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It’s one of the year’s most awaited discs: the recent restored and remastered The War of the Worlds ’53 in a glorious 4K Ultra HD edition. A second Blu-ray disc of When Worlds Collide ’51 is too good to be called a bonus extra: this edition looks better than anything seen since original Technicolor prints. In one show we endure scurvy invaders from The Red Planet; in the other a rogue Astral Body threatens Earth with obliteration, necessitating escape on a space ship. Don’t bother checking online for tickets, the flight is sold out. CineSavant has the lowdown for collectors: how good does the new release look?

The War of the Worlds on 4K Ultra-hd

When Worlds Collide on Blu-ray

Digital HD Access for both titles.

Paramount Presents

George Pal Sci-fi Double Feature

Color / 1:37 Academy / Street Date September 27, 2022 / 167 minutes / Available from Amazon / 39.99

Starring: Richard Derr, Barbara Rush, John Hoyt; Gene Barry,...

Another key ’50s sci-fi makes it to Blu-ray in an admirable encoding. Roger Corman’s end-of-the-world survivalist struggle against radioactive mist and three-eyed mutants shines in the glory of Superscope: Richard Denning and cute Lori Nelson must contend with a human monster in Touch Connors’ gangster. Adele Jergens spices things up, while Paul Birch delivers downer sermons about doomsday. It’s a truly marvelous atom fable, full of fanciful silly-science that makes for good storytelling. With a commentary by Tom Weaver. And don’t forget to click the ‘Rhododendron’ link.

Day the World Ended

Blu-ray

1955 / B&w / 2.00:1 widescreen / 79 min. / Street Date December 21, 2021

Starring: Richard Denning, Lori Nelson, Adele Jergens, Touch Connors, Paul Birch, Raymond Hatton, Paul Dubov, Jonathan Haze, Paul Blaisdell, Chet Huntley (voice).

Cinematography: Jock Feindel

Set Decoration: Harry Reif

Film Editor: Ronald Sinclair

Special Effects: Paul Blaisdell

Original Music: Ronald Stein

Written by Lou Rusoff

Executive Producer:...

Once again CineSavant becomes intrigued by a minor genre opus normally dismissed in a sentence or two; this Roger Corman production may fall short of his other early efforts because it tried to be too cerebral and then ran afoul of the Hollywood Guilds. David Kramarsky is listed as director but it’s hard to know how many of the credits are accurate — or simply bogus. Monstermaker extraordinaire Paul Blaisdell apparently came to the rescue with 11th-hour special effects to give the ambiguous, invisible alien menace more substance. Scorpion’s release has a new transfer and a commentary by Tim Lucas.

The Beast With a Million Eyes

Blu-ray

Scorpion Releasing

1955 / B&w / 1:37 full frame open aperture / 75 min. / Region A locked / Street Date November, 2019 /available through Ronin Flix (not Amazon) / 29.99

Starring: Paul Birch, Lorna Thayer, Dona Cole, Dick Sargent, Leonard Tarver, Bruce Whitmore, Chester Conklin.

Cinematography: Everett Baker + Floyd Crosby,...

Man Without a Star

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1955/ 2.00:1 / 89 min.

Starring Kirk Douglas, William Campbell, Jeanne Crain, Claire Trevor

Cinematography by Russell Metty

Directed by King Vidor

King Vidor, the director behind the bucolic Kansas sequences in The Wizard of Oz and the histrionics of Duel in the Sun, has it both ways in 1955’s Man Without a Star starring Kirk Douglas.

Douglas follows his director’s lead – acting primarily with his teeth, the eager to please ham gives a performance almost as broad as his wayward sailor in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. But as screenwriter Borden Chase slowly pulls back the masks on his characters, Douglas settles into a more reasonable approximation of a human being.

Closing in on 40, the irrepressible show-off plays a wandering cowpoke named Dempsey Rae who follows constellations for clues to his destiny and so far he’s come up empty – the “man without a star.

“I hate her! I hate dat qveen!” Despite being one of the most maladroit sci-fiers of the ’50s, color and ‘scope and Zsa Za Gabor’s hilarious accent make this Allied Artists offering a must-see head scratcher. Bad taste! Tacky art direction! Infantile sexist humor! The word on the street is that the Me Too movement has this embarrassing howler on their kill list.

Queen of Outer Space

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1958 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 80 min. / Street Date September 25, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Eric Fleming, Laurie Mitchell, Dave Willock, Paul Birch, Lisa Davis, Patrick Waltz, Barbara Darrow, Joi Lansing, Marilyn Buferd, Mary Ford, Marya Stevens, Laura Mason, Lynn Cartwright, Kathy Marlowe, Coleen Drake, Tania Velia, Norma Young, Marjorie Durant, Gerry Gaylor, Brandy Bryan, Ruth Lewis, June McCall.

Cinematography: William P. Whitley

Film Editor: William Austin

Sam Gordon and Ted Mossman: Props

Visual Effects: Jack Cosgrove...

