. . . film buff Richard Schickel for the five-minute DVD extra ILLEGAL: MARKED FOR LIFE (an uninformative title) than she is tag-teaming the actual feature commentary audio track for ILLEGAL with that picture's female lead, Nina Foch. I could only stomach 10 or 15 minutes of that commentary, because Nina's continuous complaining about the "bad old days" of film making is so repetitious. I believe she used the word "stiff" 211 times in that brief period, which includes two minutes of the uninterrupted original soundtrack as Nina is launching into an animated anecdote about ILLEGAL producer Frank P. Rosenberg (either she had a "senior" 120 seconds, or this reminiscence was too off-color even for Warner Bros.). MARKED FOR LIFE tells us that Jayne Mansfield debuted in ILLEGAL, Edward G. Robinson was "gray-listed" by Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McHitler, and that ILLEGAL writer W.R. Burnett was the Philip K. Dick of Hollywood Golden Age Crime Drama.
2 Reviews
AFI's Patricia King Hanson is paired better here with . . .
oscaralbert4 April 2015
Warning: Spoilers
An unnecessary DVD extra that offers nothing for the film lover
planktonrules31 October 2009
I love DVD extras, as they often give great insight into the feature film and are a cinemaniac's must-see. However, I must say that this featurette and a very similar one included with THE BIG STEAL (both features were on this DVD) were both practically worthless. This is because they are so darn short--only about four minutes long. In addition, the interviews mostly give information that is already known or should be known to the viewer or consist of mostly the IMDb trivia for the films. There just aren't enough insights and listening to a few film fans say "the film is great" just doesn't warrant these extras to be seen or even made in the first place. In other words, it seems like they were quickly made and slapped onto the DVD to say "yes folks, we have extras!". Not worth your time.
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