Released in a long-ago VHS version at 87 minutes, the film’s original 1951 release time, Budd Boetticher’s Bullfighter and the Lady was restored to the 224 minute director’s cut by UCLA labs in the 1990s and released on laser disc at that time. That version has now been given a long delayed Blu-ray and standard DVD release thanks to the good folks at Olive.

The film was produced by John Wayne starring Robert Stack as a brash American skeet shooting champ who coerces a legendary bullfighter played by Gilbert Roland into teaching him the art of bullfighting. The lady is a Mexican aristocrat played by Joy Page, Jack Warner’s step-daughter, who was given the role of her career here. It’s all played out with flair, albeit in standard bullfighter’s story style with several deaths along the way. The longer cut does give gravitas to the film.

A more classic tale of bullfighters, Vicente Blasco Ibanez’s Blood and Sand was filmed twice to great acclaim. First made as a 1922 silent film, it was one of Rudolph Valentino’s biggest hits. Rouben Mamoulian’s 1941 color version was his second film with Tyrone Power following the preceding year’s box-office smash, The Mark of Zorro.

Both film versions of Blood and Sand were previously released on DVD. Mamoulian’s film, which won an Oscar for Cinematography and a second nomination for Art Direction, has been given a magnificent looking Blu-ray upgrade.

Power as the cocky matador is joined by his Mark of Zorro co-star, Linda Darnell as his long-suffering wife and Rita Hayworth in her star-making turn as the seductress who steals him from her. The supporting cast is equally strong with Anthony Quinn as Power’s rival; John Carradine as his faithful friend; Nazimova as his sorrowful mother and Laird Cregar as a two-faced critic, all turning in memorable performances. Of special note are the film’s many set designs and color schemes based on the works of master Spanish painters such as El Greco, Velasquez and Goya which look more stunning than ever on the Blu-ray.

Another long-awaited Blu-ray upgrade is that of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1986 comedy, Peggy Sue Got Married, which earned Kathleen Turner an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a 43 year-old woman who faints at her college reunion and wakes up twenty-five years earlier in her senior year, getting to make the same mistakes over. Barry Miller, Kevin J. O’Connor; Catherine Hicks; Joan Allen; Barbara Harris and Maureen O’Sullivan provide memorable support though both Nicolas Cage and Jim Carrey are hard to take. Still, the film has more pleasures than annoyances and is as good as you may remember it.

Fox, which has been slow to upgrade its classics to Blu-ray has nevertheless just given us two more of Marilyn Monroe’s major films in the hi-definition format.

Joshua Logan’s 1956 film, Bus Stop was based on a hit Broadway play by William Inge, whose Picnic brought Logan an Oscar nomination the previous year. The story here is less interesting but Monroe gives it her all as a second-rate singer barely making it in show business who is swept off her feet (literally!) by a naïve cowboy played by Don Murray who earned an Oscar nomination for his first big screen appearance. The supporting cast is headed by Arthur O’Connell as Murray’s mentor; Betty Field as the bus stop proprietress; Hope Lange as a waitress and Eileen Heckart as Monroe’s confidant, all of them having a moment or two to shine.

Monroe, Joseph Cotton, Jean Peters and Niagara Falls star in Henry Hathaway’s 1953 thriller, Niagara in which Monroe and her lover plot to kill her considerably older husband, played by Cotten. The breathtaking location adds to the excitement.

On the standard DVD front, Fox continues to release a number of sought after films through the Fox Cinema Archive, which to date has not been nearly as successful as the Warner Archive. The primary reason is that Fox, the widescreen pioneer, has thus far released most of its Cinemascope films in pan-and-scan versions that are not acceptable to most collectors. A case in point is this month’s releases of April Love and Mardi Gras.

Both are early films of 1950s clean-cut heartthrob Pat Boone. Unlike numerous previous releases, however, neither film looks bad in pan-and-scan primarily because the action in both films takes place mostly in the center of the screen so there is very little panning between actors on either side of the screen in most scenes.

1957’s April Love, directed by Henry Levin, is a remake of 1944’s Home in Indiana. Once you get past the idea of Boone playing a “bad boy” it doesn’t take much to get into the wholesome story of a juvenile delinquent learning about life on his uncle’s farm, especially when the next door neighbor is played by the equally wholesome Shirley Jones. Boone, Jones, Dolores Michaels, Arthur O’Connell and Jeanette Nolan have the roles played in the original by Lon McCallister, Jeanne Crain, June Haver, Walter Brennan and Charlotte Greenwood. It’s a draw as to which cast is better.

The musical score is little more than pleasant with the exception of the Oscar nominated title song, which was justifiably a hugely popular tune in its day.

1958’s Mardi Gras, directed by Edmund Goulding, is a pleasant time killer with Boone, Tommy Sands, Gary Crosby and Dick Sargent as cadets let loose on the town in New Orleans with Christine Carere, Sheree North, Barrie Chase and Jennifer West among the females they encounter. The musical score is okay at best.

One film Fox Cinema Archive did put out in widescreen is 1956’s Hilda Crane, directed by Phillip Dunne. Jean Simmons stars as a twice married, twice divorced woman who returns to her home town where she hooks up with her first love, Guy Madison, and marries him over the objections of his possessive mother, Evelyn Varden, whose fake heart attack turns into the real thing. It’s what used to be called a women’s weepie, not particularly good, but not terrible either with good performances from Simmons and Judith Evelyn as her mother. Varden, though, is so over the top you might want to throw something at her. Madison and Jean-Pierre Aumont as Simmons’ playboy lover are merely adequate.

Also among this month’s Fox Cinema Archives releases is Henry Koster’s 1951 film, No Highway in the Sky with James Stewart in one of his best little known films as an absent-minded research scientist who predicts the back will fall off a popular plane. Marlene Dietrich gets co-star billing for what is basically an extended cameo as a fellow passenger on a business flight with Stewart. Glynis Johns as the plane’s stewardess and Janette Scott as widower Stewart’s daughter have more substantive roles and are almost as good as Stewart. Jack Hawkins co-stars.

This week’s new releases include Mud; The Place Beyond the Pines; and the long, long overdue 1933 Oscar winner, Cavalcade.