Murder, She Wrote: The Complete Series (1984-1996, Universal, 62 Blu-rays, TV-PG, 215 hours 32 min.). Angela Lansbury, who played amateur sleuth and mystery book writer Jessica Fletcher in this engaging series, was nominated for the Best Actress in a Drama Emmy Award 12 straight years. She also was nominated for 10 Golden Globes, winning four for the role. This new Blu-ray set contains remastered versions of all 264 episodes and the four TV movies, plus six bonus features – and takes up half the shelf space of the individual DVD seasons.

The two Emmy Awards it did win were for the music underscore for the two-part pilot, “The Murder of Sherlock Holmes” and for costume design for season two’s “Widow, Weep for Me.”

Lansbury’s (“The Manchurian Candidate,” “Death on the Nile”) Fletcher is a widow living in the small Maine fishing town of Cabot Cove, a fictional town located somewhere in the Midcoast, as episode three has Monhegan Island only a brief sail away.

The pilot episode has Fletcher’s nephew Grady (Michael Horton in 12 episodes), through a woman he likes, get Fletcher’s first novel to the publisher of Coventry House (Arthur Hill as Preston Giles), who buys the book, signs Fletcher to a contract and brings her to New York City for a publicity tour. Yes, very little of the first two episodes takes place in Maine, although there is a smart introduction of Fletcher and two friends watching the first-half of a play rehearsal and Fletcher afterwards explaining to the director the “tells” to who the show’s murderer is.

The publicity tour is fun as it skewers TV and radio promotional appearances. I also like how, after the murder outside Giles’ costume party – come as your favorite fictional character, Fletcher choses to be Cinderella’s fairy godmother – when Fletcher is accosted by two street thugs while following a murder suspect, it is a young African-American man (Russell Curry) who comes to her rescue. Fletcher is very into solving the case, as Grady becomes the prime suspect. Guest stars in the episode include Bert Convy as pianist Peter Brill, Brian Keith and Anne Francis as Caleb and Louise McCallum, and Ned Beatty as Police Chief Roy Gunderson.

By episode three, Fletcher is back in Cabot Cove and solving the murder of the man (Howard Duff as Stephen Earl) who showed up removing weeds from her yard, after disappearing from his yacht and four daughters two days earlier. The episode introduces Tom Bosley as Sheriff Amos Tupper, a character who appears in 19 episodes. During the series, Fletcher is sometimes assisted by her friend Dr. Seth Hazlitt (William Windom, appeared in 53 episodes).

Other top guest stars through the years include George Clooney, Shirley Jones, Courtney Cox, Tom Selleck, Dorothy Lamour, Leslie Nielsen, Mickey Rooney, John Amos (5 episodes), Martin Milner (5 episodes), Wayne Rodgers (5 episodes), Theodore Bikel (4 episodes), Andrew Pine (4 episodes), Gary Lockwood (4 episodes) and Cyd Charisse.

The extras include three pieces with interviews with Lansbury, the cast and crew, covering the show’s origin and the perils of success, a “Great ‘80s Flashback,” a Sleuth Channel countdown of the top sleuths in television and film, and the crossover episode with “Magnum, P.I.” Grade: series 3.75 stars; extras 2.5 stars

Rating guide: 5 stars = classic; 4 stars = excellent; 3 stars = good; 2 stars = fair; dog = skip it

Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League (Japan, DC/Warner Bros., 4K Ultra HD, PG-13, 89 min.). This is a sequel to 2018’s “Batman Ninja” (Japan, DC/Warner Bros., 4K Ultra HD, PG-13, 85 min.), which had Batman and friends sent back to feudal Japan.

The previous film tale begins on a rainy night at Arkham Asylum, where Batman and Catwoman are confronting Gorilla Grodd and his Quake Engine, a time displacement teleportation machine. Catwoman inadvertently touches a gear on the Engine, causing Batman and her to be sent back 600 years to Japan during the Sengoku period. Batman lands in the middle of a village where he is attacked by a cadre of The Joker's henchmen who have lances. Batman then learns that several of his arch-villains are occupying provinces throughout the country, including Penguin, Two-Face, Poison Ivy, Deathstroke and Bane (now a sumo wrestler). Lord Joker is the ringleader, with Harley Quinn and he assuming imperial refuge in Arkham Castle. Along with Catwoman/Selena Kyle, Bruce Wayne's butler, Alfred, has made the time trip, plus the Batmobile has magically surfaced in the region. While Batman lacks many of his trusty gadgets, he is joined by a group of loyal ninjas as well as Robin, Red Robin and Red Hood.

