Briefs on things that are actually on DVD

One of the Richard Carlson movies I finally got a chance to see last night was The Magnetic Monster. I thought I had seen on TCM's schedule page that there's a DVD avaiable, but when I did an IMDb search this morning, they suggested it's not. This surprised me, since it's usually the other way around. Amazon deals in out-of-print and used items, which the TCM shop doesn't. As it turns out, The Magnetic Monster was originally teleased to theaters through United Artists, has been given a DVD release from MGM's manufacture-on-demand program. These are whatever films MGM after selling the library to Ted Turner, got the rights to, which would be a lot of United Artists stuff and I believe some other studios. At any rate, MGM's MOD films don't see to be available for purchase on Amazon yet. The Magnetic Monster won't be getting a full-length post today because there's something else not on DVD that I'll be blogging about.

Elsewhere on DVD, you've probably seen TCM hawking the Glenn Ford: Undercover Crimes collection, which I mentioned about a week and a half ago. TCM is finally showing two of the movies on that set as part of a 24-hour birthday salute to Ford. Ford's birthday is tomorrow, but TCM is starting the celebration off tonight, with several of Ford's films in the 1940s, with the Wednesday morning/afternoon lineup being films Ford made in the 50s. The Undercover Man is coming up at midnight, with Framed on at 2:45 AM. I don't think either of these have shown up much before on TCM, so it would have been nice to see them kick off the night's lineup, instead of the Warner Bros. film A Stolen Life (available courtesy of the Warner Archive). Actually, it's even more true for Babies for Sale, at 1:30 AM, which I don't think I've ever seen before and which isn't on DVD. The subject, which you could imply from the title, is about corruption in adopting babies and would, I'd guess, be part of an interesting pairing with the Crime Does Not Pay short Women in Hiding, about unwed mothers. (As far as I know, Women in Hiding isn't on DVD either, not even as an extra to some other movie.) I don't know if it's coincidence, but both of these were released in 1940.