Do you like my choice of leading image?  'We're the Glory Guys! Eee-Yow!' What is surely the most generic cavalry western of all time is actually from a screenplay by Sam Peckinpah. Twilight Time's extras have a lot to say about that, and so does Savant. The Glory Guys Blu-ray Twilight Time 1965 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 113 min. / Street Date September 6, 2016 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95 Starring Tom Tryon, Harve Presnell, Senta Berger, James Caan, Andrew Duggan, Slim Pickens, Peter Breck, Jeanne Cooper, Michael Anderson Jr., Adam Williams, Wayne Rogers, Michael Forest, Paul Birch, Stephen Chase, Claudio Brook. Cinematography James Wong Howe Cinematography Ernst R. (Tom) Rolf, Melvin Shapiro Original Music Riz Ortolani Written by Sam Peckinpah from the novel by Hoffman Birney Produced by Arthur Gardner, Arnold Laven, Jules V. Levy Directed by Arnold Laven

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Glory Guys is as generic and standard-issue...

Nick Aldwinckle Aug 10, 2016

Blood Bath, The Beast With 1,000,000 Eyes and Return Of The Killer Tomatoes: it's our latest DVD and Blu-ray round-up...

Britain is in a state of turmoil, with Brexit, political leadership spinning out of control and social media civil war already underway. As such, it has perhaps never been a more appropriate time for a release of John De Bello and Stephen Peace’s 1988 meditation on the path towards peace and racial tolerance, Return Of The Killer Tomatoes, out on Arrow Bluray.

Set ten years after the events of the Great Tomato War, as depicted in uncompromising detail in De Bello and Peace’s earlier epic, Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes, tomatoes – following the mutant, sentient, strain responsible for the deaths of many citizens – are now outlawed in the Us. As with all the best banned items, killer tomatoes have now gone underground, with a thriving black market...

'The Beast with a Million Eyes': Hardly truth in advertising as there's no million-eyed beast in Roger Corman's micro-budget sci-fi thriller. 'The Beast with a Million Eyes': Alien invasion movie predates Alfred Hitchcock classic Despite the confusing voice-over introduction, David Kramarsky's[1] The Beast with a Million Eyes a.k.a. The Beast with 1,000,000 Eyes is one of my favorite 1950s alien invasion films. Set in an ugly, desolate landscape – shot “for wide screen in terror-scope” in Indio and California's Coachella Valley – the screenplay by future novelist Tom Filer (who also played Jack Nicholson's sidekick in the 1966 Western Ride in the Whirlwind) focuses on a dysfunctional family whose members become the first victims of a strange force from another galaxy after a spaceship lands nearby emitting sound vibrations that turn domestic animals into aggressive killers. Killer cow First, the lady-of-the-house is pecked by a flock of chickens and,...

Germany's Explosive Media company has a serious itch for American westerns, and they have a trio of new releases. One is a minor Hollywood classic with major graces, from the late 1950s. A second sees an American producer based in England filming in Italy with a rising international star, and for the third an established American star goes European  to stay in the game. The best thing for Yankee buyers? The discs are Region-free.

Gunman's Walk, Land Raiders, A Man Called Sledge Three Westerns from Explosive Media Blu-ray Separate Releases 1958-1970 / Color Starring Van Heflin, Tab Hunter; George Maharis, Telly Savalas; James Garner

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The majority of American studios now choose not to market their libraries for digital disc, and license them out instead. Collectors unwilling to settle for whatever's on Netflix or concerned about the permanence of Cloud Cinema, find themselves increasingly tempted by discs from Europe,...

Jeanne Crain: Lighthearted movies vs. real life tragedies (photo: Madeleine Carroll and Jeanne Crain in ‘The Fan’) (See also: "Jeanne Crain: From ‘Pinky’ Inanity to ‘Margie’ Magic.") Unlike her characters in Margie, Home in Indiana, State Fair, Centennial Summer, The Fan, and Cheaper by the Dozen (and its sequel, Belles on Their Toes), or even in the more complex A Letter to Three Wives and People Will Talk, Jeanne Crain didn’t find a romantic Happy Ending in real life. In the mid-’50s, Crain accused her husband, former minor actor Paul Brooks aka Paul Brinkman, of infidelity, of living off her earnings, and of brutally beating her. The couple reportedly were never divorced because of their Catholic faith. (And at least in the ’60s, unlike the humanistic, progressive-thinking Margie, Crain was a “conservative” Republican who supported Richard Nixon.) In the early ’90s, she lost two of her...

More long hidden horrors are now available as part of Warner's made-to-order Archive Collection. Oh, the classic terrors that await you, dearest reader! Dig it!

Head on over to the Warner Archives and order yours today!

