Blackmail (Hitchcock, 1929)

[Dr.Starr]

Disappointed this wasn't included on the Network Hitchcock boxset, I recently plumped for the German dvd release of this film on the ARTHAUS label from Amazon Germany (under the title Erpressung)

Often overlooked, this classic from 1929 (Britain's first "talkie"), remains fascinating viewing.

The quality on the dvd is about as good as you could hope for from a film made in 1929, there are English options, plus you also get the silent version (which I haven't yet watched but is supposed to have been shot differently for the silent medium), and a screentest from Anny Ondra.

Worth checking out.

[Vaughan]

Actually, I believe it was a rights issue that prevented this being in the Network box. You need the other (essential) Early Hitchcock box set:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41nr2gS%2BKCL._.jpg (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000KRMZMY/ref=nosim?tag=mondoerotico05)

It rare for any Hitchcock to bore you (there are a couple I don't rate, but very few). But none of his early works should be missed.

[Timmy Lea]

I thought that seeing as the film was over 70 years old, rights wouldn't have come into it!! But I could be wrong. My DVD was a Region 1 job purchased from a film fair back in 2005 (the same as my copy of MURDER)

I must have been inspired by the film, as I wrote a huge schpiel of a review of it for the BHF at the time- which sadly, no-one will ever see, as it was frazzled into nothingness by the evil computer of a Middlesex internet cafe. Never to be repeated. Except that Anny Ondra probably counts as British suspense cinema's first "rampant totty". That is, until I ever see THE AVENGING HAND, should it still exist.