In the sequel, it is raining jet-pack Yakuza fighters in Gotham, as Grodd’s Quake Engine has removed Japan from Earth and a feudal version is now floating above Gotham. Also, the Justice League has disappeared. While Nightwing, Red Robin and Red Hood fight the Yakuza invasion, Batman and Robin ascend to floating Japan, where the Hagane Family, led by Ra’s al Ghul, rules Tokyo. Ra’s al Ghul has versions of the Justic League allied with him, including Zeshika, the Emerald Ray (a version of Green Lantern), Asha, the Aqua Dragon (a version of Aquaman), Bari, the Fleet of Foot (a version of The Flash) and Kuraku, the Man of Steel (a version of Superman).

On this Japan, Batman and Robin have a new ally in Daiana (a version of Wonder Woman), who also acts to protect Harley Quinn, who seems to have switched sides. Towards the climax, Kuraku challenges Batman to a duel, not aware that Batman has kryptonite set up to use as a weapon. It all is slightly confusing, but looks wonderful as the Japanese animators have combined animation styles.

Extras include a look at designing the Japanized Justice League with character designer Takashi Okazaki (7:22); and a look at the action choreography with co-directors Jumpei Mizusaki and Shinji Takagi, plus writer Kazuki Nakashima. With the main film dubbed into English, these extras are the only way to hear a little of the Japanese voice cast. Grade: Batman Ninja 3 stars; Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League 3.5 stars; extras 2.5 stars

The Rapacious Jailbreaker (Japan, 1974, Radiance, Blu-ray, NR, 97 min.). Based on the real exploits of a seven-time prison escapee, this film by Sadao Nakajima (“Jeans Blue: No Future,” “The Seburi Story”) tells the tale of a man who repeatedly escapes just because it seems like fun. Five escapes take place in the simple, but cleverly plotted film, which also sheds light on the Japanese penal system back in the 1970s, including group baths and doctor examinations in which the stethoscope does not even touch the prisoners’ chests. The main character is Masayuk Ueda, played by Hiroki Matsukata (“13 Assassins.” “The Shotgun Assassins”), who does a wonderful job in a physically-demanding role.

The story opens with Ueda killing a couple, after the man tried to steal Ueda’s morphine and kill him. When caught and convicted, Ueda is sentenced to 20 years. By the time of his final incarceration, that sentence is up to 41 years and seven months, and covers a couple of in-prison murders.

During his first stint, Ueda gets in a couple of fights and is beaten by guards. His initial escape plan is postponed when a group of prisoners in another cell escape. He manages to get locked alone in a structure near the prison wall by deliberately starting a fight. Then he digs his way out, combines some wood and climbs over the wall. In a bit of humor, Ueda gets his hips stuck while trying to leave through the hole he dug. He then visits his wife for sex, food and money.

After being recaptured, Ueda asks for fellow prisoner Suenaga (Tatsuo Umemiya of “Abashiri bangaichi: Fubuki no toso”) to be moved into his cell. Preparing for the next escape, the prisoners have cigarettes – used as money inside and for bribes – smuggled in via a fake retrieved baseball, as their baseball supposedly had been batted over the wall. The escape is via a window and involves three inmates, one of whom is shortly thereafter run over by a truck of American GIs. This time, Ueda goes to his younger sister’s – he has not seen her in 16 years – where she is helping some Koreans illegally cut up cattle to sell the meat.

The next three escapes involve running from a courthouse and running from police. The film’s ending leaves Ueda’s fate uncertain.

The film comes with audio commentary by Nathan Stuart; a visual essay on the director’s career by Tom Mes (16:58); and a 24-page illustrated booklet with an essay by Earl Jackson on Japanese prison films and a 1974 review of the film by Masaharu Saito. Grade: film 3.5 stars; extras 2.75 stars

Clark Gable 4-Film Collection, including San Francisco, Wife vs. Secretary, Idiot’s Delight and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935, 1936, 1939, Warner Archive Collection, 4 Blu-rays, NR, 482 min.). In these four MGM classics, Clark Gable portrays mutineer Fletcher Christian in “Mutiny on the Bounty,” romances Jeanette MacDonald in the earthquake classic “San Francisco,” shows off his comedic charm with Myrna Loy and Jean Harlow in “Wide vs. Secretary,” and does some singing and dancing opposite Norma Shearer in the adaptation of Robert Sherwood's Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Idiot’s Delight.” The films are reviewed individually.

