When a British secret agent carrying confidential documents is abducted from a train traveling between New York City and Washington, DC, His Majesty’s government calls on Sherlock Holmes to travel across the Atlantic to locate the missing agent and retrieve the documents. Bringing along Dr. Watson, Holmes quickly unravels the mystery behind this disappearance while exposing a Fifth Column spy operation in the nation’s capital.
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One of the most interesting Christmas films of all time was “Christmas 1944,” a short film produced exclusively for release to U.S. military bases during World War II. The film is relatively simple in concept but is deeply impactful in its execution.
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A troop of Australian soldiers have to survive the elements, enemy advancements, and a nightmarish great white, after their ship sinks in the Timor Sea during their journey to the Pacific in World War 2, now on Shudder as of January 2026.
Available on Blu-ray and DVD from Well Go USA on 11/11/2025
During World War II, a British Wing Commander finds himself prisoner with an international group of men in a Japanese internment camp from which they must fight to escape.
BOOTLEG FILES 917: “Portrait: A Man Whose Name Was John” (1973 television film starring Raymond Burr).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It fell through the proverbial cracks.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: It deserves one.
I have a huge regret in writing this particular column – I wish I wrote it years earlier. Indeed, the film “Portrait: A Man Whose Name Was John” was on my to-do list for the longest time, but I only now got around to it. And while I am angry with my self-inflicted delay, I am overjoyed to report this film is one of the finest to be featured in The Bootleg Files series.
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Among Three Stooges fanatics, “They Stooge to Conga” is notorious for a few seconds of roughhouse involving a climbing spike and Moe’s head. But that’s just a one of too many brilliantly surreal moments that occur in this deliriously insane short film.
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The other day, I saw a post on Facebook asking for input on whether the 1944 Laurel and Hardy feature “The Big Noise” deserved to be considered among the worst films ever made. After all, many Laurel and Hardy aficionados label it as the duo’s on-screen nadir, and it was also cited in a book that allegedly ranked the all-time 50 worst films.
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