Bad Day at Black Rock

• Spencer Tracy stars with Robert Ryan, Lee marvin, Ernest Bornine and Walter Brennen in this offbeat and chilling tale of a man pitted against an entire town. Year: 1954 Director: John Sturges Starring: Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Anne Francis, Dean Jagger, Walter BrennanRunning Time: 82 min. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR Age: 012569690226 UPC: 01256969022

BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK – DVD MovieOne of the first Hollywood films to deal openly with white racism toward Japanese Americans during World War II, this drama directed by 1950s action maestro John Sturges (The Great Escape) stars Spencer Tracy as a one-armed stranger named MacReedy, who arrives in the tiny town of Black Rock on a hot day in 1945. Seeking a hotel room and the whereabouts of an ethnic Japanese farmer named Komoko, MacReedy runs smack into a wall of hostility that escalates into serious threats. In time it becomes apparent that Komoko has been murdered by a local, racist chieftain, Reno Smith (Robert Ryan), who also plans on dispensing with MacReedy. Tracy’s hero is forced to fight his way past Smith’s goons (among them Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin) and sundry allies (Anne Francis) to keep alive, setting the stage for memorable suspense crisply orchestrated by Sturges. Casting is the film’s principal strength, however: Tracy, the indispensable icon of integrity, and Ryan, the indispensable noir image of spiritual blight, are as creatively unlikely a pairing as Sturges’s shotgun marriage of Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen in The Magnificent Seven. –Tom Keogh

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• In the redwood forests of California, a multimillionaire lumberman and his two young grandchildren encounter two gnomes, old Knobby and young Jasper. Supposedly, they’re the last of their kind. But everyone sets off on a trip in a Gnome-Mobile (an old Rolls-Royce) to find the rest of the gnomes. After a series of adventures and mishaps, they find them, and the lumberman deeds the forest to the

Northern California’s majestic Redwood Forest is the scene for a chance encounter between two young children (Matthew Garber, Karen Dotrice) and Jasper (Tom Lowell), a two-foot-high gnome. Jasper has been desperately searching for a suitable bride to please Knobby (Walter Brennan), his 900-year-old grandfather. Surprised and delighted with their find, the children agree to help Jasper with his predicament — a problem that develops into a wild chase when an enterprising showman (Sean McClory) discovers the gnomes and quickly masterminds a kidnapping plot!

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