The Criterion Collection has released a 4K UHD upgrade of Fritz Lang’s 1953 masterwork, The Big Heat.

Previously released on Blu-ray by boutique label, Twilight Time in 2014, The Big Heat has leaped ahead of such Lang films as 1936’s Fury, 1944’s The Woman in the Window, and 1945’s Scarlet Street to take its place alongside Lang’s seminal German films, 1927’s Metropolis and 1931’s M
, as the Austrian born director’s third most significant film.

Darker than even the most cynical film noir has any right to be, this one takes the cake from the brutal murder of hero Glenn Ford’s wife (Jocelyn Brando) to arch villain Lee Marvin’s disfiguring of hard luck Gloria Grahame’s face with a pot of coffee to numerous other killings, mostly of women.

Aside from Ford and Marvin at the top of their respective games, it’s the women you remember from this one. Not only Grahame in her best ever performance, but Marlon’s older sister as Ford’s lovely wife, Jeanette Nolan as a tough as nails crooked cop’s widow, Dorothy Green as a loose tongued b-girl, Carolyn Jones as another soon to be disfigured victim of nasty Marvin, and Edith Evanson as an old lady whose near invisibility aids Ford in bringing down the villains.

Extras include an informative commentary on both the 4K and accompanying Blu-ray discs by film-noir experts Alain Silver and James Ursini and a video essay on the Blu-ray by critic Farran Smith Nehme on the women in the film along with other material on the Blu-ray.

Kino Lorber has released a 4K UHD upgrade of Bill Wilder’s 1954 classic, Sabrina starring Audrey Hepburn as the chauffer’s daughter who beguiles wealthy brothers Humphrey Bogart and William Holden in one of the best remembered comedies of the era.

Nominated for six Oscars including Best Actress and Best Director, the film won only one for Best Costume Design Black-and-White which went to Edith Head even though the film’s three iconic costumes worn by Hepburn were based on designs by an uncredited Hubert de Givenchy. A scandal erupted when Head failed to even mention the internationally acclaimed designer who later designed most of Hepburn’s on-screen clothing beginning with 1957’s Funny Face which from then on always received an on-screen credit.

Extras include two separate commentaries on both the 4K and accompanying Blu-ray discs along with numerous documentaries on the making of the film on the Blu-ray.

Kino Lorber has also released 1965’s Sands of the Kalahari and 1966’s Promise Her Anything on Blu-ray and 1979’s Murder by Decree on 4K UHD and Blu-ray.

Cy Endfield’s Sands of the Kalahari was released shortly before Robert Aldrich’s The Flight of the Phoenix. Both films were about plane crashes in African deserts, The Flight of the Phoenix in the Sahara in Northern Africa and Sands of the Kalahari in the Kalahari in Southern African. Sands of the Kalahari suffered at the box-office in comparison to the more popular Flight of the Phoenix.

Sands of the Kalahari features stunning cinematography in its otherwise dour situation in which a plane containing five men and a lone woman crashes in an area next to a conclave of baboons. The plane’s pilot (Nigel Davenport) travels on foot for help while a businessman turned big game hunter (Stuart Whitman), an engineer (Stanley Baker), a doctor (Theodore Bikel), an elderly former German soldier (Harry Andrews), and the frightened woman (Susannah York) stay behind to fend off starvation and the baboons.

The highly suspenseful film, which has developed a cult following over the years, becomes a cross between The Flight of the Phoenix and 1968’s Planet of the Apes. Extras include a commentary by film historians Howard S. Berger and Nathaniel Thompson

The best thing about Arthur Hiller’s Promise Her Anything is its cast consisting of Warren Beatty, Leslie Caron, Robert Cummings, Keenan Wynn, Hermione Gingold, Cathleen Nesbitt, and Lionel Stander. Unfortunately, the silly script by a pre-Exorcist William Peter Blatty doesn’t give them much to do.

Extras include a commentary by film historian and author Dwayne Epstein.

Bob Clark’s Murder by Decree is one of the better Sherlock Holmes films. Unfortunately, it was not a box office success despite a cast headed by Christopher Plummer as Holmes and James Mason as Dr. Watson in the pursuit of Jack the Ripper.

Both actors are superb. Plummer is a more compassionate Holmes than we are used to seeing and Mason is the definitive Watson. They are joined by a supporting cast that includes Frank Finlay as Inspector Lestrade, David Hemmings as another inspector, Anthony Quayle as the new head of Scotland Yard, John Gielgud as the Prime Minister, Donald Sutherland as a clairvoyant, and Susan Clark and Genevieve Bujold as victims of the Ripper.

Like James Hill’s A Study in Terror from 1965, the first film to bring Holmes and Watson into the search for Jack the Ripper, this one also involves Britain’s Royal Family but comes to an even more sinister conclusion. That film, which starred John Neville and Donald Houston also featured Frank Finlay as Lestrade and Anthony Quayle albeit in a different role with a supporting cast that included John Fraser, Barbara Windsor, Adrienne Corri, Judi Dench, Barry Jones, and Robert Morley. Both films are well worth your time.

Extras on Murder by Decree include two separate commentaries on both the 4K and Blu-ray discs.

Two other newly released 4K UHD and Blu-ray combinations worth seeking out are Shout’s upgrade of Martin Brest’s 2002 film, Scent of a Woman which won Al Pacino a long overdue Oscar, and Icon’s upgrade of Bernardo Bertolucci’s 2004 film, The Dreamers starring Michael Pitt, Eva Green, and Louis Garrel as students and lovers in 1968 Paris. The latter features more than 3 hours of bonus material on the Blu-ray.

Happy viewing.