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It’s big, it buzzes, and it screams like a banshee. So why is the Mantis monster so ho-hum? Universal-International tries to squeak out another boffo big bug epic, but 1957 screens were already crowded with grasshoppers and scorpions — and the screenplay is derivative — and somebody allowed producer William Alland to throw in every stock shot that wasn’t nailed down.

The Deadly Mantis

Blu-ray

1957 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 79 min. / Street Date March 19, 2019 / 27.99

Starring: Craig Stevens, William Hopper, Alix Talton, Donald Randolph, Pat Conway, Florenz Ames, Paul Smith, Harry Tyler.

Cinematography: Ellis W. Carter, Clifford Stine

Film Editor: Chester Schaeffer

Original Music: Irving Gertz, William Lava, Henry Mancini

Written by Martin Berkeley, William Alland

Produced by William Alland

Directed by Nathan Juran

I grew up partly in the Mojave Desert. Our red ants were aggressive (and they stung!), our grasshoppers big and strong, and our scorpions were as scary as the...

‘Hey Blondie!’ Dagwood, Blondie, Mr. Dithers and a victimized postman return for a stab at a TV revival of the 1940s series from Chic Young’s never-ending comic strip. It’s not bad, with Arthur Lake clowning up a storm and Pamela Britton a charming new embodiment of a character who began as ‘Blondie Boopadoop.’ It’s the entire one-season series.

Blondie The Complete 1957 Television Series

DVD

ClassicFlix

1957 / B&W / 1:33 TV aperture / 26 x 30 min. / Street Date September 25, 2018 / 39.99

Starring: Arthur Lake, Pamela Britton, Stuffy Singer, Florenz Ames, Ann Barnes, Harold Peary, Hollis Irving, Elvia Allman, Lucien Littlefield.

Cinematography: Lothrop B. Wort

Original Music: Mahlon Merrick

Written by John L. Greene, George Beck, George Carleton Brown, Jo Conway, Frank Gill Jr., Gordon T. Hughes, Don Nelson, Jay Sommers, Warren Spector from characters created by Chic Young

Produced by William Harmon

Directed by Hal Yates, Paul Landres, Gerald Freedman

Chic Young’s...

Jeanne Crain: Lighthearted movies vs. real life tragedies (photo: Madeleine Carroll and Jeanne Crain in ‘The Fan’) (See also: "Jeanne Crain: From ‘Pinky’ Inanity to ‘Margie’ Magic.") Unlike her characters in Margie, Home in Indiana, State Fair, Centennial Summer, The Fan, and Cheaper by the Dozen (and its sequel, Belles on Their Toes), or even in the more complex A Letter to Three Wives and People Will Talk, Jeanne Crain didn’t find a romantic Happy Ending in real life. In the mid-’50s, Crain accused her husband, former minor actor Paul Brooks aka Paul Brinkman, of infidelity, of living off her earnings, and of brutally beating her. The couple reportedly were never divorced because of their Catholic faith. (And at least in the ’60s, unlike the humanistic, progressive-thinking Margie, Crain was a “conservative” Republican who supported Richard Nixon.) In the early ’90s, she lost two of her...