James Clavell
The set's central 13-part production documentary hails from the miniseries' previous DVD release but remains an extensive, insightful and, most importantly, candid overview of the production from start to finish, featuring a wide array of key players, chief among them author/producer James Clavell, director Jerry London, and actors Richard Chamberlain and Yoko Shimada.
The film begins following the British victory of the first Opium War and the seizure of Hong Kong. Although the island is largely uninhabited and the terrain unfriendly, it has a large port that both the British government and various trading companies believe will be useful for the import of merchandise to be traded on mainland China, a highly lucrative market.
People in a small German village in the last valley to remain untouched by the devastating Thirty Years' War try to exist in peace with a group of soldiers occupying the valley.
Based on the adventures of Jack Sheppard, the thief and jail-breaker who became a folk hero in 1720s London.
Idealistic engineer-trainee and his experiences in teaching a group of rambunctious white high school students from the slums of London's East End.
When Singapore surrendered to the Japanese in 1942, the Allied POWs, mostly British but including a few Americans, were incarcerated in Changi prison. There were no walls or barbed-wire fences for the simple reason that there was no place for the prisoners to escape to. Included among the prisoners is the American Cpl. King, a wheeler dealer who has managed to established a pretty good life for himself in the camp. While most of the prisoners are near starvation and have uniforms that are in tatters, King eats well and and has crisp clean clothes to wear every day. King soon forms a friendship with Lt. Peter Marlowe, an upper class British officer who is fascinated with King's élan approach to life.
The Satan Bug (1965) is a science fiction film in which a US government germ warfare lab has had an accident. The first theory is that one of the germs has been released and killed several scientists. The big fear is that a more virulent strain, named The Satan Bug because all life can be killed off by it should it escape, may have been stolen.
When Norwegian resistance leader Lieutenant Erik Bergman reports the location of a German V-2 rocket fuel plant, the Royal Air Force's 633 Squadron is assigned the mission to destroy it. The plant is in a seemingly-impregnable location beneath an overhanging cliff at the end of a long, narrow fjord lined with anti-aircraft guns. The only way to destroy the plant is by collapsing the cliff on top of it.
The Nazis, exasperated at the number of escapes from their prison camps by a relatively small number of Allied prisoners, relocate them to a high-security 'escape-proof' camp to sit out the remainder of the war. Undaunted, the prisoners plan one of the most ambitious escape attempts of World War II. Based on a true story.
California, 1870s. The cowboy Lincoln 'Linc' Bartlett finds out there's a slave auction of Chinese women in San Francisco and he intervenes and purchases the Chinese Kim Sung from the auction with the intent of setting her free. But it doesn't occur to Linc that setting her free isn't enough. Where is she going to go? Kim doesn't speak English and she's just going to be exploited by somebody else. Linc takes Kim home to serve as a housekeeper. Ma Bartlett Linc's mother, is not happy that a Chinese girl is living in her home, and even less happy when Kim and her son fall in love. Their affair also arouses the jealousy of Cheng Lu, a Chinese immigrant.
A group of nurses, doctors and nuns are taken hostage in Vietnam and sent up river to a castle hideout so they can cure an ailing war general.
Industrialist François Delambre is called late at night by his sister-in-law, Helene Delambre, who tells him that she has just killed her husband, André. Reluctant at first, she eventually explains to the police that André invented a matter transportation apparatus and, while experimenting on himself, a fly entered the chamber during the matter transference.
