Alpha Video

Working girl Mary Ellen Stack lives in poverty in New York with her parents and kid brother. They decide to sell their dilapidated home and make a go of it in California. To make the journey, Mary Ellen purchases a slightly used automobile from the local junk dealer. Little does she realize that it is the first car ever built by the Tourist Motors Company, and they are offering a substantial ($10,000) reward for it. When word gets out that the prized automobile is on the road, treasure hunters...

NAKED MASSACRE (1976): A solitary American soldier stops in Belfast on his way home from Vietnam. Already traumatized by the horrors of war, he is driven to madness by the IRA bombings shaking the city. With no money to complete his journey, he becomes fixated on eight young nurses living together in a boarding house. His mind snapping, the soldier invades the girls' home, subjecting them to a horrific night of rape, terror, and murder...Loosely based on the real-life Richard Speck murders,...

RECKLESS YOUTH (1922): Alice Schuyler, a spoiled child of privilege, is expelled from a convent for bad behavior. Rather than return to her parents, she seeks refuge at a lodge owned by timid John Carmen. Wanting to avoid ever going back to the convent, Alice marries the lonely middle-aged man. They move to the big city, where Alice spends every night partying at the jazz clubs while John stays at home with the newspaper. She soon attracts the attention of playboy Harrison Thornby, who...

SUNNY (1941): Anna Neagle is Sunny O'Day, the pretty owner of a ramshackle traveling circus. During a layover in New Orleans, Sunny takes in Mardi Gras, where she meets dashing young playboy Larry Warren. The pair immediately fall in love, but are faced with incompatible backgrounds. Larry's rich parents don't want him settling down with a commoner, while Sunny's circus family fear that marriage will take her far away from them. The two worlds meet head-on when the entire circus troupe crashes...

Marie Dressler plays Tillie Tinklepaw, a neglected housewife. One day she decides to head to Coney Island for a day of fun away from her stuffy hubby. There she meets J. Mortimer Pipkins, a henpecked husband who has just run off with his and the wife's savings. The two become a modern-day Romeo and Juliet amid the sights and sounds of Coney Island...until their spouses show up! In 1914, Tillie's Punctured Romance, the first feature-length comedy, had made stars of Charlie Chaplin, Marie...

In the 1930s, the one-reel short subject was an important part of the cinema-going experience. Changes in distribution brought about by the Great Depression meant that theatre owners now had to buy a program of features, cartoons, newsreels and shorts directly from the studios themselves, creating a need for regular series of short subjects. This collection brings together examples from some of the most popular (and unusual!) series. THE GLACIER'S SECRET (1930): A thrilling installment of...

On a remote island in the South Seas, the natives are torn between two opposing groups of white colonizers: the missionaries who wish to convert them to Christianity, and the slave traders who want to condemn them to eternal servitude. Unsure of her place among any of them is "White Almond Flower," a beautiful young white girl who was raised to believe she is one of the islanders. She is lusted after by Dan McGuire, a drunkard, and Walter Kincaid, the cowardly nephew of the head missionary....

Harold is a spineless coward who spends most of his time afraid of his own shadow. When the town jewelry store is robbed, he is deputized along with every other able-bodied man to capture the culprit. Petrified by his new responsibility, Harold is given a good luck charm by his grandmother. According to her, it brought the boy's grandfather great success during the Civil War. Emboldened, Harold heads out to nab the robber - not realizing the "good luck charm" is just the handle from an old...

FORTRESS OF THE DEAD (1965): This haunting, eerie short feature (possibly made for television) is reminiscent of the best works of Val Lewton and Rod Serling. During World War II, while stationed on Corregidor Island in the Philippines, Private Frank Griffin was trapped along with the rest of his unit in a collapsed tunnel during a Japanese bombing. Frank was able to escape, but the other 38 men in his platoon all perished. Two decades later, Frank is still wracked by post-traumatic stress and...

AS WE FORGIVE (1952): A leather-jacketed juvenile delinquent sees the error of his ways when he discovers a passion for playing the church organ. As We Forgive stars Darryl Hickman, an actor who specialized in juvenile roles in the 1940s. The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Men of Boys' Town (1941) and Leave Her to Heaven (1945) are among his credits. In 1951, he abandoned Hollywood to enter a monastery. Darryl returned to acting some time later, appearing in Tea and Sympathy (1956) and The Tingler...

Genius inventor John MacGregor discovers a new metal - lighter than aluminum, but stronger than steel. His reporter son Bill realizes this discovery puts him at risk. With World War II raging on the other side of the Atlantic, whoever possesses this new metal could turn the tide of the war in their favor. Before long, two strangers have arrived in the MacGregors' hometown - an esteemed archaeologist and a female reporter, both of whom seem to know all about the mysterious new metal. Bill must...

Marshal Cheyenne Davis and his partner, Fuzzy Q. Jones, look into a series of murders in the town of Buffalo Gap. Several ranchers have been killed after refusing to turn their land over to a gang of rustlers. Cheyenne is puzzled because the town sheriff refuses to do anything about it. He suspects that both the sheriff and the rustlers are taking orders from a mysterious boss. While in town, Cheyenne and Fuzzy decide to stay at the ranch of good-looking Betty Walters and her uncle Bob, the...