Is it me, or do these box set collections coming out every month (seemingly) from Warner Bros. just keep getting better and better? Hot on the heels of the magnificent Tennessee Williams Collection comes the five-film, seven-disc Bette Davis Collection Vol. 2. A momentous set, the package includes two unquestioned highlights, the two disc remastered special edition of Robert Aldrich's 1962 suspenseful black comedy What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and the first-ever home video release of 1943's Old Acquaintance costarring longtime Davis nemesis Miriam Hopkins.

The other titles in the set include a newly remastered and restored edition of perennial favorite Jezebel (1938), the wondrous madcap comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942) and the gritty inspired-by-a-true-story potboiler Marked Woman (1937), the latter two making their DVD debut. While all are available separately, exclusive to the set is the exquisite 2005 Turner Classic Movie (TCM) documentary "Stardust: The Bette Davis Story" narrated by Susan Sarandon and directed by Emmy-winning documentarian Peter Jones.

By and larger, it probably isn't too much of a stretch to assume these films look sharper and more beautiful now than they did at the time of their original release. While both Marked Woman and Old Acquaintance show noticeable wear and tear, Warner has still done an excellent job cleaning them up and making each more than presentable for this package. Each film comes with the usual smorgasbord of extras typical of the studio including commentary tracks, TCM documentaries, shorts, trailers and vintage Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies cartoons.

A star with few equals, fans of Davis will want to race out and pick up this collection almost immediately. Box sets rarely get better than this one, and without a single dog in the entire collection grabbing up Vol. 2 is about as easy a decision as their possibly ever could be. For those in need of more convincing, however, please feel free to read on. For everyone else, what the heck are you waiting for? Grab your credit card and run over to your favorite entertainment super store before their copies of The Bette Davis Collection Vol. 2 walk out the door without you.

Marked Woman (1937)
In one of the great battles between movie star and movie studio in Hollywood history, Bette Davis sued Warner Bros. in an effort to gain greater control of the material she was contracted to appear in. Davis lost the battle but in doing so still won the war, Jack Warner realizing it was in his best interest to keep his most popular (and arguably most talented) female star happy.

The first step towards that happiness was Marked Woman, a ripped from the headlines gangster picture the studio was known for during the 1930's. The difference? In a genre dominated by men here was one starring a woman, Davis headlining a courtroom thriller about a troupe of high-priced prostitutes bringing down the cold-blooded mobster who runs their lives. Almost 70 years old, this is still a shockingly effective picture anchored by the actress' powerfully focused performance.

Directed like a Movietone News reel by Lloyd Bacon (Knute Rockne All American) and inspired by the events surrounding the real-life downfall of Lucky Luciano, Marked Woman proved to be a glorious return to the screen for Davis and a precursor of the brilliant performances to come. It also was an early turning point for costar Humphrey Bogart (with whom Davis would work six times), the studio casting him in a rare '30's good-guy role as a crusading district attorney. It all culminated in a moment of shocking ultra-violence that's still pretty wicked even by today's standards, and in the end it is easy to see why noted producer Dick Wolf has singled this out as one of the templates for NBC's "Law and Order."

Presented in black and white and in its original Full Frame (1.33:1), Marked Woman comes to DVD showing only a fraction of the wear and tear you'd expect from a film about to enter its seventh decade. The special features include a strong TCM documentary and the movie's theatrical trailer. There are also two deliriously entertaining shorts from directors Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng, Porky's Hero Agency and She Was an Acrobats Daughter.

Jezebel (1938)
There may be no redder dresses in film history than the one worn by heroine Julie Marsden (Davis) in the William Wyler (Ben-Hur) classic Jezebel. Julie wears the dress to a Southern ball where white isn't so much expected as it is required (especially for single woman), trying to express her fierce individuality as well as goad her young investment banker fiancé Pres Dillard (Henry Fonda) into jealousy. The plan backfires, and the sight of Pres leading Julie through a parting sea of white is one of the most audaciously powerful ever filmed, so searing you can actually feel the vibrant red of the dress burn brightly right through the screen.

What's so masterful here, of course, is that the picture was filmed in black and white, so that unforgettable red isn't really even red at all. But this is the film's power, it genius, Wyler crafting an unmistakably rigid Southern milieu and then plants Dame Davis is all her tart-tongued glory right smack dab in the center of it. It is no wonder, then, that the actress won her second Academy Award for her performance. This is as complex and multifaceted a portrayal as Davis has ever given, and with the director cementing the picture right on top of her shoulders to say she delivers the goods is probably as close to an understatement as I'll likely get.

