The news arrived this past week that veteran showman Phil Hopkins, in collaboration with a “consortium of historians and enthusiasts,” will be launching the new Film Masters home entertainment packaged media label on Sept. 26.
For genre-fans, the rollout release from Film Masters is a pure delight.
This would be none other than director Ray Kellogg’s back-to-back sci-fi/horror gems — The Giant Gila Monster and The Killers Shrews — which are being released as a double-feature/double-disc set on both Blu-ray and DVD. The pair even played as a double-feature when released theatrically in November of 1959.
Sure, they’ve both been out before, but you can safely retire those vintage DVD copies that you’ve been treasuring for all these years.
The whole goal with Film Masters is the restoration, preservation and re-introduction of films that genre fans, film buffs and movie-lovers in general have enjoyed watching since they were first seen at the local drive-in or movie theatre.
For example, The Giant Gila Monster is a new 4K scan from the original 35mm film elements … this is the real deal.
As to the films themselves, producer Gordon McLendon, a Texas businessman, hooked up with veteran f/x wizard and former head of 20th Century Fox’s special effects unit during the 1950s, Ray Kellogg (over 100 film credits during that period, including work on such productions as The Egyptian, Prince Valiant, House of Bamboo, On the Threshold of Space and The King and I).
They developed a trio of films under the Hollywood
Pictures Corporation, with Ray Kellogg sitting in the director’s chair for the
first time … he was not without experience, having served as a second unit
director on both The Egyptian and South
Pacific while at Fox.
With veterans Wilfrid Cline as the cinematographer and Aaron Stell doing the editing, both features were produced with studio-level competency on very modest budgets.
These are “creature features” from the 1950s that have become iconic treasures from the Baby Boom cinematic sci-fi and horror cycle of the period. Whether it be high school hot-rodders battling a mutant Gila Monster or a well-meaning “mad scientist” trying to solve a future food shortage problem and in the process developing a strain of ravenous shrews … this choice of a double-feature launch from Film Masters absolutely nails it!
As to bonus goodies, The Monster Party Podcast provides commentary on The Giant Gila Monster and Prof. Jason A. Ney does the same for The Killer Shrews. Additionally, there is the original production titled “Ray Kellogg – An Unsung Master,” and an archival interview with Don Sullivan (as hot-rodder Chase Winstead in The Giant Gila Monster).
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