• Introduction by Tony Curtis • The menus are available in English, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese • Rear Window Theatrical Trailer

This is one of Laserlight's best Hitchcock DVDs. 'Blackmail' is worth a look if only for the fact that it was Britain's first talkie. In fact some of the early scenes are still silent and you expect a title card to appear at any moment. Although 'Blackmail' never reaches the heights of 'The 39 Steps' or the 1934's 'The Man Who Knew Too Much', it is significantly better than most of Hitchcock's other films of the late twenties and early thirties. A few of the scenes are rather long and stagey but there are still some eyecatching moments and Anny Ondra is definitely an asset to the film despite her voice being dubbed by another actress. Picture quality is also very good. Unfortunately, with the notable exception of 'The Lodger', Hitchcock's silent work does not measure up to much. 'Easy Virtue' is probably one of his better efforts but I doubt you will be on the edge of your seat come the film's climax. The picture quality isn't too good either - only watchable - but I guess we shouldn't expect too much given the budget nature of the DVD. All in all, a decent double bill at a decent price. Well done Laserlight!

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This set of five titles from the British phase of Alfred Hitchcock's early career serves as an outstanding reflection on the great director's evolving preoccupations and pet themes in the 1930s. The earliest inclusion is the 1930 Murder, starring Herbert Marshall as a famous stage actor who takes it upon himself to investigate a murder for which a young actress has been wrongly convicted. Clever and witty, the film finds Hitch exploring the blurry dualisms of reality and illusion, guilt and innocence, and watching and doing. The 1932 Number 17 is Hitchcock in a particularly playful vein. A bit bored by the "old dark house" Gothic tone of the story, he uses the film as an opportunity to push the limits of camera mobility, the emotional underpinnings of shots, and the sheer fun of using model trains and other vehicles to create climactic chases. In the 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, the director matches a sophisticated tone with a gut-wrenching tale of a child kidnapped by spies. A fascinating study in contrast with Hitch's 1956 edition of the story (the one starring James Stewart and Doris Day), this film highlights both his interest in the burden of secrecy as well as his youthful efforts at visual experimentation. The 1936 Sabotage is a stunning story of a naive woman's revenge-killing of her husband, a German spy, and the subsequent cover-up of her deed both by fate and by a police detective who chooses to keep quiet about her guilt. Finally, the 1936 Secret Agent, starring John Gielgud, Robert Young, Madeleine Carroll, and Peter Lorre in an espionage story of concealed identities and assassination, is dense with ideas about lies and the brutality of the hidden. A few features later, Alfred Hitchcock belonged to Hollywood, and the American cinema took a giant leap forward. But in this boxed set can be seen the blueprint of his genius. The prints of the films used in this box set are serviceable and probably comparable to average 16mm classroom or museum presentations. The DVDs also include Hitchcock filmographies, trivia questions, a director biography, and scene access. --Tom Keogh

• Black & White, Box set, Dolby • 10 challenging Alfred Hitchcock trivia questions and anwers • In-depth, interactive biography of Alfred Hitchcock • "Alfred Hitchcock The Innovator": An interactive guide to the pioneering filmmaker's creative and technical innovations • Number of discs: 5

'Murder', an early talkie, is staid, even slow by comparison, although it conjures an equally nerve-racking London atmosphere, and contains some frightening scenes of violence. It is much more subtle enquiry into jury and justice than '12 Angry Men'.

Considered the first true Hitchcock film, 'The Lodger' is the director's most visually audacious masterpiece, made under the heavy influence of German Expressionism. Like his master, Fritz Lang, he imposes on his thriller narrative an angular, geometric grid: his use of domestic space, with its various levels, stairs, ceilings, walls, doorways, window frames etc., is part of the film's rich pleasure. He also shares with a Lang a relish for new technologies, analysiing the diffusion of media and their ability to whip up violent mob hysteria; while equating the policeman with a suspected serial killer. The Lodger's entrance, pure Guignol as he stands concealed in a black cape as the lights go out, reminds me of Conrad Veidt.

What makes the film so Hitchcock is its Englishness; its joy in sensation (the film opens with a startlingly huge close-up of a blonde being murdered); provocative visual puns (there is much Hitchcockian fun with handcuffs; the first 'love' scene, with the Lodger's head looming and filling up the screen like the earlier female victim); and surprising sexiness (the heroine is a 'mannequin', justifying much backstage activity with girls in their underwear; a teasing bath scene); its Catholic iconography, riddling the Lodger with a much heavier guilt than murder. The film is so visually busy, especially in its first third, it threatens to overwhelm the picture, and Hitchcock would learn not to start at such a high pitch. But of all his British films, 'Lodger' is perhaps the closest to a (sour) vision of modern England. In its grim vision of media-provoked mob violence, its plot about a serial killer become mysterious celebrity, its portrait of an affluent, 'swinging' society masking murders and sexual dysfunction, this disturbing film could have been made for our times.