This new DVD is a marked improvement from the original release, the beautiful Full Frame (1.33:1) B&W transfer with restored audio first rate. The cinematography, sets and costumes literally pop off the screen, no more so than Wyler's recreation of a brutal yellow fever epidemic that rips New Orleans in two and forces Julie to reevaluate the choices she's made. Made one year before Gone with the Wind, Jezebel might just be an even greater examination of Southern decadence and fortitude at the time before the Civil War than the one depicted in that other landmark classic. At the very least, the pair would make a fascinating double bill.

The special features include two shorts, the Melody Masters entry "Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra" and the Tex Avary cartoon classic "The Mice Will Play." There is a commentary track by film historian Jeannine Basinger, and while a few of the scholar's tidbits are fairly interesting the majority of these can be found in the ten minute TCM featurette also included on the disc. The special features are rounded out with the movie's original theatrical trailer.

The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)
In one of her few comedies (and even fewer ensembles), Davis takes a backseat to Monty Woolley, Ann Sheridan and Reginald Gardiner in this absolutely delightful adaptation of the George S. Kaufman/Moss Hart Broadway smash. The Man Who Came to Dinner is situational farce at its absolute finest, the type of comedy you could watch twenty times and still not catch all of the many layered (and barb wired) witticisms. When they say they don't make them like they used to, this is one of those mysterious 'them' they're always talking about.

The premise is simple. Famed author and critic Sheridan Whiteside (Woolley) injures himself during a lecture tour in Ohio and ends up becoming stuck inside the home of a conservative bourgeois couple (Billie Burke and Grant Mitchell) ill-prepared for his sharp mind, imperious temper and acid tongue. Davis is the soothing personal assistant trying to maintain order, falling in love with a budding playwright (Richard Travis) in the process. Sheridan is the high-strung Broadway star Whiteside lures to Ohio to steal him away from her, while Gardiner is a visiting British writer with more than a passing resemblance to real life celebrity Noel Coward. Jimmy Durante completes the cast with a high-powered cameo that tickles the proverbial funny bone.

The Man Who Came to Dinner is lightening fast and razor sharp. The notoriously front-and-center Davis lets her costars shine while she delivers assuredly relaxed and confidently appealing support. The entire cast proves to be a remarkably well-oiled unit, both Woolley and Sheridan delivering what may be career-defining portrayals in their unabashedly larger-than-life characters. While some of the gags and illusions to famous folks of the time can't help but feel more than a bit out of date, the comedy is still a prime example of how to do this sort of thing right, director William Keighley (Each Dawn I Die) ordering up laughs just as easily as you and I would pick up the phone and order a pizza.

If any piece of this set deserved an audio commentary from a film historian it is this one, if only to point out all the pop culture references lost in a sea of 60-plus years. Unfortunately, there is no commentary, viewers having to settle for the requisite TCM featurette with the usual assortment of talking heads instead. While a good one, I still couldn't help but wish the studio had taken the time to supply viewers with a little bit more, this satire deserving of deeper examinations than those presented here.

The rest of the special features include a quite bizarre short entitled "So You Think You Need Glasses" and the Warner Bros. musical piece called "Six Hits and Miss. Rounding" things out is the picture's original theatrical trailer. The Man Who Came to Dinner is presented in a solid B&W transfer showcasing the film in its original Full Frame (1.33:1) glory.

Old Acquaintance (1943)
Next to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Old Acquaintance might be the most hotly anticipated title in this collection. Why? While not the landmark Jezebel is or a timeless classic like The Man Who Came to Dinner, up until now this Vincent Sherman (Mr. Skeffington) melodrama, the quintessential "Woman's Picture," has never been available on home video in any form whatsoever.

Finally making its debut, let me be the first to say this movie has been well worth the wait. This weepy 20-year soap opera of two writer friends (Davis and Miriam Hopkins) is old-school filmmaking at its very best. The stars may have loathed one another off screen, but on it they make a strikingly dynamic pair. The duo plays off one another so well you'd almost think they'd been doing it all their lives.

Davis takes the less glamorous part and runs with it, anchoring the drama with her two-fisted portrayal. Hopkins goes for the glitz and it shows, and while she's very good it is still readily apparent the actress is coming perilously close to going over the top all in an effort to upstage her rival. Yet, together they are borderline genius, a last scene sharing a midnight drink so stirring I think I went through five boxes of Kleenex just to make it to the end of a four minute scene.

Restored from its original nitrate elements, it is easy to see why it has taken Old Acquaintance so long to make its debut. Even on DVD the melodrama is showing its age, and while this sterling B&W Full Frame (1.33:1) presentation looks as good as it probably ever could, there are more than a few nicks and scratches throughout showcasing just how bad a shape the original negative must be in.

