Paramount has been busy now that they have stepped up their Blu-ray release game between Paramount Presents, Paramount regular Blu-ray, and licensing to Australia’s Imprint and other outside companies.

Finally making its Blu-ray debut, thanks to Paramount Presents, is Frank Perry’s 1981 film Mommie Dearest, a blockbuster in its day.

The film was a dramatization of the events in Christina Crawford’s book about her mother, actress Joan Crawford, who died in 1977. Although the narrative paints a negative picture of Crawford as a self-absorbed control freak, those who knew her insisted it was an inaccurate portrayal. Arguments persist to this day as to how much of it was true.

Critics were split over Faye Dunaway’s over-the-top portrayal of the legendary star. On one hand, the prestigious New York Film Critics and National Society of Film Critics nominated Dunaway for Best Actress, while the Razzie and Stinkers Bad Movie awards both gave her their Worst Actress award as well as giving the film their Worst Picture awards. The actress herself has since disavowed her participation in the film, considers it the beginning of the end of her career as a major star, and refuses to discuss it.

One’s tolerance of the film depends on one’s ability to appreciate “camp” as it portrays the relationship between Joan from her adoption of Christina in 1940 to Joan’s death. It adds as a coda to the material in the book, a scene in which Christina questions whether Joan has had the last word in leaving her out of her will.

Mara Hobel (Kinsey) plays Christina as a child, Diana Scarwid (Inside Moves) plays her as an adult. Steve Forrest (Spies Like Us) plays a composite of Joan’s lovers. Rutanya Alda (The Deer Hunter) plays a composite of Crawford’s housekeepers. Howard da Silva (1776) has a featured role as a nasty Louis B. Mayer.

The Blu-ray release includes a new interview with director Frank Perry’s biographer Justin Bozung on Perry’s making of the film and new commentary by drag queen Hedda Lettuce. It also imports three shorts on Faye as Joan, along with John Waters’ commentary from the original DVD release.

The Paramount Presents remastering of Jerry Zucker’s 1990 film Ghost, from a 4K scan, provides the best look ever for this hugely successful romantic comedy.

Nominated for five Oscars including Best Picture, Film Editing, and Score by Maurice Jarre (Lawrence of Arabia), it won two. Those were for Best Supporting Actress Whoopi Goldberg and Best Original Screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin (Jacob’s Ladder).

Rubin’s penchant for writing screenplays obsessed with death and Airplane! director Jerry Zucker’s penchant for comedy might seem like an uneasy mix, but the two came together to produce one the most enduring love stories in screen history. The chemistry is remarkable between lovers Patrick Swayze (Dirty Dancing) as a young banker and Demi Moore (Disclosure) as an up-and-coming potter torn apart by his murder. It is even more remarkable between the two of them and Goldberg as the phony medium who discovers she has real powers when she connects with Swayze’s ghost.

Extras include a new on-screen interview with Zucker as well as previously-released extras including two documentaries on the making of the film and a commentary from Zucker and Rubin from the 2006 DVD release.

In addition to the region-free Blu-rays Imprint has been releasing, the Australian company has recently released several Blu-rays, primarily of Paramount and Columbia films, for which you need a region free Blu-ray player on which to play them. These include 1931’s The Criminal Code and 1934’s Twentieth Century from Columbia, 1956’s The Rainmaker and 1991’s Regarding Henry from Paramount, 1992’s Light Sleeper from Carolco Pictures, and 1996’s Big Night from The Samuel Goldwyn Company.

Howard Hawks’ early 1930s films, The Criminal Code and Twentieth Century, couldn’t be more different. The Criminal Code is a heavy drama as were his two films that book-ended it, the 1930 aviation drama, The Dawn Patrol, and the 1932 gangster epic, Scarface. Twentieth Century is a screwball comedy that set the barometer high for his future comedies which would include Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday.

Walter Huston gets top billing as a former big city district attorney who becomes warden of the state prison in The Criminal Code, but the central character is played by Phillips Holmes (Broken Lullaby), a young innocent who Huston had prosecuted for an accidental killing while still D.A. Both performances are masterful. Constance Cummings (Blithe Spirit) plays Huston’s daughter and Holmes’ eventual lover.

Numerous extras include a documentary on Hawks narrated by John Carpenter, and one on Boris Karloff whose portrayal of Holmes’ cellmate led to his casting as the monster in Frankenstein.

Twentieth Century gave John Barrymore his greatest screen role and made a major star of Carole Lombard as his nemesis in this screwball comedy given a 4K restoration that finally does justice to this much-loved classic. Walter Connolly and Roscoe Karns, who supported Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert earlier in 1934’s It Happened One Night, do the same here albeit in completely different roles.

Joseph Anthony’s The Rainmaker gave us Burt Lancaster as a conman and Oscar-nominated Katharine Hepburn as a spinster falling in love against their better judgment in the film version of N. Richard Nash’s play, which became the source material for the Broadway musical 110 in the Shade. It’s good, but not great. The musical is better.

Mike Nichols’ Regarding Henry gave Harrison Ford one of his best non-Star Wars roles as a heartless lawyer who finds redemption after a near fatal shooting. Paul Schrader’s Light Sleeper gave Willem Dafoe his best screen role after The Last Temptation of Christ as a drug dealer trying to go straight. Both look better than ever on Blu-ray.

Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci’s Big Night gives us Tony Shalhub and Tucci as brothers struggling to make ends meet in their Jersey Shore Italian restaurant. The character study, also featuring Isabella Rossellini, Minnie Driver, and co-director Scott in supporting roles, is a minor gem that only gets better with multiple viewings.

This week’s U.S. Blu-ray releases include Pickup on South Street and Madame Curie.