5.0 out of 5 stars
2 early classics from the Master of Suspense!, October 14, 2011
This review is from: Murder/Sabotage (DVD)
I bought this 2 disc set for only $1.45 when it first appeared on Amazon a couple of months ago, and for the price, it's amazing. I already owned "Sabotage" (1936) on the "Alfred Hitchcock: The Legend Begins" movie set, but I didn't own "Murder" (1930), and getting the movie by itself would be about $5-6 dollars, so it was a great bargain getting "Sabotage" along with "Murder" for about $4-5 dollars less. But there is one problem. On the DVD cover (different from the one it shows on Amazon), it says "Digitally Remastered Movie". I didn't really expect much because it was from a low-budget company that I never heard of (Leisure Entertainment), but they could have at least remastered it a little, but it seems like they didn't remaster it all. It's extremely blurry, washed out, and faded, alongs with hisses, pops, and bangs in the audio. Another thing is they said you can choose from 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound and the original 2.0 Mono track, but the only difference is that the 5.1 sounds just a tad louder than the 2.0. That's the problem I have with the DVD, but it still deserves 5 stars, because both movies are early Hitchcock classics that are excellent!
Murder is about a woman, Diana Baring (Norah Baring) who is accused of murdering somebody, and Sir John Menier (Herbert Marshall) investigates. It also stars Phyllis Konstam. It's a really interesting movie, with some good suspense and the end and a courtroom sequence, but my favorite part is the point-of-view talk between Norah Baring and Herbert Marshall when he visits her in jail. It's a very-well done sequence that shows the early brilliance of Hitch. I noticed that the audio is slightly off in a few scenes, but other than that, I can't complain. It's a great film. Another thing is that instead of the cut 90-minute version, this DVD comes with uncut 104-minute version. I thought that was fantastic!
Sabotage is about a man named Karl Verloc, that owns a cinema, who is a part of a terrorisst group that plan bombings in London. His wife, Mrs. Verloc (Sylvia Sydney) gets mixed up in it all when Detective Sergeant Ted Spencer (John Loder) walks into her life, investigating Mr. Verloc. Mrs. Verloc suddenly finds out. Desmond Tester plays her little brother, Stevie. I thought "Sabotage" was an amazing and suspenseful Gaumont-British Hitchcock film that deserves repeated viewings.
Both of these films are great quality, with not so great audio/video quality, but altogether, this dual-sided DVD is worth it.
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