The Black Pirate (Fri., Sept. 26, 8 p.m. and Sat., Sept. 27, 2 p.m., $8-$15, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700, www.princemusictheater.org) Technicolor? In 1926? Just one of the surprises in store when the Prince shows a new print of the Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckler, with live accompaniment by the always-welcome Alloy Orchestra.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre/Prizzi’s Honor ($26.99/$14.95 DVD) Drawn from opposite ends of John Huston's career -- Treasure (1948) was his third feature, Prizzi's Honor (1985) his next-to-last -- these two films show a remarkable consistency of theme, and as intriguing a difference in tone. Starring Humphrey Bogart as backstabbing gold prospector Fred Dobbs, Treasure is one of the most corrosively cynical movies ever released by a Hollywood studio. Though Huston moved the production to Mexico to shoot valuable exteriors, the three-way struggle between Bogart, the slightly less opportunistic Tim Holt and grizzled prospector Walter Huston is so concentrated it could practically have been filmed on a bare stage. (It seems no coincidence that Huston had just finished staging No Exit on Broadway.) Having spent the war filming shattered GIs, Huston was disinclined to further heroic myths; there's no romance in Treasure's frontier, only a lust for gold whose worth, the old prospector points out, is essentially a function of human toil. His metaphor is made flesh as the three laboriously extract gold dust out of a mountaintop mine, growing ever more paranoid and deceptive as their collective riches mount. Huston's sophistication gives the lie to the present equation of jaded acceptance and worldliness; lack of sentiment isn't the same as endorsement. Bogart's titanic performance of the greed-crazed Dobbs is tempered by the movie's Depression-era setting, and the prologue, which shows him begging for meals, cheated out of wages for even the meager work he can find. A horror film without the comforting remove of genre, Treasure ends with a tiny upward flourish, just enough to let you know Huston hasn't given up hope, but it's the darkness that stays with you.

Nearly 40 years on, Huston's estimation of the human race hasn't raised perceptibly, but it's become a gruesome joke rather than a cry of alarm. If Richard Condon's novel, Prizzi's Honor, was something of a Godfather pisstake, Huston's film similarly undercuts that movie's oversize romanticism. Jack Nicholson's Charley may be a hit man for one of Brooklyn's biggest families, but he's still a working stiff, a mumble-mouthed lug as apt to wear a confused frown as a sneer. Quick on the draw, but only when it comes to guns, Charley's already met, fallen for and married Irene (Kathleen Turner) before he realizes she's the "out-of-town talent" who snatched a hit out from under his nose. Prizzi's Honor plays out with all the maneuvering and double-crossing of a textbook gangster yarn, but Huston keeps a god's-eye-view detachment: "What fools these mobsters be." Hardly defeatist, Prizzi's Honor might edge closer to accepting that corruption is the price we pay for being human. The struggle goes on, but in a different key.

Run Ronnie Run! ($24.98 DVD) Considering that Bob Odenkirk and David Cross have been telling people not to see their Mr. Show movie for months, expectations for it could hardly be lower, which works out well, since that's the only way it could surpass them. In fact, "Mr. Show movie" is something of a misnomer, since most of the show's cast members appear only in bit parts, the better to make room for an endless parade of blink-and-you'll-miss-'em guest stars. (There seems to be a perception that endless stunt casting is both "funny" and increases a movie's potential audience, but does anyone really imagine fans of Jeff Goldblum or Anthrax's Scott Ian buying tickets just to see them onscreen for 20 seconds?) Based on a COPS joke already used twice on the show, Run Ronnie Run! recycles the idea for a third go-round, with Cross as white-trash perpetual arrestee Ronnie Dobbs, and Odenkirk as the Britisher who finds a way to capitalize on his flair for getting jailed. Strapped into single roles (not their funniest, either), Cross and Odenkirk don't get to show off their smart-ass versatility, and the movie feels strapped down, too, without the ruthlessness to cut off jokes before they've run their course. (Put it this way: There are not one but two extended Survivor jokes.) It's not, perhaps, as aggressively awful as Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy, but all the best bits come from the TV show, where they were done better for less. Odenkirk and Cross claim there's a funnier "super-cut" of the movie out there that New Line refused to release; doubtful we'll ever see it, but hard to care much, either.

Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life ($26.98 DVD) Now this is more like it. The least of Python's three feature films (not counting the TV compendium And Now For Something Completely Different), Meaning of Life is scattershot and sketch-y, without the unifying brilliance of Holy Grail or Life of Brian. But boy, are some of the bits grand -- John Cleese's schoolmaster stiffly providing live sex education; the World War I soldiers who guilelessly present their commander with a grandfather clock in the middle of a battlefield trench; every one of those lovely songs. As on previous Python discs, the newly created material (here, a handful of tossed-off short films and Michael Palin's "Soundtrack for the Lonely," which simulates watching the movie with a fairly boorish companion), is disposable, but the five surviving Pythons discuss the filming with surprising candor. Terry Gilliam, who directed the opening featurette "The Crimson Permanent Assurance," rather than clashing with one-time co-director Terry Jones on set, calls it "the best movie Python ever made -- probably because I didn't have anything to do with it." Eric Idle blames John Cleese, who declined a final writing session that might have tied the movie's disparate bits together, for "the fact that it's not the masterpiece he says it isn't." No wonder the group could only get together for a "virtual reunion," yet another half-funny add-on. Despite all the chaff, there's still plenty for even casual fans to tuck into -- and besides, how many casual Monty Python fans are there?