Lady Of The Law (1975/88 Films*)/Rapacious Jailbreaker (1974/Radiance*)/Side Street (1949/MGM**)/Steppenwolf (2024/Arrow*)/Terror Firma (2023/Dark Arts/*all MVD Blu-rays)/Three The Hard Way (1974/Allied Artists/**both Warner Archive Blu-rays)

Picture: B-/B-/B/B/B/B Sound: C+/C+/C+/B-/B/B- Extras: B-/B-/B-/B-/C+/C- Films: B-/C+/C+/C+/C/B-

PLEASE NOTE: The Side Street and Three The Hard Way Blu-rays are now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.

This new group of genre films are from the near-past, but the two newer ones still hark back to the earlier era of the others...

Shen Chiang and Stanley Wing Siu's Lady Of The Law (1975) has the title character (Leng Rushuang) going after an escaped hardcore criminal, but she starts to doubt how guilty he is and starts investigating in between various fights. Another in the cycle of then-rarer female antagonist films in the genre and in related genres, the film has more action than expected and holds up a little better than expected, has more energy than later variants and is before this became a total formula.

Fans will be more impressed, but it is worth seeing and the decent supporting cast includes Dean Shek, Lo Lieh, Shih Zu, Tung Lin, Chang Pei-Chang, Tang Chi-Ching, Ou-Yang and Cheng Lei.

Extras include a Stills Gallery

• Limited Edition O-ring

• Feature Length Audio Commentary by David West

• an Original Theatrical Trailer

• and a Limited Edition Set of 4 collectors art cards.

Masaru Shiga's The Rapacious Jailbreaker (1974) is a gritty prison movie that has some good moments and is just a little different (to its credit) from the Hollywood version, old and then-new, taking place just after WWII in Japan as Ueda (Hiroki Matsukata) lands up behind bars form his black marketing activities. Sentenced to 20 years in prison, he keeps escaping, so they keep punting him in new places. He keeps escaping all of them.

That last aspect is darkly amusing, but the film is dark and does not ignore the ugliness of prison or the gangsters connected to them. Even at 97 minutes, this might be more than some can handle, but I liked how brutally honest and realistic it was for the most part, even if we've seen more than a bit of this in the cycle, crime and gangster films before it and since. Worth a look for those interested.

Extras include a Feature Length Audio Commentary track by yakuza film expert Nathan Stuart (2025) worth hearing

• Visual essay on Sadao Nakajima by Tom Mes (2025)

• New English subtitle translation

• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Filippo Di Battista

• and a Limited Edition booklet featuring new writing by Earl Jackson and an archival review of the film.

Anthony Mann's Side Street (1949) is the director's last film noir, a sometimes unintentionally amusing tale of a father-to-be-mailman (Farley Granger) who lands up stealing a fortune from some bad men, with a wife (Cathy O'Donnell) in tow not knowing what he has done, he quits his job after the robbery and lies to her and says he has a new job he needs to go out of town for. Of course, this all goes wrong and the bad guys are out for blood.

Not quite campy, his character Joe makes all kinds of obvious and practical mistakes, common sense ones most would not make, so as the situation gets wilder and wilder, it can be hard to buy. However, it is still entertaining to watch.

No longer having James Wong Howe as his Director of Photography, it is not as dark visually (or thematically) as Raw Deal or T-Men (both reviewed elsewhere on this site) but having longtime MGM DP Joseph Ruttenberg, A.S.C., still delivers some great shots and interesting variations on Noir and its look. Ruttenberg started in the silent era (1917!) as a DP and some of his key sound films include the original Three Godfathers, Man Hunt, A Day At The Races, Comrade X, Broadway Melody of 1940, Waterloo Bridge, Two-Faced Woman, Woman Of The Year, Mrs. Miniver, Brigadoon, Last Time I Saw Paris, Kismet, The Swan, Gigi, Elvis Presley's Speedway, the Marlon Brando Julius Caesar, Stewart Granger Prisoner Of Zenda, Gaslight and the Spencer Tracy Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. That's the kind of effective talent he brought to this film, including some fine outdoor location work.

The only other thing that throws the film off is its voiceover narration. Instead of a gumshoe detective or someone alone, isolated and in trouble, it is a safe police detective Captain Walter Anderson (Paul Kelly) which like 'official voice of God' narration, cuts some of the potential darkness and sleaze, but he is good too. The rest of the supporting cast is also solid, including the always reliable Charles McGraw, James Craig, Jean Hagen, Whit Bissell, Paul Harvey, Adele Jergens, Edmon Ryan, Edwin Max and look for an uncredited turns by David Bauer (Diamonds Are Forever) and Richard Basehart.

Extras include a Feature Length Audio Commentary by Richard Schickel, Featurette "Where Temptation Lurks", Crime Does Not Pay Short "The Luckiest Guy in the World", Classic Cartoons: Goggle-Fishing Bear and Polka Dot Puss (both in HD, but with lossy Dolby Digital) and an Original Theatrical Trailer.

Adilkhan Yerzhanov's Steppenwolf (2024) briefly references the famous book it shares its name with, but takes off as a woman (Anna Starchenko) searches for her missing son and brings a hotheaded guy and former police officer (Berik Aitzhanov) to help her out, no matter how murderous or violent he gets. He also uses machine guns, putting this revenge tale on steroids, but it puts style and cliches over substance a little too much.

I do like the idea that it tries to be something different and does try to see how quick anger and automatic weapons fit into the look of such films, but it at least tries to sort of do Mad Max in current times and has a few good moments. Too bad it runs out of ideas early.

