Of all John Ford’s great films, the one that tends to get the least amount of respect these days is 1937’s The Hurricane. Maybe it’s because the film has been out of general circulation for so long that younger generations have not seen it. Maybe it’s because of the advances in special effects that have come along in the nearly eighty years since it was made. Kino Lorber’s beautifully restored Blu-ray should put an end to that. Both sound and visual effects take your breath away.

Based on a 1936 Nordhoff-Hall novel, Ford’s film was given the green light by Sam Goldwyn after the huge success of MGM’s 1935 Oscar-winning film of Nordhoff-Hall’s Mutiny on the Bounty. Jon Hall, co-author James Norman Hall’s half-Polynesian nephew, is the Christ-like Polynesian sailor whose constant escapes from an unjust imprisonment drives much of the film’s narrative. Sarong queen Dorothy Lamour gets top billing as his wife, but is given little to do. Acting honors go to Thomas Mitchell as the Ford-like, slovenly, drunken doctor who is the film’s conscience; Raymond Massey as the island’s martinet governor; Mary Astor as the governor’s compassionate wife; and C. Aubrey Smith as the island’s beloved priest. Mitchell, who was also in Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon and Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow in 1937, received his first Oscar nomination for The Hurricane. He would win for a similar role in Ford’s Stagecoach two years later.

The film was also nominated for Best Score and won for Best Sound Recording. There were no categories for Sound and Visual Effects at the time or it most certainly would have won both awards for the film’s fourteen-minute hurricane sequence in which many of the film’s principal players including 73-year-old C. Aubrey Smith were required to do their own stunts. Why it didn’t win a special Oscar for Special Effects by the same team that was overlooked for the preceding year’s San Francisco no one seems to know.

The Blu-ray and DVD release includes feature-length commentary from film historian Joseph McBride, author of two books on Ford.

Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru had an unusual release pattern in the U.S. It played Chicago in 1956, but didn’t open in New York or Los Angeles until 1960 where it received respectful, but not quite ecstatic reviews. Londoners were more receptive. The film’s star, Takashi Shimura, received a BAFTA nomination for Best Foreign Actor.

Now generally considered Kurosawa’s masterpiece, Ikiru (To Live) follows a petty city clerk (Shimura) who given a year to live, tries to find meaning in his last days. After several wrong turns, he finds that helping people gives him the most pleasure. The biggest complaint audiences have had over the years is about its length. Some find the 45-minute funeral sequence after a 100-minute narrative to be anti-climactic. Others find that sequence the heart of the film. See it for yourself and decide which side you’re on.

Criterion’s Blu-ray release is a 4K restoration with Criterion’s usual plentiful array of extras.

George Bernard Shaw’s 1897 historical comedy The Devil’s Disciple, set in the last days of the American Revolutionary War, had been performed many times on stage and television when Burt Lancaster’s Hecht-Hill-Lancaster production company decided to turn it into a major film sixty-two years later. Surprisingly, the now 118-year-old property is amazingly spry with wonderfully witty performances by the film’s three major stars, Lancaster as a once stern preacher who answers a call to action, Kirk Douglas the devil’s disciple who masquerades as the preacher, and Laurence Olivier as the sharp-witted British General Burgoyne. The supporting cast is led by Janette Scott as Lancaster’s wife, Eva Le Gallienne as Douglas’ mother, Harry Andrews as Olivier’s assistant, and Mervyn Johns as Lancaster’s fellow preacher. Olivier received a BAFTA nomination for Best British Actor of 1959.

Kino Lorber’s release features the original trailer and no other extras, but it’s great just to have this classic film available for the first time on Blu-ray and DVD.

Long available in other countries, John Casssavetes’ 1963 film A Child Is Waiting oddly has never been available as a domestic DVD until now. Kino Lorber’s excellent new Blu-ray and DVD releases with feature-length commentary from film historians Tom Charity and Michael Van Den Bos provides insight into the volatile relationship between Cassavetes and producer Stanley Kramer that resulted in Cassavetes’ firing and Kramer’s re-editing of several comedy scenes involving real-life mentally challenged children, eliminating scenes that Cassavetes found revelatory and Kramer found insensitive.

Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland star as a psychologist with new ideas and a too-involved employee. Professional child actor Bruce Ritchie gives a remarkable performance as the boy who clings to Garland while Gena Rowlands and Steven Hill are effective as his parents in underwritten roles.

Shout Factory has released Ghost Story for the first time on Blu-ray with feature-length commentary from director John Irvin.

Sad to say, this film was a major disappointment when released in December, 1981 and Irvin’s droning on about it in his commentary doesn’t make it any better.

The film, based on portions of Peter Straub’s bestselling horror novel, never quite comes alive. The once-in-a-lifetime casting of Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and John Houseman as old men with a secret in their past casts the actors as the film’s stars, although in the narrative they play second fiddle to Craig Wasson (as Fairbanks’ son) and Alice Krige as his mysterious lover. Patricia Neal is totally wasted as Astaire’s long-suffering wife.

Shout Factory is to be commended for their fine restoration of the film and the gathering of numerous extras, but the whole fails to add up to the sum of its parts.

This week’s new releases include Amy and Some Kind of Beautiful.