It amuses me to no end that young audiences that dote on superhero and cartoon characters turn their noses up at musicals in which singers spontaneously burst into song because they’re “unrealistic”. Audiences of fifty years ago had no such problem.

Throughout the 1950s and well into the 1960s, Original Broadway Cast Albums were among the top-selling LP (long-playing) albums. None was more popular than Lerner & Loewe’s My Fair Lady, the musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. The 1964 film version of the 1956 Broadway hit was one of the most eagerly anticipated films in history, and it didn’t disappoint.

Time was unkind to the film elements of My Fair Lady as ownership of the film went from Warner Bros. to Paramount to CBS Home Entertainment and a whole slew of other owners. Finally in the early 1990s the film was in such bad shape that it had to be restored for a theatrical re-release on its 30th anniversary in September 1994 and subsequent laser disc release, the first time the film looked good on home video.

The first Blu-ray release of the film in 2009 was lambasted by critics and fans alike as looking old and tired. It was painstakingly restored once again for an intended 50th anniversary release in 2014. The cleanup went so well that they had to take another year to diminish some of its effects such as the now visible fillings in Audrey Hepburn’s mouth. A year later it’s finally available for all to enjoy. Needless to say, Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Gladys Cooper and the rest of the cast look and sound better than they ever did. One oddity, however, is that there are no new extras. The included extras have been carried over from the 1994 laserdisc including a “then and now” comparison between the original film and the 1994 re-issue narrated by co-star Jeremy Brett who died in 1995.

My Fair Lady – 50th Anniversary Edition is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Lately I’ve seen David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive from 2001 described by some as a horror film. I’m not sure why that is. The film is a mystery thriller in which the mystery isn’t really solved. It’s bizarre, as are most of the director’s films, but it’s not horrific. It is, in fact, very funny in spots.

Originally intended as a TV series to rival his earlier Twin Peaks, ABC passed on it after many of the film’s scenes were shot and shown to them as a pilot for the would-be series in 1999. Two years later the pilot was dusted off, several scenes were added and the released film became one of the best reviewed films of the year. It won numerous critics’ awards for Lynch, the film and star Naomi Watts who was plucked from virtual unknown after more than a decade in Hollywood to major stardom for her complex dual role. Watts, for her part, was as stunned as the film’s audiences to find out that the sunny creature she played in the early scenes of the film was an imaginary character and the real one was someone much darker. Laura Harring, Justin Theroux, and Ann Miller in a major comeback performance have key supporting roles, while Robert Forster, Chad Everett, and many others have one or two scenes waiting for larger roles in the TV series that never came.

Mulholland Drive is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD. The Criterion extras include interviews with Lynch, Watts, Harring, Theroux, and others.

Warner Bros. has released Special Effects Collection on Blu-ray focusing on science fiction films released from the 1930s through the early 1950s.

The oldest in the batch is Son of Kong, a not uninteresting sequel to the great King Kong released earlier in 1933. Although not bad in its own right, the film suffers in comparison to the original. It was directed by half of the King Kong team, Ernest B. Schoedsack, but not Merian C. Cooper; featured one of the male leads, Robert Armstrong but not Bruce Cabot; and featured Helen Mack instead of scream queen Fay Wray. Unlike the original, it was a flop on original release.

The most successful gorilla movie since King Kong, 1949’s Mighty Joe Young was also directed by Schoedsack and again featured Armstrong, third-billed behind Terry Moore, and Ben Johnson. Sixteen years after the success of the original King Kong, audiences were in the mood for his spiritual offspring. It was a box office hit and an Oscar winner for Best Special Effects.

1953’s The Beast from 50,000 Fathoms was one of the first monster-on-the-loose science fiction/horror films that proliferated in the mid-1950s. Featured in the cast was veteran character actor Cecil Kellaway, whose cousin Edmund Gwenn played a similar role in the 1954 classic Them!, an Oscar nominee for Best Special Effects.

Them! is the best of the lot, the first film to deal with the effects of atomic bomb testing. It grows more realistic with every passing year.

All four films are available separately as well as part of the Special Effects Collection.

Acorn Media has released Agatha Christie’s Marple – The Geraldine McEwan Collection and Agatha Christie’s Marple – The Joyce McKenzie Collection comprising the 6 series total, 23-film collection that comprised the revival of Christie’s elderly sleuth on British TV, running from 2004 to 2013.

Miss Marple first appeared in a Christie novel in 1930 and lastly in 1976. She didn’t reach the big screen until Margaret Rutherford embodied her in 1962’s Murder She Said, followed by three other films. Angela Lansbury played her on screen in 1980’s The Mirror Crack’d. Helen Hayes then played her in three TV movies made between 1982 and 1985. Joan Hickson played her the longest on British TV from 1984 through 1992.

Geraldine McEwan, who played her form 2004 through 2008, takes a bit of getting used to. She provides a livelier characterization than the actresses before her, but in doing so she often comes across as a busybody rather than a person of genuine concern. Eventually you get used to her, but Julia McKenzie is the real thing. From her first appearance in 2009 to her last in 2013, she is Marple the way you imagined her from the novels. It’s a shame there aren’t any Miss Marple stories left for her to play.

This week’s new releases include Inside Out and Roar.