A number of films previously released on DVD have been given recent Blu-ray upgrades. Among them is The Time Machine, George Pal’s legendary science fiction film from H.G. Wells’ novel.

Filmed numerous times and copied too many others to count, this is the definitive version of Wells’ visionary masterpiece set in 1900 London and eight hundred thousand years into the future.

Utilizing a time machine of his own invention, Rod Taylor, playing Wells, expects to find Utopia in his travel into the distant future. Instead he finds that humans have split into two species, the above-ground docile, albeit shiftless Eloi and the below-ground cannibalistic Moorlocks. Utilizing then state-of-the-art special effects that still impress today, the film comes closest to capturing the essence of Wells, the man and writer than any other film except perhaps 1979’s Time After Time set in Wells’ London as well as modern-day San Francisco.

The Time Machine co-stars Yvette Mimieux; Alan Young; Sebastian Cabot and Doris Lloyd, whose career goes back to 1920 and encompasses such classics as Tarzan the Ape Man; Alice in Wonderland; Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music.

A moody, often sadistic, highly stylized gangster film, John Boorman’s Point Blank from 1967 opened in the wake of the enormous success of the then ultimate in violence, Arthur Penn’s Bonne and Clyde, giving the British director a cult status that would be enhanced by Deliverance five years later.

The lone anti-hero played by Lee Marvin at his sullen best was nothing new to movies. John Garfield and Humphrey Bogart had long ago perfected the style in American films and Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo were continuing it in new wave French films. Clint Eastwood was already earning a reputation for giving it new momentum in the so-called spaghetti westerns, A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, released in the U.S. for the first time earlier in the year. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly would not be seen here until the following year. Marvin, a long-time character actor who unexpectedly won an Oscar for mixing comedy with violence in Cat Ballou had earlier in the year brought his violent streak to Robert Aldrich’s equally violent The Dirty Dozen. Here he plays a low-level gangster who sets out to avenge his near-death at the hands of criminals who work for “the organization” led a mystery man.

The film has a strong supporting cast led by Keenan Wynn; Carroll O’Connor; John Vernon; Lloyd Bochner and Angie Dickinson as Marvin’s femme fatale sister-in-law.

A younger, equally strong Marvin can be seen in 1954’s Shack Out on 101 as a scowling roadside diner cook nicknamed “Slob”. This cold war paranoia flick which also stars Terry More, Frank Lovejoy and Keenan Wynn features a plot that centers around nuclear secrets being smuggled out the country. Directed by Edward Dein, it’s a Grade B film with a Grade A message for the times that reverberates through the decades.

A rather strange film, 1947’s The Lost Moment, based on Henry James’ The Aspern Papers, was the only film directed by actor Martin Gabel. Robert Cummings had the male lead as an opportunistic publisher masquerading as a struggling writer while searching for the love letters a long dead 19th Century poet wrote his now 105 year-old mistress played by Agnes Moorehead. Susan Hayward plays the old lady’s demented niece. Highly publicized at the time of its release due to Moorehead’s then state-of-the-art old-age makeup, the film sadly has nowhere to go beyond its basic premise.

Eduardo Cianelli as the local Venetian priest and Joan Lorring and Minerva Urecal have some interesting moments, but the film’s focus is mainly on the three stars in the film that was made on the Universal lot, not in Venice which might have given it some distinction beyond Moorehead’s make-up.

One of the most notorious screen flops of the 1940s, Leo McCarey’s Good Sam was the Oscar winning director’s first film since the extraordinary success of The Bells of St. Mary’s three years earlier. Whereas that film built considerable interest in the pairing of Oscar winners Bing Crosby reprising his Going My Way role of the easy-going priest and Ingrid Bergman bolstering her image as a saintly nun, no-one was clamoring for McCarey’s version of It’s a Wonderful Life.

Set in small town America, Gary Cooper, an even bigger legend at the time than James Stewart, plays the local do-gooder opposite Ann Sheridan as his fed-up wife. Just when everything has gone wrong, Coop’s friends, including Tod Karns who played Stewart’s brother in It’s a Wonderful Life come to his rescue. Although the film has some charming set pieces, it doesn’t have a Clarence, Stewart’s guardian angel in It’s a Wonderful Life played by The Bells of St. Mary’s’ unwitting benefactor, Henry Travers. Nor does it have anyone like Beulah Bondi, star of McCarey’s greatest film, Make Way for Tomorrow, whose warmhearted presence as Stewart’s mother in It’s a Wonderful Life added immensely to that film’s pleasures. It would be four years before McCarey would make another film, the even more misguided My Son John. He would, of course, rebound five years after that with the glorious An Affair to Remember.

There are those who are fond of the early Blake Edwards, whose later efforts were hit and miss. Frankly, I find his early efforts just as hit and miss. While 1959’s Operation Petticoat has a few funny moments, it is no Mister Roberts. Its box-office success is largely attributable to the pairing of Cary Grant and Tony Curtis and the promise of lots of “boob Jokes” which even to 1959 audiences were so tame as to be almost non-existent.

Grant was still riding high in his career, his last film having been the summer box-office giant, North by Northwest. Curtis had hit pay dirt earlier in the year with his impersonation of Grant in Some Like It Hot. The anticipated hostility between the two actors never materializes. As I said, it is no Mister Roberts.

This week’s new releases include the Blu-ray upgrades of Pickpocket andScanners.