 1.33
X 1 image across all the black and white films are detail challenged, but Video
Black is usually good. It’s just the
films are old and who knows what happened to the original camera
materials. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono also
shows its age and though they have tried to clean it up, there is only so much
you can do with such old material. Extras
include various Western trailers, a few lesser B-movies (Fangs Of The Wild, Train To
Tombstone, Operation Haylift and
Wildfire – Story Of A Horse), plus
video short Hold ‘Em Cowboy and
color Vincent Price short Born In
Freedom: The Story Of Colonel Drake.
- Nicholas Sheffo