• Black & White • Video program: Murder! (1930), newsreel (1930), cartoon: Felix the Cat in "Two-Lip Time" (1930), The Lodger (1926) (with new digitally recorded musical soundtrack) • Audio program: Suspense presents The Lodger (radio dramatization) • Hitchcock's filmography, bibliography, cameo roles

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Alfred Hitchcock's 1929 remake of the 1916 U.K. drama The Manxman is no picnic: lives are destroyed, careers ruined, and hopes dashed. One of the director's harshest works, this silent film concerns two old school chums on the Isle of Man, Pete (Carl Brisson) and Phil (Malcolm Keen), who both love the same woman, Kate (Anny Ondra). Phil has been reared and educated to become an aristocrat--a successful lawyer and eventual judge. Pete, by contrast, is happy as a fisherman but cannot win Kate until he earns his fortune. (He also doesn't know how Phil really feels about his girl.) When word comes that Pete has died overseas, Phil and Kate consummate their passion, only to find that the news of their friend's demise has been greatly exaggerated. What follows is a doomed effort by the lovers to paper over what they've done: Pete marries Kate, all right, but Kate and Phil's deception not only doesn't go away, it just gets deeper. Hitchcock explores, though not too subtly, his developing preoccupation with shared guilt and secret selves, and he layers in strong hints of ever-deepening motivation behind so much self-destruction. (A suggestion that blue-blooded Phil is really using the barmaid Kate as a shield against his destiny is not only provocative but amplifies the tragedy.) Much of the film is set-bound, but there are also astonishing moments of Hitchcock working out early versions of visual ideas fulfilled up to 30 years later in such films as North by Northwest and Psycho. --Tom Keogh

A "skin game" means a swindle, trick, or scam. The movie starts with Hornblower (Edmund Gwenn) buying property from the proud, proper English landowner Hillcrest (C.V. France), assuring him that the tenant farmers would be allowed to stay. Soon Hornblower evicts them to build factories, because he is a man of progress and industry. Hillcrest is outraged, and sets out to stop Hornblower's efforts to buy up land for more factories. Hillcrest attempts to slow down Hornblower's land purchases by rigging an auction on some property that's up for sale. But Hornblower figures out the scheme, and outsmarts Hillcrest with his own tricks. Hillcrest escalates the feud by hiring a man to dig up dirt on Hornblower and his family.

• Black & White • Introduction by Tony Curtis • The menus are available in English, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese • Dial M for Murder theatrical trailer

The film really is a bit of a mess, albeit a mess that at times is fairly entertaining. It begins as a comedy, using sight gags that have their basis firmly in the silent era. Then the humour starts to fizzle out and we are introduced to the story of a married couple who want to see the world. Amazingly, within the span of a couple of minutes, their dreams come true, and they race aboard a luxury liner intent on a life of travel and idleness. Once onboard the ship the plot cools its boots while a cheesy romance subplot begins. The husband of the couple begins an affair with a vampy single woman who professes to be a Princess (no doubt of some generic European country) and the wife begins hanging around a dull aristocrat. I won't give away any more of the plot, except to say that after the long and fairly boring romantic subplot that's neither entertaining or interesting, pirates show up and do nothing except act strange and do weird things.

The story just doesn't know what it wants to be. It starts off as a comedy, then switches to drama, then has an attempt at romance, then becomes an adventure tale. It finally shudders to a halt, but not before it has tried its hand at several more unrelated genres. It has the feel of a movie that was slapped together out of multiple unrelated scripts. The problem is that while none of the segments are especially terrible (although the romances are not awfully engaging), they just don't work together at all. Characters who would seem to be sympathetic in one portion are suddenly acting in a completely different manner only a few scenes later.

RICH AND STRANGE has traces of Hitchcock's humour present, but as a whole, it turns out to be much less than the sum of its parts. It never establishes the characters, therefore it is hard to feel much sympathy for all the weirdness that befalls them. Possibly very telling is the fact that in the introduction, Tony Curtis seems much more interested in talking about how great of a film PSYCHO was than in discussing the movie that is actually on the disc.

• Black & White • Contains Two Hitchcock Films: Rich and Strange (1932, 83 min.), The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1962, 26 min.) - An innocent boy becomes the pawn in a deadly circus game gone awry in this episode from the Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV series. • Introduction by Tony Curtis • The menus are available in English, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese • Psycho theatrical trailer

Unfortunately, Laserlight hasn't bothered with any restoration work, and the print is pretty awful on the DVD. The most that can be said is that it's not as bad as most of the Madacy prints and that, with the addition of the silent feature, The Ring, the DVD is a true value for the Hitchcock collector. And on that topic, The Ring has values of its own, including impressive performances by Carl Brisson and Ian Hunter. Sadly, Lilian Hall-Davis's heroine is mostly trashy and unattractive.