“San Francisco” (1936, 115 min.). The 1906 earthquake itself takes up less than three minutes of screen time in this black-and-white classic that pairs Clark Gable and Jeanette MacDonald as on-and-off-again lovers, but along with its one devasting aftershock and the resulting fires that level most of the city, it makes “San Francisco” one of the most iconic disaster films in history. It also is a love story between a rakish Barbary Coast kingpin and nightclub owner (Gable as Blackie Norton) and the new songbird in town (MacDonald as Mary Blake), who is content to sing in Blackie’s nightclub, but has aspirations of a career in opera. Thus, the film also has a lot of music in it – arguably too much music, as it takes a long time to get to the destruction.

Soprano MacDonald, of course, is known for her pairing with Nelson Eddy in eight films. Here, she sings “San Francisco,” later adapted as one of the city’s two official songs; “Would You,” later sung by Debbie Reynolds in “Singin’ in the Rain”; “The Holy City”; and excerpts from Charles Gounod’s “Faust” and Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata.” MacDonald was coming off appearing in “The Merry Widow” and “Naughty Marietta,” her first film with Eddy.

Gable had made “Mutiny on the Bounty” and “Call of the Wild” the previous year, but it would be three more years before he made “Gone with the Wind,” cementing his legacy in film. Their co-star was Spencer Tracy, who was nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award, his first of nine Oscar nominations, for his role as Father Tim Mullin, Blackie’s childhood friend whom Blackie still secretly helps by such acts as donating a new organ for his church. Gable and Tracy would later be paired in “Test Pilot” (1938) and “Boom Town” (1940). Tracy won the Best Actor Oscar the next two years for his work in “Captains Courageous” and “Boys Town.”

With director W.S. Van Dyke noted for his one-take approach, Tracy slipped in some ad-libs, most notably: “That Rooney kid skipped Mass again.” He was referencing actor Mickey Rooney. Ironically, two years later in “Boys Town,” Tracy again played a priest, one tasked with reforming a boy played by Rooney.

The film won its Academy Award for Best Sound Recording (Douglas Shearer). Its other Oscar nominations were for Best Director (Van Dyke, who directed 3 “Thin Man” films, “Marie Antoinette,” “Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever”), Outstanding Production, Best Original Story (Robert Hopkins) and Best Assistant Director (Joseph M. Newman).

At the time, the film’s special effects were exceptional. Entire sets were built on hydraulic lifts and shakers, which were then raised and rocked violently. The aftershock splits a street and most of the city becomes a conflagration, forcing the fire department, which had run out of water, and others to dynamite buildings to create breaches the flames could not cross. There was no Oscar for special effects at the time.

The film had a political element as well as Blackie is urged to, and indeed does, run for Supervisor, so that he can help pass fire code laws, as most of the buildings on the Barbary Coast were owned by rich people who did not live there. Many lived on Nob Hill among the wealthy. That is where Jack Burley (Jack Holt of “Cat People,” “My Pal Trigger”), the impresario of the Tivoli Opera, lives with his mother (Jessie Ralph of “David Copperfield,” “Camille,” “Captain Blood” as Mrs. Maisie Burley). During one of the periods Blackie and Mary were not dating, she agrees to marry Burley.

The extras include a very good TNT look at Gable’s life and career, “Clark Gable: Tall, Dark & Handsome,” hosted by actor Liam Neeson from the ranch house Gable called home for 21 years (1996; 46:30). It includes interviews with his daughter Judy, who only met Gable once when she was 15, and his son John, who was born six months after Gable died of a heart attack. Other extras include a Happy Harmonies cartoon, “Bottles” (10:16); two James A. FitzPatrick featurettes on San Francisco, one centering on recreating a Cavalcade of Western expansion and the other on the artwork and lights of the 1939 Golden Gate Exposition on man-made Treasure Island (8:55 and 8:06); and an alternate ending that shows a dissolve to the then-current San Francisco skyline (37 secs.). Grade: film 3.5 stars; extras 3.25 stars

“Wife vs. Secretary” (1936, 87 min.). In this classic romantic comedy from director Clarence Brown (“Anna Karenina,” “The Human Comedy,” “Anna Christie”), the three leads of the suspected love triangle are outstanding. Clark Gable (“Gone with the Wind”) has never been bubblier, all fun and games as he plays Van Stanhope, owner of a publishing empire and married to Linda (Myrna Loy of “The Thin Man” series). Van’s extremely able, and very pretty, secretary is Whitey Wilson (Jean Harlow of “Red Dust,” “Dinner at Eight”). Van is universally called “VS” by his employees and friends, which creates a wonderful pun in the film’s title.

