Film-noir thrillers hit shelves

Here are movies new to DVD this week, led by a collection of film-noir thrillers from the 1940s and '50s — three of them starring Edward G. Robinson.

Vintage movies

"The Woman in the Window" (MGM, 1944, not rated, b/w, $19.98). Robinson is excellent in this first-rate thriller as a mild-mannered professor who is sucked into a vortex of crime and terror.

With his family out of town, he happens to meet a woman (Joan Bennett) whose portrait he has admired in a shop window. And when he's lured back to her apartment, he suddenly finds himself wrapped up in a spiraling series of events that become more and more twisted — right down to the unexpected finale.

One of the great film noirs, stylishly directed by Fritz Lang ("M," "Fury"), with a good supporting cast that includes Raymond Massey and Dan Duryea. And that's young Robert Blake as Robinson's son.

Extras: Full frame

"The Stranger" (MGM, 1946, not rated, b/w, $19.98). Orson Welles directed this one and stars as a Nazi criminal who learns that a wily agent (Robinson) is on his trail when he settles into a small New England town and marries the daughter (Loretta Young) of a state Supreme Court judge.

Terrific suspense film has uniformly fine performances and really ratchets up the tension.

This one is in the public domain and has been previously released on DVD, but this is the first time the sound and picture have been cleaned up; the result is sharp and enhances the viewing experience.

Extras: Full frame

"Kansas City Confidential" (MGM, 1952, not rated, b/w, $19.98). The same goes for this one; it's on other DVD labels in varying degrees of quality, but none look as good as this.

John Payne stars as an ex-con trying to go straight when he's blamed for an armored-car robbery, so he tracks down the real bad guys in Mexico. Coleen Gray and Preston Foster co-star, and the film gets some juice from character actors Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef and Neville Brand.

Extras: Full frame

"A Bullet for Joey" (MGM, 1955, not rated, b/w, $19.98). This is the least of these, but it will still be of interest for fans of Robinson or George Raft, who co-star in this espionage thriller set in Canada about the kidnapping of an atomic scientist. Not terrible, but it should have been better. Audrey Totter co-stars.

Extras: Full frame