Alpha Video

Silent film pioneer Nell Shipman (1892-1970) was born Helen Barham in Canada to middle-class parents. Deciding early on that the life of a housewife was not for her, she started performing on stage at 13. Nell soon journeyed to Hollywood, where she began acting and writing screenplays for the major studios. In stark opposition to frail, childlike starlets like Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish, Shipman's sturdy Amazonian physique meant that she often came to the rescue of her male co-stars at...

Chivalrous cowboy Blaze Howell (Ken Maynard) thinks he's stopping a train robbery in progress. It turns out that the holdup is a gag concocted by passenger Collins and his ranch manager Owens to impress Collins' wild-west crazy daughter Doris. The hoax backfires, however, when it's discovered that the train has been robbed and the train's messenger shot dead! Stranger-in-town Blaze is accused of the crimes. When the train loot is discovered in an abandoned shack, Blaze sets up a trap to catch...

Where's My Man, To-Nite? (1943, B&W): Young Rodney Tucker Jr. is leading an aimless life. His out-spoken grandfather Samuel Tucker, a decorated army veteran, thinks the military would do the boy good, but Rodney wants nothing to do with wearing a uniform. Uncle Sam has his own ideas, and a surprising piece of mail arrives, "inviting" Rodney to visit his local draft board. Boot camp rubs Rodney the wrong way and he soon goes AWOL. But if Grandpa Tucker has anything to say about it, Rodney will...

THE EROTIC TOUCH OF HOT SKIN (1966): "The erotic touch of hot skin...that arouses the animal passions in man...that torments the mind and drives it to a fever of desire...that dispels reason and drives man and woman to the peaks of ecstasy, or the depths of debauchery...that can lead to anything...even murder..." Julian Prentice, a millionaire who lives on the French Riviera, is killed after he discovers his wife Irene with her lover, Mark. They barely have time to dispose of the body before...

Considered to be the best filming of M. Somerset Maugham's poignant novel, the film tells of the ill-fated romance between a well-to-do club-footed medical student and a vulgar waitress. Bette Davis' performance as the lower-class waitress with a Cockney accent is magnificent.

Former outlaw Tex Ryan steps into a bitter feud between a group of ranchers and homesteaders who are fighting each other for control of the frontier. Summoned by his uncle to assist the cattlemen at the Bar Y, Tex arrives to learn that his uncle has been murdered and that he has inherited the ranch. Tensions are mounting between the two factions and Ryan soon figures out the real source of the trouble - Ross Landers, his former employer in criminal enterprise. Using the name Rand Lassiter, he...

Fury originally ran on Saturday mornings on NBC from 1955 to 1960. The stallion Fury (trained by Ralph McCutcheon) became an award-winning star that appeared in other TV shows and movies, and was the subject of spin-off books, games, and puzzles.Scorched Earth: Hunters from the city carelessly set the forest ablaze, trapping Joey and Fury in a fiery inferno.Joey and the Gypsies: Joey comes to the defense of an innocent family of gypsies, framed by outlaws to cover up their rustling.Joey Saves...

Rex Bell's 1932-33 Monogram Westerns, turned out by the same production team that would shortly achieve great success with John Wayne as its star, are a notch above other independently made horse operas of the early sound period. Exploiting the likability of their amiable star, they films stress comedy, and in addition they eschew timeworn genre conventions in favor of fresh settings and situations. Fighting Texans opens in a clothing store, Lucky Larrigan at a polo match. Both are...

Marian Ramsay realizes that her wealthy husband Michael has lost interest in her on their 19th wedding anniversary together. Still craving romance, she takes up with "Mr. Jaromir", a mysterious young man who is really the deposed king of the tiny Balkan country of Morania. Their grown daughter Tillie discovers what is going on with her parents and flirts with Jaromir to throw a spanner into the works of her mother's affair. This has the unintended consequence of ruining her relationship with...

Steve Reeves is Hadji Murad, the legendary 19th century Avar/Chechen warrior chieftain who battles his peoples' Tsarist oppressors in this sweeping spectacle loaded with swashbuckling violence, forbidden desire and betrayal.Filmed in Technicolor by acclaimed genre director Mario Bava and brimming with first-rate action sequences, this tale is a frank and even-handed depiction of the effects of the atrocities of war on the peasant class.The source for The White Warrior was Leo Tolstoy's novel...

Messiah of Evil (1973, Color): 100 years ago, a demonic priest from Hell passed through a seaside town, carrying a blood-crazed contagion that reduced all the good citizens to mindless, cannibal zombies. Following a frenzied, flesh-eating orgy, the dark priest walked straight into the sea, promising to return a century later to lead a new zombie apocalypse. This time around, the vile contagion precedes him. As spaced-out followers gather on the beach, awaiting their master's return, the town...

The Great Stone Face of Comedy stars in this extremely rare compilation of his television series Life with Buster Keaton. In each segment, Keaton pursues a different "get rich quick" scheme, including opening a sporting goods store and running his own theatre company. Disaster inevitably ensues. Along the way, Buster recreates some of the most beloved moments from his films The Butcher Boy (1917), The Cameraman (1928) and Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928). Keaton worked with his longtime colleague...