Van is planning to move into the 5-cent newspaper business by buying the National Weekly on the sly. Because a competitor may try to thwart his maneuver, Van and Whitey work in secret on the project, including a hurried meeting during Van and Linda’s third anniversary party and a trip to Havana to seal the deal with J.D. Underwood (George Barbier of “The Man Who Came to Dinner”).

Trouble begins when Van’s mother Mimi (May Robson of the 1937 “A Star Is Born,” “Bringing Up Baby”) warns Linda that Whitey is too good-looking to be around her husband and she should make Van get rid of her. Soon other situations feed this first spark of jealousy, leading to an all-out breakdown of the marriage. The film has plenty of wit, wonderful, heartfelt performances and even an ice-skating scene.

James Stewart, then less than two years into his career, plays Whitey’s boyfriend Dave. One could already tell he was going to become a star, with his winning personality.

The film was the fifth of six collaborations between Gable and Harlow and the fourth of seven between Gable and Loy.

The extra is the Oscar-winning crime drama “The Public Pays,” about racketeering protection schemes (specifically, the Creamery Betterment Assn.) as part of the “A Crime Does Not Pay” series (18:20). Grade: film 3.5 stars; extra 2 stars

“Idiot’s Delight” (1939, 107 min.). Here, again Clark Gable plays a Van, this time Harry Van, a vaudeville performer who struggles for a decade to find steady work after serving in World War I. While doing a mindreading act with Madame Zuleika (Laura Hope Crews of “Camille,” “Gone with the Wind”), one night blind-folded Zuleika is too drunk to guess the held item and Irene (Norma Shearer of “The Divorcee”), an acrobat who hangs by her mouth in another act, too-loudly tries to tell Zuleika the item, arousing the audience’s anger.

Backstage, Irene enters Van’s dressing room and they go to dinner, during which Irene says she wants to learn the codes and be part of Van’s act. However, they part ways, then the Great Depression hits and suddenly it is 10 years later and Van is touring Europe with his six dancing Les Blondes girls. With the start of World War II imminent, the frontier is closed, preventing them from crossing into Switzerland for their next gig.

Despite a lack of funds, they have to stay at a mostly-deserted Alpine hotel, where one of the workers is an American, Quillery (Burgess Meredith of “Clash of the Titans,” the “Rocky” films). Much to Van’s surprise – and a little doubt as her hair color is now blonde – Irene shows up as the presumed girlfriend of arms manufacturer Achille Weber (Edward Arnold of “Diamond Jim,” “You Can’t Take It with You,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”). Irene is acting very Russian and high class, but some of her stories are familiar to Van.

The film, and the play it is based on, very much has the intent of warning about a possible next global war, particularly once the story reaches the hotel, which is next to a military airfield and becomes the subject of a destructive retaliatory raid in the final minutes. Several characters make speeches against the pending war and the arms merchants who benefit from war, particularly Quillery, who is said to have been shot by soldiers offscreen.

The film belongs to Shearer, who humorously overplays being Russian. Gable gets to sing “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” Extras include an alternate ending used in the U.S. and Canada, which is without the hymn (3:23); and two cartoons, Merrie Melodies’ “The Good Egg” (7:36) and Looney Tunes’ “It’s an Ill Wind” with Porky Pig (7:29). Grade: film 3 stars; extras 1.5 stars

“Mutiny on the Bounty” (1935, 132 min.). In this Best Picture Oscar winner, Clark Gable plays head mutineer Fletcher Christian and earned himself an Oscar nomination. Other acting Oscar nominations went to Charles Laughton (“Spartacus,” “Witness for the Prosecution”) for playing Capt. Bligh and to Franchot Tone (“Dangerous,” “I Love Trouble”) for playing midshipman Roger Byam, a supporter of Christian but a non-mutineer, who has a big courtroom scene. The other Oscar nomination went to director Frank Lloyd.

In the classic story, first mate Christian leads a revolt against his sadistic commander, Capt. Bligh, in this seafaring adventure, based on the real-life 1789 mutiny. Bligh and those loyal to him were set adrift, but survived, while Christian took the HMS Bounty from Tahiti to uninhabited Pitcairn Island, with a total of 28 surviving, including six sailors’ native wives.

The film begins with a press gang storming a British pub to forcibly conscript the male patrons into the Royal Navy and the crew of the Bounty, as it is about to set sail to Tahiti to gather breadfruit trees for transplanting to the West Indies as cheap food for slaves. The Bounty is under the command of Bligh, a squat, sad, diminutive man with a Napoleon complex. He is a cruel disciplinarian who commands respect only through fear.

