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Kirk Douglas and Rock Hudson can’t quite bring this all-star western fully to life, even with Robert Aldrich at the helm and a storyline that toys with (then) lurid, adult subject matter. Screen-written by Dalton Trumbo and filmed in Mexico, it perhaps packs too much edgy psychodrama into a simple cowboys & six-guns saga. Dorothy Malone and Carol Lynley give fine support and the locations are nice, as is Ernest Laszlo’s cinematography.

The Last Sunset

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1961 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 112 min. / Street Date October 12, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Rock Hudson, Kirk Douglas, Dorothy Malone, Joseph Cotten, Carol Lynley, Neville Brand, Regis Toomey, Rad Fulton (James Westmoreland), Adam Williams, Jack Elam, John Shay, José Torvay.

Cinematography: Ernest Laszlo

Art Directors: Alexander Golitzen, Alfred Sweeney

Film Editor: Michael Luciano

Original Music: Ernest Gold

Written by Dalton Trumbo from the novel Sundown at Crazy Horse by Howard Rigsby

Produced by Eugene Frenke,...

Ida Lupino was the first woman to direct a classic noir film. In fact, she was the only woman working within the 1950s Hollywood studio system to direct a feature and she directed seven features and more than 100 TV episodes. She was the only woman to direct episodes of the original “The Twilight Zone” series, as well as the only director to have starred in the show.

She was born in London on Feb. 4, 1918, during a German zeppelin bombing. Her father’s forbears were traveling players and puppeteers in Renaissance Italy. Later generations migrated to England in the 17th century. Her father, Stanley Lupino, was a noted comedian, and her mother, Connie Emerald, was an actress who was also descended from a theatrical family. A cousin, Lupino Lane, was an internationally popular song-and-dance man.

As a child, she improvised and acted scenes with her younger sister, Rita, in a small...

The AFI Fest is free! And it takes place in the heart of Hollywood at the Tcl Chinese 6 Theatres, the Egyptian Theatre, and the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. All you need is a ticket!SydneysBuzz is proud to be the official presenter of “The Hitch-Hiker” directed by Ida Lupino, one of the rare women directors in Hollywood in the 1950s and today being brought back to our collective consciousness by AFI!“The Hitch-Hiker”Ida Lupino

A deranged hitchhiker takes two all-American Everymen as hostages in the gripping film noir classic, “The Hitch-Hiker” by Ida Lupino, a pioneering director, writer, producer and actress who became the first woman to direct a film noir. She is one of a trio of diverse female trailblazers being celebrated in the 30th edition of AFI Fest presented by Audi. AFI Fest will also spotlight Dorothy Dandridge, the first African American nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award® and Anna May Wong,...

Fred MacMurray movies: ‘Double Indemnity,’ ‘There’s Always Tomorrow’ Fred MacMurray is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" today, Thursday, August 7, 2013. Although perhaps best remembered as the insufferable All-American Dad on the long-running TV show My Three Sons and in several highly popular Disney movies from 1959 to 1967, e.g., The Absent-Minded Professor, Son of Flubber, Boy Voyage!, MacMurray was immeasurably more interesting as the All-American Jerk. (Photo: Fred MacMurray ca. 1940.) Someone once wrote that Fred MacMurray would have been an ideal choice to star in a biopic of disgraced Republican president Richard Nixon. Who knows, the (coincidentally Republican) MacMurray might have given Anthony Hopkins a run for his Best Actor Academy Award nomination. After all, MacMurray’s most admired movie performances are those in which he plays a scheming, conniving asshole: Billy Wilder’s classic film noir Double Indemnity (1944), in which he’s seduced by Barbara Stanwyck, and Wilder...