Dusty and Sweets McGee.

With the goal of putting its entire, extensive catalog within reach, Warner Bros. has inaugurated the Warner Archive, a DVD-on-demand service that pops out DVD-Rs of a growing selection of titles and ships them directly to consumers via its Web site. Reaction has been mixed: the discs are lower-quality than standard DVDs, there are no supplements or remastering to offset the higher prices, and the Web site's product information and order-taking capability are erratic. The undeterred will find movies for all tastes, including Nicholas Ray's Party Girl, Robert Altman's Countdown, Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People, and Floyd Mutrux's pseudodocumentary about heroin addicts and dealers on a weekend in L.A., which outside of rare screenings has been sitting in Warner's archive since 1971. Uncomfortable with the twenty-eight-year-old filmmaker's well-researched, evenhanded and nonexploitative portrait of the subculture, the studio yanked it from theaters after a week. The addicts, adrift in reveries that range from melancholic to unhinged, were played by real users; the suppliers by actors, including former Father Knows Best star Billy Gray and the film's cinematographer, William A. Fraker. The loose, impressionistic narrative and dreamy imagery (well-preserved on this particular title) clearly anticipate the work of Gus Van Sant. As a portrait of the city, it emerges as a decade-later companion piece to the similarly exhumed The Exiles, powered by a stunningly deployed series of songs including Van Morrison's "Into the Mystic" and Jack Holmes's "So Close." (A Warner Bros. release, on DVD-R, available from the Warner Archive, www.wbshop.com)