The House of the Seven Gables, a 1940 Oscar nominee for Best Original Score, has been given a Blu-ray upgrade by Kino Lorber.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1851 gothic novel followed the author’s oft-filmed The Scarlet Letter by one year, but unlike that work, The House of the Seven Gables had been filmed only once before as a short silent film in 1910 and made its first on-screen appearance since 1940 as one of the three stories in the 1963 anthology film, Twice-Told Tales. It hit the big screen once again in limited release as a 2018 animated short.

The screenplay for the 1940 version by Lester Cole (Born Free) changes some of the characters from Hawthorne’s family curse drama in which Clifford and Hepzibah Pyncheon were brother and sister and the evil Jaffrey Pyncheon was their cousin. In this version, Clifford and Jaffrey are brothers and Hepzibah is their cousin, as well as Clifford’s love interest. Originally set to star Robert Cummings as Clifford, Margaret Lindsay as Hepzibah, and George Sanders as Jaffrey, Cummings bowed out and was replaced by Vincent Price subsequently billed third behind Sanders and Lindsay as Sanders and Lindsay were bigger names at the time.

The casting of Price suggests to modern audiences that this is a horror film in which both Price and Sanders could be the villains since both have long since made lasting impressions in such roles. Rest assured, however, that Price is the good guy and Lindsay’s faith in him is not misplaced. Lindsay’s (G-Men) haunting portrayal of Hepzibah is the film’s most memorable performance despite fine work from both her co-stars as well as a long list of supporting players led by Dick Foran and Cecil Kellaway.

The film was directed by Joe May (The Invisible Man Returns). Insightful commentary is provided by film historian Troy Howarth.

Sony does not release many of the classic Columbia films it owns on Blu-ray, but when they do, they do it in style. Such is the case with Sony’s new Noir Archive 9-Film Collection Blu-ray featuring nine films released between 1944 and 1954. Although most of the film were released as second features, they are all extraordinarily well made.

Showcasing Oscar winner Paul Lukas’ versatility, the “good” German-American hero of Watch on the Rhine is a “bad” German-American in 1944’s Address Unknown in which he plays an art dealer who returns to Germany during Hitler’s rise to power and becomes indoctrinated into the Nazi way of life. The meaning of the film’s title is not made clear until the final scene. Carl Esmond, Morris Carnovsky, Peter van Eyck, Mady Christians, and K.T. Stevens co-star. It was directed by William Cameron Menzies (Invaders from Mars).

Character actor Otto Kruger (The Young Philadelphians) gets top billing in 1945’s Escape in the Fog despite playing a decidedly supporting role in this World War II thriller in which Nina Foch and William Wright have the lead roles, she as a young woman who has a precognition vision of an attempted murder on San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, and he as the would-be murder victim. Foch (My Name Is Julia Ross) would have a long Hollywood career, but Wright, a Clark Gable lookalike, would sadly die of cancer just after his 38th birthday in January 1949. It was directed by Budd Boetticher (The Bullfighter and the Lady).

Rosalind Russell is a suicidal war widow and Melvyn Douglas an alcoholic newspaperman who help each other in 1947’s The Guilt of Janet Ames. It was directed by Henry Levin (Where the Boys Are).

The best-known film in the collection, 1949’s The Black Book, is about the search for Robespierre’s list of enemies contained in a black book during Robespierre’s reign of terror in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Robert Cummings and Arlene Dahl star as crusaders against the reign of terror with Richard Basehart as Robespierre. Richard Hart, Jess Barker, Norman Lloyd, Beulah Bondi, Charles McGraw, and Arnold Moss co-star. It was directed by Anthony Mann (Man of the West).

George Raft sleepwalks through 1949’s Johnny Allegro as an escaped convict trying to make good as an undercover agent for the feds represented by Will Geer. Nina Foch as a femme fatale and George Macready as her insane husband take the acting honors. It was directed by Ted Tetzlaff (The Window).

The same year Edmond O’Brien starred in his signature role of the doomed man in 1950’s D.O.A., he gave an equally memorable performance as an electrician turned mobster in 711 Ocean Drive opposite Joanne Dru and Dorothy Patrick. It was directed by Joseph M. Newman (The Big Circus).

Evelyn Keyes, Charles Korvin, William Bishop, and Dorothy Malone head the ensemble cast of 1950’s The Killer That Stalked New York, Columbia’s answer to Fox’s Panic in the Streets, released earlier the same year. The killer is, of course, a deadly disease. It was directed by Earl McEvoy, best known as an assistant director on such films as The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Dana Andrews and Marta Toren star in 1952’s Assignment: Paris, a cold war story with a newspaper background set in Paris and Budapest. George Sanders and Audrey Totter co-star. Toren, promoted as the new Ingrid Bergman, would die just five years later of a brain aneurism at 30. Andrews and Sanders would later co-star in another newspaper story, 1956’s While the City Sleeps, also co-starring Sanders’ House of the Seven Gables co-star Vincent Price. Assignment: Paris was directed by Robert Parrish (The Purple Plain).

Barry Sullivan heads the cast of 1954’s The Miami Story as a reformed gangster who comes out of hiding to aid a citizen’s committee in bringing down a notorious gangster played by Luther Adler. The strong supporting cast includes Beverly Garland, Adele Jergens, John Baer, and Gene Darcy. It was directed by Fred F. Sears (Earth vs. the Flying Saucers).

This week’s new releases include Blu-ray upgrades of A Face in the Crowd (delayed from last week) and My Brilliant Career.