During the voyage, Bligh, even for the smallest offences, starves his men, beats them – including a dead man once -- and even resorts to keelhauling, which is when a rope is tied to a sailor, who then is tossed overboard and dragged under the boat from one side to the other. Either the barnacles on the hull rip the victim to shreds or the sailor drowns. Disgusted, Christian tries to stand up for the men, until Bligh is about to arrest or flog him.

The extras are a 1930s look at Pitcairn Island, which then had 52 families 150 years after Christian landed the Bounty there (9:39); and a Hearst newsreel of the film winning the Oscar for Best Picture (1 min.). Grade: film 4 stars; extras 1.5 stars

Looney Tunes Collector’s Vault Volume 1 (1930-1969, Warner Archive Collection, 2 Blu-rays, NR, 356 min.). The first disc in this remastered collection contains 25 cartoons making their home video debut, many directed by Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Ben Hardaway and Cal Dalton. The second disc contains 25 fan favorites, including Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Foghorn Leghorn, Tweety and the first appearances of Speedy Gonzales (1953), Pepe Le Pew (1945) and Daffy Duck (1937).

Disc one contains: Bars & Stripes Forever" (1939), "Beauty & the Beast" (1934), "A Day at the Zoo" (1939), "Dixie Fryer" (1960), "Double or Mutton" (1955), "Each Dawn I Crow" (1949), "Easy Peckin's" (1953), "Feather Dusted" (1955), "A Fox in a Fix" (1951), "Good Night Elmer" (1940), "The Goofy Gophers" (1947), "I'd Love to Take Orders from You" (1936), "A Kiddie's Kitty" (1955), "Let It Be Me" (1936), "Of Fox and Hounds" (1940), "Quackodile Tears" (1962), "Ready, Woolen & Able" (1960), "Robin Hood Makes Good" (1939), "The Squawkin' Hawk" (1942), "Terrier-Stricken" (1952), "Tweet & Lovely" (1959), "Tweety's Circus" (1955), "Two's a Crowd" (1950), "Wild About Hurry" (1959), and "Zip 'n Snort" (1961).

Disc two contains: ”Ain't She Tweet" (1952), "Banty Raids" (1963), "Birth of a Notion" (1947), "Bye, Bye Bluebeard" (1949), "Cat-Tails for Two" (1953), "Daffy Dilly" (1948), "Daffy Duck & Egghead" (1938), "Gee Whiz-z-z-z-z-z-z" (1956), "Gonzales' Tamales" (1957), "Hare Conditioned" (1945), "Hare Trigger" (1945), "Hare Trimmed" (1953), "Horton Hatches the Egg" (1942), "Little Boy Boo" (1954), "Much Ado About Nutting" (1953), "Odor-able Kitty" (1945), "Past Perfumance" (1955), "Porky's Duck Hunt" (1937), "Rabbit Punch" (1948), "Red Riding Hoodwinked" ('55), "Rhapsody Rabbit" (1946), "Snow Business" (1953), "Tom Turk & Daffy" (1944), "Two Crows from Tacos" (1956), and "Zoom & Bored" (1957). Grade: collection 4 stars

Sour Party (2023, Anchor Bay, Blu-ray, NR, 84 min.). Granted humor is subjective, but the so-called humor in this film left me with a sour taste, like when the two protagonists – Samantha Westervelt as Gwen and Amanda Drexton as James (don’t you hate it when female characters have male names; in this case it is her last name it turns out) – post a video of themselves barely dressed and farting colored smoke on Kreep Peepz online. Heaven help us if there actually is such a site. Then, there also is the cult meeting – led by Corey Feldman (“The Lost Boys”) as Leslie, no less – that ends with all the members drinking poison.

James’ lifelong plan is to marry actor Nicolas Cage (whose name, by the way, is misspelled Nicholas throughout the film’s subtitles). She even has a bust of him in the rear of her station wagon. Gwen suddenly needs $150 to buy the last remaining present on her sister’s baby shower registry and only hours to collect the money from old debts.

Spoiler alert to show how stupid the film, directed by Amanda Drexton and Michael A. Drexton, who also co-wrote with Westervelt, is: After they spend most of the film trying to raise the money and Gwen actually gets $11,000 in back pay and then learns James has some $70,000 in credit card debt, Gwen throws the money into the ocean instead of giving it to James.

The sole extra is an audio commentary by both Drextons, Westervelt and cinematographer Steven Moreno. Grade: film 1.5 stars; extra 2 stars