Extras include a brand new feature length audio commentary track on Steppenwolf with critic and pop culture historian David Flint, recorded exclusively for Arrow Video in 2025

• Reading Steppenwolf as a Transnational Post-Western, a brand new visual essay by author, film historian and academic Lee Broughton, exploring the use of American and Italian Western genre tropes in Steppenwolf and other films from around the world

• The Making of Steppenwolf, a 15-minute behind-the-scenes featurette featuring interviews with the cast and crew

• Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new interviews with Steppenwolf cast and crew members including writer-director Adilkhan Yerzhanov, producer Aliya Mendygozhina, actors Berik Aitzhanov and Anna Starchenko, composer Galymzhan Moldanazar and cinema

• The Limited Edition includes Yerzhanov's 2022 film Goliath (also in DTS-MA 5.1)

• and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly-commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow.

Jake Macpherson's Terror Firma (2023) is a low budget H.P. Lovecraft inspired horror film that is very much in the same vein as Color Out Of Space. The film has some strong moments, but also about 20 minutes of nonsense that doesn't really add much to the overall plot. The film only stars five or six people total, with the only strong performance by the lead Faye Tamasa, without her the whole thing would've fell apart. Considering the limitations that the filmmakers obviously faced, the film wears its inspirations on its sleeve and isn't without some creative flare.

The film also stars Burt Thakur and Robert Brettenaugh.

Part analogy for drug addiction and part supernatural horror, Terror Firma is set in a city under lockdown with its population on the edge and forced to say indoors. An estranged Orphan (Tamasa) moves in with her adopted brother (Thakur) and his unhinged roommate (Brettenaugh) who in a dirty house on the outskirts of the city. When they get a package of seeds that they later plant in their yard, they find an odd soil that gives them psychedelic effects upon consumption. As the soil drug goes to their heads, they find themselves in different realms of reality and ultimately stuck in a dangerous time loop that has each of them fighting for their lives as they lose their grip on reality.

Special Features:

Director's Cut

Director's commentary

Behind-the-scenes photo gallery

and a Theatrical Trailer.

Terror Firma has some good ideas, decent special effects, and an impressive performance from its lead, but ultimately feels uneven and lacks a cohesive conclusion.

Gordon Parks Jr.'s Three The Hard Way (1974) is one of the key films in the action side of the 'blaxploitation' cycle and was a real coup for up and coming Allied Artists by landing three of this biggest stars: Jim Kelly, Jim Brown and Fred Williamson, plays action-capable guys who team up to stop of secret white supremacist plot to contaminate water in black neighborhoods in Washington D.C., Detroit and Los Angeles.

The late, great Jay Robinson (Caligula in the first CinemaScope films like The Robe, Dr. Shrinker on TV and so much more) is really good and one of the more realistic villains you'll find in one of these films, smart enough to take on all three of them, but there is more going on here like romance for the leads, action sequences and music including The Impressions towards the end of their remarkable hits run when they were still topping the soul charts.

Another plus is the supporting cast that includes Sheila Frazier, Jeanne Bell, Howard Platt, Richard Angarola, Howard Platt, Marion Collier, Roberta Collins, Irene Tsu, Alex Rocco and a very young Corbin Bernsen. At least a minor classic of the cycle, this is the full 97-minutes-long version, finally restored in all its glory. See it!

The only extra is an Original Theatrical Trailer.

Now for playback performance. The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image on Lady Of The Law can look good and have good color, but some age in the film and some distortion with the older anamorphic lenses used to shoot it hold back the image quality, but some of those issues are the way it was produced. The Mandarin PCM 2.0 Mono also shows its age, a little sonically limited and the like, but it has been worked on and is as goos as the film will ever sound.

The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image on Rapacious Jailbreaker has some nice shots and impressive color, but also has limits because of its older anamorphic lenses, while the Japanese PCM 2.0 Mono also turns out to be as aged as Lady, but also has been as restored as possible, so it is the best this film will ever sound too.

The 1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image transfer on Side Street rarely shows the age of the materials used, one of the best-looking release on the list and the oldest by a quarter century. Detail, depth, Video Black and Video White look good too. The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix sounds as good as it can, also well restored, but shows its age and has limited sonics. The combination is fine and enjoyable.

The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image on Steppenwolf is a stylized HD shoot that sacrifices some of it potential detail and depth for that, as it tries to look like a Spaghetti Western, albeit postmodern. The Russian DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix is by default, the best sonic presentation, but nothing special beyond it being competent and consistent, so this is as good as it will ever sound and just about ever look.

Terror Firma is presented in 1080p high definition on Blu-ray disc with an MPEG-4 AVC codec, a widescreen aspect ratio of 2.39:1 and an English LPCM 2.0 Stereo mix. The film is pretty well shot and edited for being a low budget production aside from a few scenes being pretty dark. Overall, however, the HD transfer is up to standards for the Blu-ray format.

The 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer Three The Hard Way looks really good, Allied Artists doing what they can to have their films look as good as any of the major studios and it is in great shape. Well lensed by Director of Photography Lucien Ballard, A.S.C., whose other great work can be seen in The Wild Bunch, Kubrick's The Killing, The Outlaw, Laura, the Rod Steiger Al Capone, City Of Fear, Nevada Smith and Hour Of The Gun. Needless to day he was a great choice for this film. The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix is actually the second-best sounding film here. Too bad it is not in stereo for those Impressions songs and the music score.

To order either of the Warner Archive Blu-rays, Side Street and/or Three The Hard Way, go to this link for them and many more great web-exclusive releases at:

https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/ED270804-095F-449B-9B69-6CEE46A0B2BF?ingress=0&visitId=6171710b-08c8-4829-803d-d8b922581c55&tag=blurayforum-20

- Nicholas Sheffo and James Lockhart (Firma)

https://letterboxd.com/jhl5films/