(Enlarge) "Collector's Choice: The Samuel Fuller Collection" from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment brings seven distinctive early films by writer-director Fuller to DVD.

A big-city publisher comes to his senses and stuns editors with the announcement that their newspaper will no longer be in the business of "twisting" the news to suit their agenda. The publisher admits he had "great plans for this country," but with America's enemies on the march he perceives a more critical need for a free press; for a democracy to survive, he says, the citizenry needs to know the whole truth.

No sooner does he vow "to make an honest newspaper of the Gazette again," however, he is shot and killed by nefarious associates who do not want to lose this propaganda outlet.

Wow! That's just the opening of the 1943 movie "Power of the Press," one of seven vintage films making their DVD debuts in "The Collector's Choice: Samuel Fuller Collection" (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, not rated, $79.95 suggested retail).

Even in that brief summary of one film's set-up you can catch the many sides of writer-director Sam Fuller: Philosopher and warrior, moralist and Everyman, he was fully engaged with social issues that still matter to people of honor today.

His tales sought to illuminate the struggle between reformer and realist. As a one-time journalist himself, he knew that humankind was rife with corruption and, in most cases, beyond the reach of redemption.

Most of the titles in the new DVD set trace from Fuller's beginnings in Hollywood as a contract screenwriter. There's only a hint of the maverick director to come in such later raw, dramatic classics as "Shock Corridor," "Pickup on South Street," "Fixed Bayonets" and "The Big Red One" -- the latter two based on Fuller's own experiences as a foot soldier in World War II.

The films premiering here were made for Columbia Pictures, usually as the bottom half of a double-bill: They are modestly budgeted programers, often with no star power. At their film noir best, though -- as in 1952's "Scandal Sheet" and 1961's "Underworld U.S.A." -- the story was the star.

In one of Fuller's first writing credits, 1937's "It Happened in Hollywood," a silent movie "hero on horseback" (Richard Dix) finds his career at an impasse when Westerns are no longer fashionable and the only movie work open to him glorifies bankrobbers and killers. Will he suck it up and disillusion his young fans?

"Shockproof," a film noir directed by Douglas Sirk in 1949, stars Cornel Wilde as a parole officer whose dedication to the rule of law is slowly eroded by his love for a beautiful ex-con.

In 1959's "The Crimson Kimono," the investigation into the murder of a stripper leads two Los Angeles detectives into Little Tokyo and a jealous rivalry involving an explosive interracial triangle.

I can't recommend this set to casual entertainment-seekers; too many of the films plod along in dated formulas, like a "Beau Geste" wannabe titled "Adventure in Sahara." As actor Tim Robbins says in one bonus commentary, with Fuller's films you sometimes have to "roll with the clunker moments" in order to feast on themes "no one else was touching." For students of American film, though, nothing else debuting on DVD this year will likely be so rewarding.

Also new on DVD

"Cheri" (Buena Vista Home Entertainment, rated R, DVD $29.99). Edgy British director Stephen Frears ("Prick Up Your Ears," "The Queen") should have been the last choice to film Colette's fluffy tale of an aging Parisian courtesan's final grab at domestic happiness. What was told from a female vantage in the 1920 novel is told on screen from a somewhat jaded male perspective -- often in intrusive voice-over narration. Star Michelle Pfeiffer looks lovely but fails to cast much reflection on the mores of "La Belle Époque." Her lusty affair with a dissolute young heir (Rupert Friend) never gains any traction, thanks to his portrayal of the younger man as a mopey, bloodless metrosexual. The film's eye-popping art design smacks of a vanity production, while the jaunty and light-hearted musical underscoring constantly shifts our attention away from the inner lives of the characters -- which is what Colette's writings were really about.

"Orphan" (Warner Home Video, rated R, DVD $28.98; Blu-ray Disc $35.99). You're more likely to get unintended laughs than thrills from this sloppy genre outing about a privileged-but-isolated family that adopts a precocious Russian girl with a homicidal sense of entitlements. Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga haven't done their careers any favor as the adoptive parents whose two younger kids become the situation's abused victims. Worse than all the clichés is the script's eagerness to stain the innocence of those on-screen tykes by making them party to bad language, violent deaths and adult sexuality. The DVD presents a few excised scenes and an alternate ending that probably had preview audiences throwing things at the screen. The Blu-ray Disc reportedly also offers a featurette on cinema's legacy of "bad seeds."

"Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure" (Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, not rated, DVD $29.99; Blu-ray Disc $39.99). Very young kids may enjoy this latest exercise in computer-generated animation starring a carefree winged fairy with no connection at all to the James M. Barrie story. It's as clean and colorful as watching a jar of marbles rolling around on a searchlight. After 40 minutes, the plot finally kicks in when Tink leaves Pixie Hollow in a balloon on a quest to bring back a magical "moon stone" to save an autumn holiday. The adventure may remind kids of "The Wizard of Oz" -- minus any scary witches, charming sidekicks or delightful songs. By the way, Tink's new romantic interest, Terence, looks an awful lot like a squeaky clean Peter Pan with wings.

"Whatever Works" (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, rated PG-13, DVD $27.96; Blu-ray Disc $39.95). Woody Allen is back on familiar Manhattan terrain this time out -- and for the occasion he has chosen a suitable screen surrogate in sour egotist Larry David ("Curb Your Enthusiasm"). There are some chuckles here, too, but anyone expecting a light-hearted celluloid romp doesn't know the modern Woody. David is quick to look into the camera and tell us exactly what he thinks of us, our universe, and life itself -- and it ain't much. Woody follows the smashing of the "fourth wall" with two awkward leaps of faith: One involves a naive Texas runaway (Evan Rachel Wood) who asks David for shelter and ends up staying and staying; the other finds the girl's involved, conservative parents (Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley Jr.) coming in search of their daughter but finding the true angels of their better liberal nature. A plot turn involving a suicide attempt should curb anyone's enthusiasm for outright, giddy laughter.

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