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The Postman Always Rings Twice

Score: 84%
Rating: Not Rated
Publisher: Warner Brothers Home
                  Entertainment

Region: A
Media: Blu-ray/1
Running Time: 113 Mins.
Genre: Drama/Crime/Classic
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio: English 1.0
           Dolby Digital, French 1.0,
           Spanish 1.0 (Both Castilian and
           Latin)

Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish

Features:

  • Introduction by Richard Jewell
  • Lana Turner... A Daughter's Memoir
  • The John Garfield Story
  • Phantoms, Inc.
  • Red Hot Riding Hood
  • Screen Guild Theater Broadcast
  • Theatrical Trailer

The Postman Always Rings Twice is a classic film noir based on James M. Cain’s novel starring Lana Turner and John Garfield as murderous lovers who can’t seem to avoid their inevitable damned fate. When drifter Frank (John Garfield) rolls into town, catching a ride with the local D.A. no less, he’s just looking for a place to hang his hat until his feet get restless again. He gets a job as a handyman/ waiter at a local diner and considers that the town might be to slow for him, that is, until he spots Cora (Lana Turner), the lovely young wife of the diner owner, Nick (Cecil Kellaway). Cora clearly outclasses her dumpy, drunkard husband, but she obviously is a woman who wants something in life and Nick must have looked like the ticket to success. Try as she may to avoid Frank’s advances, the two eventually embark on a torrid affair, which is easy since her husband goes out of town often. After she and Frank witness her husband almost have a near-miss auto accident, the two devise a plan to get rid of her husband, claim ownership of the restaurant, and be together all in one fell, murderous swoop.

But these plans never work out as they should and a freak accident intervenes, which causes Nick’s near-death, but also raises the suspicions of the local law enforcement, including the D.A. When his brush with death and some family changes cause Nick to decide to sell the diner to the highest bidder and take Cora to Canada to care for his bedridden sister, Frank and Cora realize they must act quickly or all will be lost. They succeed in murdering poor Nick and making it look like a car accident, but a wily witness has their number and before long, both find themselves on trial for murder. At first, Cora sees her hotshot attorney, Arthur Keats (Hume Cronyn) as her savior, but before long, she realizes he is a double-crossing snake who has manipulated her into turning on Frank. Can these star-crossed, but damned lovers ever truly find happiness? Fate always comes back to cash in her chips.

While this is a classic drama, it is clearly a little tame and slow for this day and age, although for it’s time, Lana Turner was a scorching sexpot. She and Garfield have decent chemistry on screen and I enjoyed the directing style. The Postman Always Rings Twice has been cleaned up a good deal and makes the transfer to Blu-ray quite nicely and it has an interesting, but odd, selection of special features. There’s an Introduction by Richard Jewell, a 90-minute featurette called Lana Turner… A Daughter’s Memoir, an hour-long featurette called The John Garfield Story, plus a short cautionary tale film called Phantoms, Inc., a vintage Tex Avery cartoon called Red Hot Riding Hood, the theatrical trailer and the Screen Guild Theater Broadcast of the radio drama of The Postman Always Rings Twice, starring Turner and Garfield reprising their roles. I really enjoyed the featurette on Lana Turner, as I learned so much about her that I never knew. The tragic tale of John Garfield was interesting as well, just not as scandalous as Turner’s personal story. The rest of the features were okay, but seemed more tacked on due to the lack of extras available for such an old film.

Overall, The Postman Always Rings Twice is definitely not for everyone, but it's one of those classics that will appeal to those who love a bit of the old film noir in their library.



-Psibabe, GameVortex Communications
AKA Ashley Perkins

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