As for the extras, if a short on whether or not you needed glasses was strange, what about one about a traveling blacksmith shoeing the horses of noted (and not so noted) celebrities? Sounds a bit odd, yes, but that's still exactly what Stars on Horseback is about, and it is the type of short that makes you wonder if having to listen to CNN report on baby Brangelina is really that bad after all. Thankfully, there's a great TCM featurette and vintage Chuck Jones cartoon "Fin 'n' Catty" rounding things out, and it definitely doesn't hurt a lick that the movie itself is certified winner worthy of watching again and again all on its lonesome.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
She may have been daddy's little girl as a child, but as an adult Baby Jane Hudson (Davis) is an absolute terror! Don't believe me; just ask her sister, Blanche (Joan Crawford). Just as her own Hollywood career was blooming, Jane's was on the verge of doing a disappearing act, and the former blonde haired superstar just couldn't accept that fact. But when Blanche's career is cut short by a mysterious accident, one sister finds she has complete control over the other, and as they both enter their senior years the former can't wait to finally get out from under the other's thumb.

But Jane doesn't want her sister to get away. She needs to be the superstar and her sister's growing independence, even though she's confined to a wheelchair, is really starting to tick her off. What to do? Fire the maid? Try to resurrect her own career? Cut off Blanche's access to the outside world? How about a little homicide?

Everything is on the table for the mentally unhinged Jane, Blanche apparently completely powerless to stop her. Or is she? The stranger and more surreal things get, the more the former actress' world seems to fall apart, the more the older sister gets up the nerve to finally take control and break free from her domineering sibling. But Blanche is running out of time, because the crazier Jane gets the more things spiral out of control, and if she waits too much longer to make her move the only one she's going to end up making is from the mortuary slab to the grave bearing her popular name.

The grand dames of Hollywood film Davis and Crawford went at each other jugular to jugular, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? a brief return to greatness for both women at the tail end of legendary careers that had already been certified as standing the test of time when this was released. According to lore, neither woman apparently could stand the other, Davis so certain she was the better of the two actresses she would spend long stretches of the shoot not even acknowledging her costar.

Of course, as much as I like Crawford it isn't like Davis was wrong in that assessment. Considering that she received her tenth Academy Award nomination for the film, a great portion of the Hollywood community though so, too. Nonetheless, director Robert Aldrich's (The Dirty Dozen) surreal macabre classic is a scarily unsettling hoot from start to finish, a frantic mindbender that provokes nearly as many laughs as it does scares. John Carpenter (Halloween), Wes Craven (Red Eye), Danny Boyle (28 Days Later), M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) and Christopher Nolan (Memento) could all be accused of cribbing (if only a wee bit) from Aldrich's playbook, and let me tell you the world is definitely all the better because of it.

This two disc special edition is every bit as exemplary as we've come to expect from Warner Bros. Disc one features a remastered and restored Widescreen (1.85:1) version of the film that looks sensational. There is also an audio commentary from two people who know good camp better than almost anyone, Psycho Beach Party filmmaker Charles Busch and noted Drag celebrity John Epperson aka Lypsinka.

What's remarkable isn't how much fun these two are having delivering their commentary but rather how much they actually know about the making of the picture. They're knowledge isn't just confined to the stars but also to the ins and outs of what went in to making sure this movie came to fruition. Sure they're silly, loud and more than a bit insane at times, but that's only to be expected. Through it all, however, they actually deliver details and tidbits that are actually interesting, making their commentary an unexpected education.

The second disc is a documentary banquet, the best of which is All About Bette, a 1994 feature narrated by Jodie Foster. While not as all-encompassing as "Stardust", the other Davis doc included in the set as a separate disc, it is still astonishingly well-produced, informative and not too mention entertaining, and as a lead-in to the rest of the special features it's definitely a movie not too be missed. The rest of the features include an in-depth look at the two stars Bette and Joan: Blind Ambition, a brief bit on Davis' costar Crawford, a great vintage featurette on the making of the picture and a splendid excerpt from The Andy Williams Show featuring Davis.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is every bit as good as advertised and Warner Bros. has gone out of their way to finally give this classic entertainment its DVD due. Granted, if taken in the context of the entire set of five films it can't help but feel a bit out of place, the almost two decades between this and Old Acquaintance a bit of a stretch for any set supposedly encompassing a snippet of a particular actor's career. But this does not change the fact that this is an excellent disc, one of the best to hit home video so far this year, and whether purchased as part of this phenomenal set or all on its lonesome fans of great cinema are virtually guaranteed to be satisfied.