Audie Murphy Collection III Blu-ray Review

THE MOVIES

HELL BENT ON LEATHER (1960) — Clay Santell (AUDIE MURPHY) stop into town of Sutterville after having his horse stolen, only to be mistaken by the townsfolk for a murderous outlaw named Travers. Sutterville’s residents capture Santell and turn him over to crooked lawman Harry Deckett (STEPHEN MCNALLY), who, tired of chasing the real Travers, decides to execute the innocent man instead. But Santell pulls off a cunning escape and takes the lovely Janet Gifford (FELICIA FARR) hostage until he can prove his innocence.

POSSE FROM HELL (1961) — Four escapees from death row, Crip, Leo, Chunk and Hash, ride into the town of Paradise, enter the Rosebud Saloon and unleash Hell. Banner Cole (MURPHY) is a tough sheriff’s deputy tasked with forming a posse to take down the quartet of killers, who fled Paradise with a hostage.

SHOWDOWN (1963) — Chris Foster (MURPHY) and Bert Pickett (CHARLES DRAKE) manage to escape their iron shackles with a gang of villains headed by Lavalle (HAROLD J. STONE). But when they tumble in a scheme involving $12,000 in stolen bonds and an ex-girlfriend (KATHLEEN CROWLEY) of Bert’s, a final showdown explodes between Lavalle and the two men.

SPECIAL FEATURES – 2½/5

As with other Kino Lorber triple features, the three films are in their own Blu-ray cases and side-slide into an outer box.

• Hell Bent for Leather – Audio Commentary by Film Historian Toby Roan; Theatrical Trailer
• Posse from Hell – Audio Commentary by Author/Screenwriter C. Courtney Joyner and Film Historian Henry Parke; Theatrical Trailer
• Showdown — Theatrical Trailer

VIDEO – 4¼/5, AUDIO – 4½/5

Hell Bent for Leather is presented with a 2.35 widescreen aspect ratio while Posse from Hell and Showdown are both 1.85. None of these films received any sort of restoration work by either Universal or Kino Lorber and as such while they didn’t look fantastic, still were respectable, though I did think Hell Bent and Showdown had that splotchy kind of texture and the former especially I noticed some specs and dust marks, albeit nothing terribly distracting. Colors on Hell Bent and Posse are well balanced and have good vibrancy while the black levels and contrast with the whites on Showdown was very nice.

All three films include a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track and all are pretty similar, providing crisp and clear dialogue levels a decent amount of depth for the variety of shootouts that occur in these westerns. There were no obvious signs of hissing, pops or other signs of issues with the audio tracks.