"Paramount was open to the idea," said Legend's PR rep Maria Mason, providing Legend with a list of titles to choose from. A few are being sold exclusively at Best Buy, but most can be found at the usual outlets, including such online stores as Amazon.com.

Mason said two titles a lot of critics are asking to review are "Houdini" (1953), the Hollywoodized biography starring Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, and "Mandingo" (1975), the controversial, overheated tale of slave treatment prior to the Civil War.

Also among the many titles is the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis film "Money From Home" (1953) — which begs the question, why was it noticeably absent from the Martin & Lewis collection released by Paramount last year? (Now the only M&L film missing from DVD is "Three Ring Circus.")

For a complete list, go to www.legendfilms.net.

Let's hope these sell well. Then maybe we'll get more.

And perhaps other studios will sit up and take notice.

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E-mail: hicks@desnews.com