Stanley Kramer’s message films reached their apex with 1959’s On the Beach in which the world is coming to an end in the aftermath of a nuclear war which nobody won.

Based on Nevil Shute’s best-selling novel, the film focuses on five main characters – the commander of a U.S. submarine docked in Melbourne, Australia; the local good-time gal he romances; a transplanted British physicist; a young Australian naval officer; and his wife. These roles are played respectively by Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire in his first non-singing and dancing role, a pre-Pyscho Anthony Perkins, and newcomer Donna Anderson, American actors all. Astaire, Perkins, and Anderson carry off decent British-tinged Australian accents but Gardner hardly tries.

After everyone in the Northern Hemisphere has died, Peck and crew make one last attempt at gauging the extent of the impending danger on Australia on a trek to San Francisco. Astaire and Perkins join them while Gardner and Anderson wait behind.

The film has some very striking images from a still-bustling Melbourne at the opening of the film to an isolated San Francisco mid-film to an equally isolated Melbourne at the end. Dramatically, however, the actors can’t do much with their stock characters save for Astaire who is quite effective as a no-longer-young man who still dreams of winning the Grand Prix.

This kind of material was better served by the 1983 film Testament in which Jane Alexander played the mother of a San Francisco Bay Area family waiting for the end to come.

On the Beach is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD from Kino Lorber which has also released 1966’s Duel at Diablo in both formats.

Although not often thought of as one of the great westerns, Ralph Nelson’s Duel at Diablo, in fact, very much is.

James Garner eschewing his usual wise guy approach is all guts and testosterone as an Indian scout in search of the cold-blooded killer of his American-Indian wife. Sidney Poitier, who won an Oscar for Nelson’s earlier Lilies of the Field is a former Army officer, now a horse breeder and trader. Both are enlisted by Army lieutenant Bill Travers to join them in the pursuit of rampaging Apaches. Bibi Andersson in one of her rare appearances in a Hollywood film plays a woman who has escaped from Apache captivity and Dennis Weaver plays the husband who feels she should have killed herself before submitting to an Indian.

The film moves along a brisk pace and all the actors, especially Garner and Andersson, are superb.

I have to admit that I’ve never cared for Bob Fosse’s 1979 film, All That Jazz. All the bells and whistles that Criterion has put into the new Blu-ray and standard DVD combo package does nothing to change that.

I will grant that Roy Scheider turns in his best performance as the chain-smoking, pill-popping, womanizing jerk of a choreographer-director patterned after Fosse himself. What, though, does that say about Scheider the actor and/or Fosse the choreographer-director? The rest of the cast, including Jessica Lange as the Angel of Death, have little to say or do except stand and/or dance in awe of the “genius” that is supposed to be Joe Gideon, Fosse’s alter-ego in the film.

Extras include Erzsebet Foldi, the dancer who played Scheider’s twelve year-old daughter in the film, and Ann Reinking, his protégé and then real-life squeeze, who played his latest squeeze in the film, sitting on a sofa and telling each other how wonderful they are while rhapsodizing about Fosse himself being wonderful. Amusingly, Foldi, a few years after the film was made, joined Twyla Tharp’s troupe of dancers. Tharp was the choreographer of the highly innovative 1979 film version of Hair which was pure joy to All That Jazz’s pure misery.

Classical music is put under the spotlight in Frank Borzage’s 1946 film, I’ve Always Loved You. This would be the director’s last film for a dozen years after which he would make only two more films in his once-legendary career. It would also be the last romantic film in a career that was packed with them from 7th Heaven to A Farewell to Arms to Little Man, What Now? to History Is Made at Night to The Mortal Storm to Magnificent Doll.

I’ve Always Loved You was made at a time when post-World War II audiences were looking for something more gritty than another of Borzage’s love-conquers-all films. While the film may not be at all groundbreaking, it is nevertheless a pleasant time-killer featuring excellent performances from lesser-known stars Philip Dorn as a demanding conductor; Catherine McLeod as his prize pupil; and William (Bill) Cater as the simple farmer who loves her. The excellent supporting cast includes Felix Bressart, Maria Ouspenskaya, Elizabeth Patterson, Fritz Feld, and Vanessa Brown.

Although it covers the same territory as Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause, 1958’s High School Confidential! is no classic. This once popular film, newly released on Blu-ray by Olive Films, is of interest primarily to those who want to know what Russ Tamblyn was doing between Peyton Place and West Side Story.

Based on a true story about an undercover police investigation, the film is nearly over before it’s revealed that Tamblyn’s character is indeed an undercover cop rather than the punk he seems to be, but it should come to no surprise to anyone who’s seen a movie or TV show in the past fifty or sixty years.

The film, directed by Jack Arnold, is nothing if not eclectic. It features Jan Sterling as a teacher; Jackie Coogan as a killer; and Mamie Van Doren as a nymphomaniac. It also features John Drew Barrymore, who at 26 looks more like 36 than he does his 18-year-old character. Barrymore also proves that talent can skip a generation as it did between his parents, John Barrymore (Grand Hotel) and Dolores Costello (The Magnificent Ambersons), and his daughter Drew Barrymore (Grey Gardens).

This week’s new releases include Draft Day and the Blu-ray upgrade of Firestarter.