Arrow Video, with domestic sales and distribution expertise provided by MVD Entertainment Group, has just announced a stunning four-film Blu-ray collection showcasing the films of producer Sam Katzman.
Titled Cold War Creatures: Four Films from Sam Katzman, genre fans will be counting the days until this limited-edition collection arrives on Blu-ray this coming Sept. 14.
Before we get into the films that make up this really-cool collection, a few words have to be said about Sam Katzman. The word prolific doesn’t do him justice. In a career that spanned from 1933 to 1972, Sam Katzman is credited with producing 239 motions pictures and serials, including the original Superman, Atom Man vs. Superman and Batman and Robin serials, and numerous theatrical releases using a “stable” of directors that allowed him to have multiple films in production at the same time.
We begin in the summer of 1955 with director Edward L. Cahn’s surprise horror hit, Creature with the Atom Brain. It might have started out as a gangster revenge film, but the script from German novelist-turned-screenwriter, Curt Siodmak (he fled Nazi Germany and delivered such 1930s and 40s screenplays as The Wolf Man, I Walked with a Zombie, The Beast with Five Fingers … and more) mutated into a terrific terror flick.
The film touches all of the right bases, with veteran horror and sci-fi actor Richard Denning in the starring role as a police “doctor/detective” investigator by the name of Dr. Chet Walker, who is assigned the strange case of an unstoppable monster who is murdering gangsters, plus the local district attorney. The problem that Walker is confronted with is that the fingerprints at the crime scenes (plural) match those of a dead man … there is also radiation present.
It gets even more sinister as the success of the killings spawn those running the experiment to steal more dead bodies from the morgue … an army is being built!!
Bonus goodies include commentary by critic Russell Dyball, a vintage condensed 8mm presentation of the film (very popular at the time) and the feature-length documentary titled Sam Katzman: Before and Beyond the Cold War Creatures.
Next in the collection is the summer of 1956 horror flick from director Fred F. Sears, The Werewolf, which was filmed on location at Big Bear Lake and stars Don Megowan (The Great Locomotive Chase, The Creation of the Humanoids) as the sheriff of the mountain hamlet of Mountaincrest.
In the opening sequence an attempted mugging ends in with the would-be thief having his throat ripped-open by a strange creature. When the deputy sheriff (Harry Lauter) follows the trail of the killer into the woods he too is attacked, but comes away with just some “claw” marks on his shoulder.
It turns out that a man by the name of Chris Marsh (Kim Charny — Suddenly, The Guns of Fort Petticoat) was involved in an auto accident, was cared for by a couple of doctors — who turned into mad scientist for a moment — who injected him with an experimental serum, which now turns him into a werewolf whenever threatened.
Bonus features include commentary by critic Kat Ellinger and the newly-prepared featurette titled “Atomic Terror: Genre in Transformation.”
From March of 1957 comes director Edward L. Cahn’s Zombies of Mora-Tau, a horror tale about cursed diamonds that cause the dead to rise, who simply want their treasure returned. Autumn Russell, Gregg Palmer, Majorie Eaton and the fifty-foot woman herself, Allison Hayes star.
As to bonus features here, critic Kat Ellinger returns for commentary and there is the newly-prepared featurette titled “Atomic Terror: Genre in Transformation.”
Rounding out the selections from Arrow Video’s Sept. 14 Cold War Creatures: Four Films from Sam Katzman Blu-ray collection is director Fred F. Sears’s summer of 1957 creature-feature film, The Giant Claw.
Test pilot Mitch MacAfee (Jeff Morrow — This Island Earth, Kronos) is a military base in the Arctic working on the installation of a new radar defense system when he spots an Unidentified Flying Object — UFO — which causes an alert and jets are sent aloft to investigate. One of the jets is lost and MacAfee is blamed for the false alarm … but soon a commercial airliner reports another UFO and then goes missing. It’s a mystery.
With his lovely tech assistant in hand, Sally Caldwell (Mara Corday — Tarantula, The Black Scorpion), they head back to New York, but quickly run into the UFO again and are forced down in Canada. They soon discover that the UFO is not what it seems, but a giant ET from another galaxy … not just any galaxy, but an anti-matter galaxy! If it is not stopped, the planet is doomed!!
Bonus features include a newly-prepared commentary with critics Emma Westwood and Cerise Howard, an 8mm version of the film and the new featurette titled “Family Endangered.”
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