High Noon

Gary Cooper is the lanky sheriff who stands tall to face a killer while the town he once defended scatters to the shadows. One of the best loved Westerns of all time, the 1952 classic has been called an old-fashioned celebration of courage and responsibility, an ironic dissection of the Western myth, and a blast of moral outrage at the silence and passivity of American citizens. Yet at heart it's a lean, dusty Western classic set to the real time of a ticking clock. Grace Kelly stars as Cooper's Quaker bride, and Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Bridges, Otto Kruger, Lon Chaney, Henry Morgan, Lee Van Cleef and Katy Jurado co-star. Fred Zinnemann directs for producer Stanley Kramer. The two-disc set features previously available commentary (by Cooper's daughter, Maria Cooper-Janis; writer Carl Foreman's son, Jonathan Foreman; director Zinnemann's son, Tim Zinnemann; and singer Tex Ritter's son, John Ritter) and featurettes, plus the new 50-minute documentary "Inside High Noon" and a live TV performance of Tex Ritter singing the legendary theme song among its supplements.