New on DVD: Yvonne DeCarlo, Joan Fontaine, More

Many thanks to reader Kevin Deany for passing on the wonderful news of a large "wave" of Universal Vault DVD releases which slipped in under the radar last week.

August 28th saw the release of three long-awaited Yvonne DeCarlo titles: RIVER LADY (1948), which I reviewed here just last night; FRONTIER GAL (1945); and CALAMITY JANE AND SAM BASS (1949).

RIVER LADY costars Rod Cameron and Dan Duryea, FRONTIER GAL costars Cameron, and CALAMITY JANE costars Howard Duff.

Another exciting new release is the rarely seen FRENCHMAN'S CREEK (1944), which I just reviewed in January when I saw it at UCLA.

FRENCHMAN'S CREEK stars Joan Fontaine and Arturo de Cordova. It's a Technicolor wonder with a marvelous performance by Fontaine.

Also new from Universal Vault: SKYLARK (1941), which just made its TCM debut in August (my 2010 review is here); LOUISIANA PURCHASE (1941) with Bob Hope; and GYPSY WILDCAT (1944) with Maria Montez and Jon Hall.

The four films from the Pirates of the Golden Age DVD set were all just released individually by the Universal Vault, although in that case honestly it makes more financial sense to purchase the original set.

The pirate films include Yvonne DeCarlo in the delightful BUCCANEER'S GIRL (1950). Can THE GAL WHO TOOK THE WEST (1949) be far behind?!

Kudos to Universal for finally making available these much-wanted films.

The Universal Vault Series was formerly exclusive to Amazon, but recently some Universal Vault titles have become available from the TCM Shop and from Deep Discount.