William Friedkin was riding high. His last two films, The French Connection and The Exorcist were world-wide box-office hits and multiple awards magnets. His next film, a reimagining of Henri-Georges Clozot’s 1953 French film classic, The Wages of Fear was intended to be his masterpiece. Instead, that film, titled Sorcerer was a critical and commercial failure from which his career has never fully recovered.

Seen today, Sorcerer is a tense, exciting thriller that is better than its reputation would suggest.

The basic story of the earlier film and its 1950 source novel is the same. Four desperate volunteers drive two cargo trucks filled with nitroglycerine over hundreds of miles of bad road in order to extinguish an oil-well fire. The men are all fugitives from justice. Kassem, played by Amidou, is an Arab terrorist. Nilo, played by Francisco Rabel, is a Mexican hit man. Victor, played by Bruno Cremer, is a Frenchman whose robbery of a family owned bank has caused the suicide of his brother-in-law. Jackie Scanlon, played by a never better Roy Scheider, is a Long Island man who was the getaway driver in the robbery of a New Jersey church in which a priest who just happened to be the brother of the local mobster was shot by one of his quickly exterminated cohorts. The pulsating score is by the rock group, Tangerine Dream,

The tension builds through several heart-pounding scenes, leading to an ambiguous ending that infuriated audiences of the day. To add insult to Friedkin’s reputation, the film was pulled from Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood after one week and replaced by the film it had itself replaced: Star Wars, which continued on its record-breaking inaugural run.

Sorcerer looks terrific on the newly restored Blu-ray from Warner Bros. which purchased the rights to the film after Friedkin sued Paramount and Universal who co-produced it.

Sidney Lumet is best remembered as a superb maker of films about New York. One of his first and best was The Pawnbroker which was first shown at the 1964 Berlin Film Festival where Lumet was nominated for the Golden Bear and his star Rod Steiger, later nominated for a 1965 Oscar, won the Silver Bear for his performance.

Steiger has never been better than as the emotionally hollow survivor of the Nazi death camps where his wife, parents and children were all murdered. A bitter shell of a man, he is cold and uncaring in his relationships, leading to a shattering tragedy that finally touches him for the first time in decades. Steiger’s Oscar nomination was well deserved and he is nicely supported by Jaime Sanchez, outstanding as his shop assistant; Brock Peters; Juano Hernandez; Raymond St. Jacques and a fine Geraldine Fitzgerald in her first film in seven years.

Olive Films has released the film on Blu-ray for the first time.

Ernie Ardolino’s well-received 1989 comedy, Chances Are has been given a 25th Anniversary release on Blu-ray. Directed with the same light touch as Ardolino’s Dirty Dancing and Sister Act, the film was a showcase for Robert Downey, Jr. as the reincarnated husband of a much older Cybill Shepherd whose daughter Mary Stuart Masterson has no clue about what is going on. Ryan O’Neal is the “other man” in Shepherd’s life. It’s not a great film by any stretch of the imgination, but it’s such innocuous fun that even a conventional lame ending can’t spoil it.

Warner Archive has released a Blu-ray of the 1955 film version of Vincent Youmans’ Hit the Deck, an odd choice considering all the better known musicals controlled by Warner Bros. still awaiting Blu-ray upgrades.

Previously filmed in 1930, MGM remade Hit the Deck as a vehicle for some of its major players whose contracts were expiring. A low-rent service musical next to MGM’s more popular Anchors Aweigh and On the Town, it nevertheless has its moments, most of them belonging to Debbie Reynolds and Russ Tamblyn who make a cute couple. Jane Powell and Vic Damone are fine as another couple and Ann Miller is terrific as the girlfriend of top-billed male performer Tony Martin. Martin had a great singing voice but was a rather dull actor as he confirms here. Walter Pidgeon has a non-singing role as an Admiral. The film’s highlight is “Hallelujah” sung by the three sailors (Martin; Damone; Tamblyn) in the beginning and most of the cast in the end.

New standard DVD releases from the Warner Archive include The Big House; Treasure Island and Irene.

The re-mastered re-issue of 1930’s The Big House is a big improvement over the initial archive release. The classic prison drama, which won Oscars for writing and sound and was nominated for Best Picture and Actor (Wallace Beery) looks as good as the 84 year-old film probably ever has. Beery, a long-time character actor in silent films became one of the first major stars of the talkie era with his portrayal of the vicious leader of a prison break. Chester Morris; Robert Montgomery and Lewis Stone also starred. It was directed by George Hill who later that year directed Beery and Marie Dressler in Min and Bill, also available from Warner Archive.

This release also includes the simultaneously filmed French and Spanish versions of the film.

The archive release of the 1934’s Treasure Island is a re-issue of the out-of-print DVD released in 2006. Wallace Beery; Jackie Cooper; Lionel Barrymore and Lewis Stone head the cast of this most famous version of the oft-filmed Robert Louis Stevenson classic. It was directed by Victor Fleming who later directed Captains Courageous; The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind.

A long-running 1929 musical, Irene is probably better known now for its 1973 Broadway revival with Debbie Reynolds and Patsy Kelly as the girl from 9th Avenue and her grandmother. The newly released DVD is of the 1940 film version starring legendary British actress-singer Anna Neagle and May Robson in Reynolds’ and Kelly’s roles. Ray Milland; Roland Young and Billie Burke also star. Milland is the secret “Madame Lucy”. Young and Burke made this between filming sequels to Topper.

Dorothy Dandridge is featured in the “Alice Blue Gown” number as one of the Dandridge Sisters. The sequence was filmed in Technicolor to show off Neagle’s stunning gown.

This week’s new releases include Blu-ray upgrades of Sophie’s Choice and The Rodgers & Hammerstein Collection.