on 8/11/2021, 2:03 pm
Yahoo! Finance seems to be morphing into a place where press releases go to turn into "news," but our quest to keep you up to date on new DVD/Blu-Ray releases of rare film noir restorations knows no boundaries, no matter how many lines get crossed...
I don't think that a 4K restoration is going to transform the film in question (A LIFE AT STAKE) into a breathless classic, but the images available on Film Detective's preview page (click on the video link once you're on their page...) do show us that the print quality of the film has been notably improved:
https://www.thefilmdetective.com/lifeatstake
Whether it is now (or ever was) a "seductive noir gem" is probably going to result in a lopsided vote in the negative from most of the witnesses here who have seen it, but the lead actors (Angela Lansbury and Keith Andes) are attractive if not particularly convincing in their roles. Veteran critic Edgar Chaput is somewhat more forgiving vis-a-vis A LIFE AT STAKE, as you can see in his commentary (a bit more labored than usual):
https://www.popoptiq.com/a-life-at-stake/
My young friend Jason Ney--he's still young, only with a much bigger family than when I first added him to the NC e-zine writing staff back in 2012--is the expert on call for A LIFE AT STAKE, handling both the booklet essay and the audio commentary for Film Detective's package.
If you still have a portion of your stimulus $$ handy, then consider adding this one to your collection. While it's still a sad fact that "haters gonna hate," it's also true that "completists gonna complete," and there are definitely worse things than that--and than A LIFE AT STAKE.
The DVD/Blu-ray combo hits the street on September 7th.
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