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A military coup in the U.S.? General Burt Lancaster’s scheme would be flawless if not for true blue Marine Kirk Douglas, who snitches to the White House. Now Burt’s whole expensive clandestine army might go to waste – Sad! John Frankenheimer and Rod Serling are behind this nifty paranoid conspiracy thriller.

Seven Days in May

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1964 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 118 min. / Street Date May 8, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Fredric March, Ava Gardner, Edmond O’Brien, Martin Balsam, Andrew Duggan, John Houseman, Hugh Marlowe, Whit Bissell, George Macready, Richard Anderson, Malcolm Atterbury, William Challee, Colette Jackson, John Larkin, Kent McCord, Tyler McVey, Jack Mullaney, Fredd Wayne, Ferris Webster.

Cinematography: Ellsworth Fredericks

Film Editor: Ferris Webster

Original Music: Jerry Goldsmith

Written by Rod Serling from the book by Fletcher Knebel, Charles W. Bailey II

Produced by Edward Lewis

Directed by John Frankenheimer...

Gabriel Over the White House

DVD-r

The Warner Archive Collection

1933 / B&W / 1:37 flat full frame / 86, 102 min. / Street Date October 20, 2009 / available through the Warner Archive Collection / 17.99

Starring: Walter Huston, Karen Morley, Franchot Tone, Arthur Byron, Dickie Moore, C. Henry Gordon, David Landau, Samuel S. Hinds, Jean Parker, Mischa Auer.

Cinematography: Bert Glennon

Film Editor: Basil Wrangell

Original Music: Dr. William Axt

Written by: Carey Wilson, from a book by T. F. Tweed

Produced by: William Randolph Hearst, Walter Wanger

Directed by Gregory La Cava

A Review Revisit.

The unique political fantasy Gabriel Over the White House has become painfully topical lately. This is an update of a 2009 review. To my knowledge nothing has changed with the product — I saw a re-promotion of Twilight Time’s 1984 disc and thought, Gabriel is twice as relevant and at least as scary.

Unstable times in America have produced some pretty strange political-religious message pictures.

This movie, about populist demagoguery in America, is pretty upsetting in itself, but what's worse is that the dystopian fascist conspiracy it depicts—a scheme to kick random sections of the black populace off relief in New Orleans—is so small-scale. And we find, examining American film history, that Sinclair Lewis's novel It Can't Happen Here has never been filmed, and that filmmakers have tended to take his title as a statement of truth. A Face in the Crowd reassuringly tells us that Americans always get wise to would-be dictators before it's too late. We have very few movies that take the idea of a tyrant getting elected and run with it. There's Gabriel Over the White House, but that's an MGM film so naturally it views the idea of a despotic zealot in the Oval Office as a good thing. The Dead Zone offers a glimpse of such a future,...

Child actor Dickie Moore: 'Our Gang' member. Former child actor Dickie Moore dead at 89: Film career ranged from 'Our Gang' shorts to features opposite Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper 1930s child actor Dickie Moore, whose 100+ movie career ranged from Our Gang shorts to playing opposite the likes of Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Stanwyck, and Gary Cooper, died in Connecticut on Sept. 7, '15 – five days before his 90th birthday. So far, news reports haven't specified the cause of death. According to a 2013 Boston Phoenix article about Moore's wife, MGM musical star Jane Powell, he had been “suffering from arthritis and bouts of dementia.” Dickie Moore movies At the behest of a persistent family friend, combined with the fact that his father was out of a job, Dickie Moore (born on Sept. 12, 1925, in Los Angeles) made his film debut as an infant in Alan Crosland's 1927 costume drama The Beloved Rogue,...

Wwz 'new' trailer in high definition: Pitt pitted against flesh-eating bacteria of sorts -- but where on earth is Iron Man when you most need him? Marc Forster's World War Z, the convoluted production starring screen icon Brad Pitt fighting off a deadly zombie army, has a brand new trailer. Well, maybe not so brand new after all. The Wwz trailer no. 2 (please scroll down to check it out) was dropped several days ago. (Pictured above: Pitt apparently fleeing from a zombie attack in Wwz.) Anyhow ... let's go for what's important: What are the lessons found in the not-all-that-brand-new trailer? Lesson no. 1 is clearly that the happiness and well-being of all-American families is appallingly fragile. Look out there (on on your television set) and you'll discover that there are always alien enemies eager to annihilate the private bliss of Americans. Lesson no. 2: The world is coming to an...

As Barack Obama is sworn in to his second term as President of the United States of America we decided to take the opportunity too look back on some of the country's previous presidents. Great men who are often overlooked simply because of the small technicality that they never actually existed. We are talking about the presidents of the silver screen.

Above we have complied some of the speeches of our favorite movie presidents into one epic, rousing stem-winder. Check it out and let us know which of cinema’s fictional presidents you would most trust to sit in the real White House in the comments below…

Full List of Movies:

Deep Impact

Head of State

Scary Movie 4

Mars Attacks

Seven Days In May

Gabriel Over The White House

American Dreamz

Deterrence

Escape From La

Armageddon

Dave

The American President

Spy Kids 3D: Game Over

Canadian Bacon

Idiocracy

Independence Day...

Taking a page from the successful programs that Warner Bros. and other studios have launched, Amazon has unveiled their “Never Before On DVD” store, which will make DVD copies available for films and television shows that have not yet made the leap to home video.

The catalog currently boasts more than 2,000 titles from the vaults of Disney, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, most of which had already been available from Warner Archive or other similar services. It also includes current content (mostly in the form of reality television) from CBS Networks, Lionsgate Home Entertainment, MTV Networks, Nickelodeon and Universal Studios Home Entertainment, with seasons of short-lived TV shows like "Mr. Sunshine" or "Dark Blue" appearing on disc for the first time.

The store will utilize Amazon’s CreateSpace DVD on demand service, which literally makes discs and packaging after you have ordered them,...

Genuinely fascist films made in democratic countries are agreeably scarce, although Gregory La Cava's Gabriel Over the White House (1933)—or President Jesus Hitler as a friend dubbed it—could certainly qualify, even if it does veer around a lot, almost as if a Hollywood film were trying to avoid committing itself politically. Nominations for other fascist films will be gratefully considered.

Bulldog Drummond was featured in ten novels by a pseudonymous character called "Sapper," (to sap: to slug over the head, British slang). Drummond, an ex-soldier bored by civilian life, advertises for adventure and finds it, as detailed in 1929 Bulldog Drummond with Ronald Colman. This movie largely avoids the racism and jingoistic fervor of the source novels, and seems to play the more brutal moments for laughs, as when Colman exchanges sweet nothings with Joan Bennett while cheerfully throttling Lionel Atwill.

The books' biggest influence in an indirect one:...