Action
Rod Lott
Swords and sandals: Once a matinee mainstay, the adventure subgenre is now all but extinct, kept alive by the occasional Conan movie or Titans clash. DVD helps, too, such as three new offerings from Warner Archive.

Action
Rod Lott
In the case of 1972's Sitting Target, the title refers to Pat Lomart (Jill St. John, Diamonds Are Forever), the wife of rough and rugged Harry (Oliver Reed, Gladiator). The opening scene finds her visiting him behind bars, where he's being held for murder. Since he's liable to get 15 years, she can't wait for him, so she's filing for divorce.

Western
Rod Lott
Before he became Itay’s master of horror, Dario Argento knocked out a few screenplays, including one of Sergio Leone's legendary Western epics, Once Upon a Time in the West. Lesser-known is 1969's The Five Man Army. That's too bad, because it brings an “international all-star team” approach to the spaghetti Western, and doesn’t forget the all-aces Ennio Morricone score!

Western
Rod Lott
What a kick it is to see Robert Mitchum biting into a stogie and laying waste to a room with a machine gun. Because, really, how often does a man of the cloth do that? No wonder the 1972 quasi-Western is titled The Wrath of God. The film takes place in a South American town so brutal and dismal that, as one character reasons, "If God had wanted to give the world an enema, he'd've stuck the nozzle in here."

Horror
Rod Lott
Boris Karloff plays one of The Sorcerers in an obscure 1967 thriller from Warner Archive. To be more precise, he’s Dr. Marcus Monserrat, “practitioner of medical hypnosis.” Yet what he and his wife (Catherine Lacey, The Lady Vanishes) really itch to try out is something more sinister.

Comedy
Rod Lott
If movies could be drug-tested, The Phynx would be in big trouble. The 1970 comedy is not just an obscurity, but an oddity, like a hallucinogenic brew mixed by Peter Max and Hanna-Barbera. Newly rescued from Nowheresville by Warner Archive, the film is a spy spoof on the goofball level of Get Smart — in spirit, that is, not creatively.

Horror
Rod Lott
Perhaps best known for being the bad guy of the early '90s blockbusters Patriot Games and Sleeping with the Enemy, Patrick Bergin must be the king of literary adaptation also-rans. He played Robin Hood in 1991 film that was denied a theatrical release because Kevin Costner's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves sewed that all up. He's played Dracula … but in a made-for-TV movie, not a Francis Ford Coppola spectacle.

Thriller
Rod Lott
I should have listened to Ron Backer. In his new book, Mystery Movie Series of 1930s Hollywood, he more or less warns would-be audiences away from trying any of the early 1930s’ half-dozen movies based on Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason character.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Just a decade after starring in Sleuth, Michael Caine returned to similar fare in 1982's Deathtrap. Both are crafty mysteries with a bare minimum of characters and even fewer settings, but many twists to leave viewers with spinning heads.

Western
Rod Lott
Perhaps to horn in on the expected Django Unchained action, Warner Archive has dug into its vaults to give a spaghetti Western a second helping of viewers. It found a unlikely offering in Dollar for the Dead, a 1988, made-for-cable effort starring Emilio Estevez. You could look at it like a Young Guns spin-off if you wish.