Hold That Woman!

"Any movie with the title Hold That Woman that has Frances Gifford as its star is too provocative to ignore -- Gifford was one of the great, unheralded screen beauties of the early '40s -- and pairing her up with her then husband, brash happy-go-lucky Irishman James Dunn, is too tempting to skip. The Alpha DVD is decent enough, transferred off of what looks like an intermittently worn 16mm dupe; there's some noise on the soundtrack, but the sound is also mastered at a very high level. Actually, the image varies considerably from shot-to-shot, the close-ups in the first reel looking passable even if the medium shots look soft, and the final reel showing lots of wear and some damage. There are some thin black vertical lines, but nothing there, at least, to interfere terribly with the viewing experience -- it's all on a par with, say, the prints that Tempo Television (the Oklahoma-based low-rent cable channel, whose transponder space was bought out by NBC) used to broadcast. There are some technical flaws in the transfer, however, including frame jitter at around 13 minutes in. The movie itself looks pretty unpromising, despite its cast, until about 32 minutes in, when its plot finally finds a direction and gets interesting, and even a little bit clever. It's not great, or even that good, but it is entertaining, which is about as much as one can insist upon with a budget DVD. The unusual Alpha six chapters are adequate, and the disc opens on a simple, easy to use menu."