Black Bag 4K (2025/Focus/Universal 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray w/Blu-ray)/Four Rode Out (1969/Film Masters Blu-ray)/Mystery Street (1950/MGM/Warner Archive Blu-ray)/Naked Witch (1969 aka Witchmaker/MVD/VCI Blu-ray w/DVD)/Working Man 4K (2025/Warner 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray)

4K Ultra HD Picture: B+ Picture: B-/B-/B/B- & C+/X Sound: B/B-/C+/C+/B+ Extras: C/D/B/C+/D Films: B-/B-/B/C+/C

PLEASE NOTE: The Mystery Street Blu-ray is now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.

Steven Soderbergh's Black Bag 4K (2025) has writer David Koepp reteaming with the director to make a spy picture, the brainy kind without huge budgets and endless gadgets (though we all have gadgets now, of course) that especially wants to be The Ipcress Files meets the many great detective and spy couples in the genres. Here, Michael Fassbinder and Cate Blanchett are the couple, working for one of the more secret subdivisions in the intelligence community when he is framed as some kind of traitor.

Of course, there is much more going on here than it first seems and unlike most films that say they have that to offer the viewer, this one delivers eventually, after a slow and mixed start. The mystery is who is the traitor inside the organization, but also, why are they doing what they are doing. At first, I was disappointed, but when things finally picked up, this worked. Too bad it did not do so earlier, or it would have been a much bigger hit. I hope seeing this at home will allow viewers to give it a chance and get though the early mixed nature of the script, because I did like what eventually happens.

Maybe they hoped for sequels and a series like the Knives Out or Branagh Poirot films and the potential is there, but they get caught up in the numbers a little too much early on, so beware and see it. You might like it too. Cheers also to the supporting cast, including Naomi Harris, Marisa Abela, Tom Burke, Rege-Jean Page and Pierce Brosnan.

Extras include Digital Code, while the disc adds Deleted Scenes and two Making Of featurettes: Company Of Talent and Designing Black Bag.

John Peyser's Four Rode Out (1969) is an underrated Revenge Western with adult themes, overtones, grittiness and brutalness the vast majority of the 'westerns' made for TV and theaters today would not have the guts to even try to make. Pernell Roberts is a U.S. Marshall trying to track down a man (Julian Mateos) who has robbed a big chunk of money, competing with a Pinkerton Detective Agency (Leslie Nielsen, convincingly brutal here) to get that money, but the twist is he also has the thief's ex-lover (Sue Lyon, good here too) in tow to pressure him. Will it work?

Well, the film works and stays more intense than you might imagine, the actors in good form and a consistency in the narrative and pace that helps this build and build and build. Underrated, even if you are not a fans of the genre, you should definitely see it once just to see how good it is. A nice gem rediscovered.

There are sadly no extras.

John Struges' Mystery Street (1950) is a Film Noir with a well thought out mystery in its screenplay as Ricardo Montalban (Star Trek II) more than carries the film as the detective trying to find out who a dead woman is, how she got there and why was she killed. Sally Forrest is a party gal who decides to get together with a drunken man at a bar, not knowing his whole story. He is distraught his wife had a miscarriage and is not making the wisest decisions.

She goes too far when she steals his car, only to meet a mysterious figure who shoots and kills her, then sends he freshly dead body with his car into deep water. Then a skeleton shows up and the mystery begins. Lt. Peter Morales (Montalban) has a early lead that brings him to an apartment run by an eccentric owner (Elsa Lanchester, almost stealing the film at times) who is an opportunist, who gets in the way of the investigation and was not a fan of the deceased.

But Sturges does an amazing directing job, was co-written by Richard Brooks & Sydney Boehm, this was shot by no less than the legendary John Alton, A.S.C., and the cast is really, really good here. At least a minor classic, WOW does this gem need to be rediscovered!

Bruce Bennett and Marshall Thomson lead the solid supporting cast.

Extras include a feature length audio commentary track by Alain Silver & Elizabeth Ward, Original Theatrical Trailer, short film Murder At Harvard and two classic MGM Technicolor animated cartoons in HD: Little Quacker and Tom & Jerry in the Hollywood Bowl.

William O. Brown's The Naked Witch (1969 aka Witchmaker) is one of those supernatural horror films so bad, you have to see it to believe it, with the somewhat underrated Anthony Eisley leading a team to investigate some bizarre ritualistic murders of young, beautiful women (I will not describe it, but its not PG-rated) and wants to stop it all.

Unfortunately, the low budget, campiness and inaneness are so bad, they are amusing (its one of those kinds of films) and is worth a look, flaws and all. The supporting cast is not bad, I like how some of this is shot and it is typical of the increasingly more graphic B-movies in the genre of the time, including being an independent production. The interested and curious should check it out just to see it to believe it. Just don't expect too much.

Extras include a horror poster gallery and feature length audio commentary track by media and film scholar Robert Kelly.

Last and least, David Ayer's Working Man 4K (2025) is yet another Jason Statham formula romp where he plays someone ordinary and simple, but is up to so much, much more, or so they say.

These are not to expensive to make and probably turn some kind of profit, but now more than ever, he is making the same film over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. He was a decorated, advanced military soldier, now working construction (If I Were A Carpenter...) only to put down his working and measuring tools to fight human trafficking.

It almost trivializes some serious subjects in bad ways, maybe sometimes doing just that, but it has way more problems than that and is for fans only, of which there are enough that he keeps making these formula romps. See it at your own risk.

There are no extras, unless you count Digital Movie Code.

Now for playback performance. The 2160p HEVC/H.265, 2.35 X 1, HDR (10; Ultra HD Premium)-enhanced Ultra High Definition image on Black Bag 4K is the best-looking film here, as expected, well shot, edited and with some nice form to it, which works better than the softer-than-expected 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image on the regular Blu-ray. You would never know how good this film looks just from the 1080p, but the 4K impresses enough. Both also have lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mixes and they are just fine with the occasional sonic highlight and always consistent.

The 2160p HEVC/H.265, 2.35 X 1, HDR (10; Ultra HD Premium)-enhanced Ultra High Definition image on Working Man 4K is not bad for a usually uneventful presentation visually, as the stunts and fights are the usual albeit consistent and the second-best performer here. The lossless Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 mixdown for older systems) has some down-points, but works well when it kicks in. Still, for fans only.

The 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image on Four Rode Out has some damage and off parts, but color is not bad and is still very watchable just the same. The PCM 2.0 Mono sound is not bad throughout, no matter how aged it sounds.

The 1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image transfer on Mystery Street can sometimes show the age of the materials used, but this is far superior a transfer to all previous releases of the film on home video, the third-best transfer here and you even get some demo shots above my letter grade. Impressive, like the film itself, while the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix is limited, but has been restored well and is about as good as this film will ever sound.

The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Naked Witch can show the age of the materials used, but this still looking good despite its issues as this looks like a real dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor version of the film. Watch the color shine through when least expected and the Techniscope has some good composition. The lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono sound on this and the softer, anamorphically enhanced DVD are good for what it is, but why no lossless sound for the Blu-ray? Otherwise, worth a look.

To order the Mystery Street Warner Archive Blu-ray, go to this link for it 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