The Palm Beach story 1942 - A delirious screwball romance

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 7,9

Director: Preston Sturges
Main Cast: Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor, Rudy Vallee

"The Palm Beach Story is yet another satirical gem from director Preston Sturges, who gives the story a cynical edge sharper than in other screwball comedies. In 1942, even as the Great Depression was giving way to the war-time economy of World War II, poking fun at the idle rich continued to be a popular comic motif. The film's title is less meaningful to current audiences than it was to moviegoers of the 1940s, when train travel was the most frequent way that people got between cities, and the wealthy of the eastern seaboard rode trains each winter to the warm shores of Palm Beach, Florida. The performances in The Palm Beach Story are uniformly strong, with such non-comic actors as Joel McCrea and Mary Astor showing the diversity of their talents. Claudette Colbert gives one of the best performances of her career, though it is often overshadowed by her work in It Happened One Night." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

Sullivan's travels 1941 - One of the finest movies about movies ever made

IMDB Link

IMDB rating: 8,2

Director: Preston Sturges
Main Cast: Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake

"The most ambitious of Preston Sturges' string of 1940s classics, Sullivan's Travels is a brilliant mixture of genres, combining giddy comedy with often brutal realism, made all the more powerful by the contrast. The first part of the film, which details the botched attempts of idealistic film director John Sullivan (Joel McCrea) to leave Hollywood, smoothly blends outrageous slapstick with Sturges' customary satirical dialogue, and includes classic exchanges between Sullivan and his Hollywood producers (Robert Warwick and Porter Hall) and his hilariously droll and opinionated butler (Robert Greig). The tone of the movie changes considerably with three bravura sequences. The first, a graceful, wordless section in which Sullivan and his nameless companion (Veronica Lake, showing a nice flair for comedy) spend a night among the homeless, proves that, although Sturges is noted mainly for his writing, he was also a sensitive and talented director. The second, a violent chain-gang episode almost shocking in its stark realism, and the third, a short musical passage set in a rural church, hammer home the movie's apparent moral: that, as Sullivan puts it, 'there's a lot to be said for making people laugh'. Sturges may seem to be ridiculing a cinema of ideas, but his final joke is that Sullivan's Travels supports a different argument: that comedy and serious drama can co-exist quite happily after all." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links: 

The most dangerous game 1932 - The night of the mad hunter

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 7,3

Directors: Irving Pichel, Ernest B. Schoedsack
Main Cast: Joel McCrea, Fay Wray, Leslie Banks, Robert Armstrong

"This classic horror film stars Leslie Banks in a tour-de-force of pure evil as the sadistic Count Zaroff, who waylays shipwrecked boats on his foggy island then unleashes his vicious dogs and hunts humans in the jungles for sport. Robert Armstrong and Fay Wray are among the prey and would be reunited the following year for co-director Ernest B. Schoedsack's wonderful King Kong, (actually filmed on the Kong sets during a lull in the production of that classic film, utilizing most of the Kong personnel - actors Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Noble Johnson, Steve Clemente and Dutch Hendrian; producer O'Brien; director Schoedsack; composer Max Steiner), while the other co-director, Irving Pichel, would go on to act in Dracula's Daughter. The timeless adventure story has been copied many times, decades later by John Woo in Hard Target (1995), but few of the remakes compare to the somewhat tatty but effective original." - www.allmovie.com

Download links:

(720p BluRay, rar, no password):

http://uploaded.net/file/bjdysy5p/The_Most_Dangerous_Game_1932_720p_BluRay_x264_x0r.part1.rar 
http://uploaded.net/file/uwm6vrne/The_Most_Dangerous_Game_1932_720p_BluRay_x264_x0r.part2.rar

OR:

Kept husbands 1931 - Saucy Mackaill with a young McCrea

Dorothy Mackaill & Joel McCrea circa 1931

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 6,0

Director: Lloyd Bacon
Main Cast: Clara Kimball Young, Joel McCrea, Dorothy Mackaill, Ned Sparks, Mary Carr

"A moderately amusing trifle, Kept Husbands is worth watching for a very young Joel McCrea and the little-seen Dorothy Mackaill. McCrea had a very long and successful career in movies, and seeing him this early in the game is a lot of fun; he's a bit unformed, not quite as sure of himself as he would very shortly become, but there's still that combination of steely stubbornness and vulnerability that would serve him well in future films. He handles the assignment well, although many modern viewers will find his character insufferable; indeed, the 'man's role-woman's role' dialogue will irk quite a few. Mackaill is also fun to watch. A former chorus girl who had a special beauty, her film career never really took off, but she has a unique flair. One suspects that her dramatic range was not unlimited, but she fits this part well and manages to keep the spoiled brat aspect of the character at bay and emphasize her considerable charms instead. As stated, the plot is quite dated, and there's little reality to the screenplay. The drama is bit overblown, but there are a few scenes that have a nice ring to them." - www.allmovie.com

Download links:

Dead end 1937 - What chance have they got?

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028773/?ref_=nv_sr_2
IMDB rating: 7,5

Director: William Wyler
Main Cast: Sylvia Sidney, Joel McCrea, Humphrey Bogart, Wendy Barrie, Claire Trevor, Allen Jenkins, Marjorie Main

"Adapted by Lillian Hellman from Sidney Kingsley's Broadway play, Dead End concerns itself with several denizens of New York's East River district. Here the elite and the slum-dwellers rub shoulders due to the close proximity of the riverfront tenements with the East Side luxury hotels. Slum girl Drina Gordon (Sylvia Sidney) tries to prevent her younger brother Tommy (Billy Halop) from wasting his life as a member of the local street gang. Tommy and the other kids idolize Baby Face Martin (Humphrey Bogart), a onetime East- sider who has hit the 'big time' as a notorious gangster. Dodging the cops, Martin makes a sentimental journey to the neighborhood to visit his mother (Marjorie Main) and his old girlfriend Francie (Clare Trevor). But Martin's mother coldly tells him to get lost, while Francie reveals herself to be a consumptive prostitute. Despite his depressed state, Martin is still admired by the local kids; this displeases sign painter Dave Connell (Joel McCrea), who hopes to escape the slums via his romance with wealthy Kay Burton (Wendy Barrie). Attempting to kidnap a rich boy who'd earlier been beaten up by the street kids, Martin is prevented from making the snatch by Dave, who shoots Martin down. Receiving a large reward, Dave decides to give the money to Drina so that she can afford a lawyer to defend her brother Tommy, who has wrongfully been accused of masterminding the beating of the rich kid. His outlook on life altered by this unselfish act, Dave gives up his mercenary romance with Kay Burton, choosing instead the poverty-stricken Drina. The film introduces the Dead End Kids - Billy Halop, Leo Gorcey, Gabe Dell, Huntz Hall, Bernard Punsley and Bobby Jordan - all of whom were veterans of the Broadway version of Dead End and would be metamorphosed into the East Side Kids and The Bowery Boys." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/dead-end-v12692

Download links:

(avi, 853 MB):

http://filenuke.com/nena8hf857nc