• Black & White • Contains Two Hitchcock Films: Number 17 (1932, 63 min.), The Ring (1927, 73 min., Silent) • Introduction by Tony Curtis • The menus are available in English, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese • I Confess theatrical trailer

• ASIN: Young and Innocent is based on the novel A Shilling For Candles, by Josephine Tey. A young woman helps a man wrongly suspected of murder. The Man Who Knew Too Much is a classic. Features Peter Lorre in his first English speaking screen role, as the leader of a bunch of assassins. A young daugher is kidnapped so her parents won't reveal the information they overheard about an assassination. Fortunately, the kid's mother is an expert shot....

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Hitchcock's first great romantic thriller is a prime example of the MacGuffin principle in action. Robert Donat is Richard Hannay, an affable Canadian tourist in London who becomes embroiled in a deadly conspiracy when a mysterious spy winds up murdered in Hannay's rented flat--and both the police and a secret organization wind up hot on his trail. With only a seemingly meaningless phrase ("the 39 steps"), a small Scottish town circled on a map, and a criminal mastermind identified by a missing finger as clues, quick-witted Hannay eludes police and spies alike as he works his way across the countryside to reveal the mystery and clear his name. At one point he finds himself making his escape manacled to blonde beauty Pamela (Madeleine Carroll), whose initial antagonism is smoothed by Hannay's charm and the sheer rush of her thrilling chase. It's classic Hitchcock all the way, a seemingly effortless balance of romance and adventure set against a picturesque landscape populated by eccentrics and social-register smoothies, none of whom is what he or she appears to be. Hitchcock would play similar games of innocents plunged into deadly conspiracies, most delightfully in North by Northwest, but in this breezy 1935 classic, Hitch proves that, as in any quest, the object of the search isn't nearly as satisfying as the journey. --Sean Axmaker • Commentary by Hitchcock scholar Marian Keane • Production notes • Gorgeous new digital transfer, with restored picture and sound • The complete 1937 broadcast of the Lux Radio Theatre adaptation performed by Robert Montgomery and Ida Lupino • The Art of Film: Vintage Hitchcock, the complete Janus Films documentary detailing the director's British period • Excerpts from the original 1935 press book • Original production design drawings

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At first glance The Lady Vanishes appears to be a frothy, lightweight treat, a testament to Alfred Hitchcock's nimble touch. This snappy, sophisticated romantic thriller begins innocently enough, as a contingent of eccentric tourists spend the night in a picture-postcard village inn nestled in the Swiss Alps before setting off on the train the next morning. In a wonderfully Hitchcockian twist on "meeting cute," attractive young Iris (Margaret Lockwood) clashes with brash music student Gilbert (Michael Redgrave) when his nocturnal concerts give her no peace. She gets him kicked out of his room, so he barges in on hers: True love is inevitable, but not before they are both plunged into an international conspiracy. The next day on the train, kindly old Mrs. Froy (Dame May Whitty) vanishes from her train car without a trace and the once quarrelsome couple unite to search the train and uncover a dastardly plot. No one is as he or she seems, but sorting out the villains from the merely mysterious is a challenge in itself, as our innocents abroad face resistance from the entire passenger list. Hitchcock effortlessly navigates this vivid thriller from light comedy to high tension and back again, creating one of his most enchanting and entertaining mysteries. Though this wasn't his final British film before departing for Hollywood (that honor goes to Jamaica Inn), many critics prefer to think of this as his fond farewell to the British Film Industry. --Sean Axmaker

• Black & White • Commentary by film historian Bruce Eder

Laughton plays the leader of a band of plundering pirates in this adventure yarn based upon Daphne DuMaurier's soapy gothic novel. He was originally cast as a licentious parson, but, because of a possible (and most likely) run-in with the notorious Hays Office, was switched to the squire role. The ravishingly beautiful but unknown Maureen O'Hara was eighteen here, in her film debut. Laughton informed the other cast members that they should all get behind Maureen and help her: "Two days later, we were fighting for our scenes. That child was stealing our scenes from us!". Also in the cast is playwright Emlyn Williams (THE CORN IS GREEN and NIGHT MUST FALL) and Basil Radford, who had charmed audiences the previous year in Hitchcock's THE LADY VANISHES. This was the last film Hitchcock made in pre-war Britain; he would soon after set sail for America, where he was destined for enormous fame.