Controversial classics still pack a punch on DVD

Controversy has been the mainstay of probing human drama since the Greeks were mounting plays in Athens — and probably before. And movies have been skewering and sometimes puncturing the status quo since the earliest days of silents.

This collection of seven classic movies new to DVD is, to say the least, quite disparate. The connective thread is that each was controversial in its day, or deals with a politically touchy issue.

The other commonality is that each holds up as an excellent film. (These seven titles are available individually for $19.97 each or in the "Controversial Classics Collection" box set for $79.92.)

• "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang" (Warner, 1932, not rated, b/w). This powerhouse picture still packs a wallop more than 70 years later.

Paul Muni is a World War I veteran who tries to get into construction in the South, but his post-war life is a disaster and he is reduced to being homeless. When he is innocently convicted of robbery, he finds himself brutalized by the justice system and eventually escapes, but his life only gets better temporarily.

Muni is amazing in the lead role here, and the film has much to say about injustice, manipulation and just bad karma. Based on a true story, it was banned in Georgia (though the film's Southern locale is never identified) and is often cited as something that helped bring down the chain-gang system.

Extras: Full frame, audio commentary (by film historian Richard B. Jewell), musical short: "20,000 Cheers for the Chain Gang," trailer, subtitle options (English, French, Spanish), chapters.

• "Fury" (Warner, 1936, not rated, b/w). Fritz Lang's first American movie has Spencer Tracy as a stranger in a small town who is mistakenly arrested for a local kidnapping. When a lynch mob goes wild and the jail catches fire, Tracy is believed dead, but he escapes and discovers the incident has been captured on newsreel footage, and he plots his revenge.

A great film that, without realizing it, of course, foreshadows the future of TV news while indicting mob rule, with excellent performances by Silvia Sydney, Walter Brennan and especially Tracy in a story that has much to say, and still resonates today.

Extras: Full frame, audio commentary (by Peter Bogdanovich, with excerpts from vintage interview with director Lang), trailer, subtitle options (English, French, Spanish), chapters.

• "Bad Day at Black Rock" (Warner, 1954, not rated). Shortly after the end of World War II, a train that hasn't stopped there in four years drops off a one-armed stranger (Spencer Tracy) in a small Arizona cattle town. And the local citizens immediately become uptight, fearing he's come to unearth their morbid secret.