The Awakening

Director: Mike Newell

Cast: Charlton Heston, Susannah York, Jill Townsend, Stephanie Zimbalist

Synopsis

Mention Bram Stoker’s name, and literature and movie buffs will conjure up Count Dracula. But there was more blood in Stoker’s pen. He also wrote The Jewel of the Seven Stars, later filmed with chilling effect as The Awakening, grippingly directed by Mike Newell (Dance with a Stranger, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) and sensuously shot on Egyptian locations by veteran cinematographer Jack Cardiff. Charlton Heston stars as an Egyptologist with a passion that will trigger several mysterious deaths. He’s obsessed with a sorceress whose return has been prophesied – and whose tomb he opened...

While other releases in the Shout! Factory’s Roger Corman’s Cult Classics focus on his producing credits, the recent Sci-Fi Classics showcases three of his early directorial works. Oh, he also produced all three, worked with the writers on the scripts and even pitched the projects to investors. Like many directors today, when you call something a "Corman film", it’s because he’s influenced the project from the start.

First up is Attack of the Crab Monsters, which manages to be quite effective despite its ludicrous premise. A group of scientists arrive on a remote Pacific island to study the effects of fallout from recent nuclear testing in the Pacific. They also want to discover what happened to the first team, which disappeared without a trace.

It’s not long before mysterious things start to happen. A sailor is pulled out of the water without his head, the...

Hey Fiends! Happy Monday! Got another list of flicks on the format of your choice.

Roger Corman’s Cult Classics Triple Feature (Attack of the Crab Monsters / War of the Satellites / Not of This Earth)

Format: DVD

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Three Films Produced And Directed By Honorary Academy Award Recipient And King Of B-Movies, Roger Corman: With All New Film Transfers From The Negative!

In Attack Of The Crab Monsters, a group of scientists become marooned on an island while investigating the disappearance of researchers who were looking into atomic activity in the Pacific. They quickly fall prey to giant, mutant crustaceans that have the ability to absorb the minds of their prey. Starring Russell Johnson (Gilligans Island), Richard Garland and Mel Welles (Little Shop Of Horrors).

An alien comes to Earth, masquerading as a human, to scout our planet for a new blood source in Not Of This Earth. He needs...

Does claustrophobia set in easily for you? Then you may want to steer clear of the video aisles of your favorite stores as last year's intense buried alive flick (starring the future Green Lantern) is coming on home.

Being that this is another light week release wise, you don't have too many other options. That is unless you're in the mood for high speed chases featuring coffin-looking vehicles that could end up causing just as much anxiety.

Or maybe you'd just like to find comfort in another Roger Corman fest from a kinder, gentler era - a triple treat that has nothing to do with coffins. Yay!

Buried (Blu-ray Review)

Directed by Rodrigo Cortés

Starring Ryan Reynolds, and the voices of Samantha Mathis, Erik Palladino, José Luis García Pérez, Robert Paterson, Stephen Tobolowsky

Paul Conroy is not ready to die. But when he wakes up six feet underground with no...

In 2010 Shout! Factory delivered us stellar editions of some truly classic Roger Corman films. The best part? They have no signs of slowing down in 2011! That's right, kids, five more flicks are on the way on January 18th that are bound to bring a smile to your horror-loving face!

From the Press Release

Roger Corman’S Cult Classics: Sci-fi Classics Triple-feature Collector’S Edition 2-dvd Set

In Attack Of The Crab Monsters, a group of scientists become marooned on an island while investigating the disappearance of researchers who were looking into atomic activity in the Pacific. They quickly fall prey to giant, mutant crustaceans that have the ability to absorb the minds of their prey. Starring Russell Johnson (Gilligan’s Island), Richard Garland and Mel Welles (Little Shop Of Horrors). Attack Of The Crab Monsters is a Roger Corman Production. Produced and directed by Roger Corman; screenplay by Charles B. Griffith.

Given the fact I reviewed the first 5 volumes of the Roger Corman Collection in order, it might look wierd reviewing volumes 6 and 9 together. But these DVDs are thematically similar, given that they are two of Corman’s earliest films – both were filmed in 1957 – and they are two of Corman’s most famous…

Vol.6: Not Of This Earth

Stars: Paul Birch, Beverly Garland, Morgan Jones, William Roerick | Written by Charles B. Griffith & Mark Hanna | Produced and Directed by Roger Corman

Remade three times since this original incarnation produced and directed by Roger Corman, Not Of This Earth sees an emotionless alien vampire on the prowl in La seeking a suitable blood source to save his dying race back home. Hailed as “a minor sci-fi gem” by Time Out, the film features a brief but hilarious appearance by Corman and Joe Dante regular, Dick Miller.

Having only ever seen the rather...

Maxïmo Park have told fans to expect a "different" third album.

The band, whose last record was 2007's Our Earthly Pleasures, said the new Lp was leaving them awake at night with excitement.

Lead singer Paul Smith told the Daily Star: "The lads gave me three days' worth of demos, just melodies without any lyrics and as soon as I heard them . . .