Battle Of The Worlds Restored By The Film Detective For Release As New Blu-ray And DVD Product Offerings On Aug. 09

The Film Detective announced this past week that a new 4K film restoration of director Antonio Margheriti’s 1961 (1963 domestic theatrical rollout) sci-fi thriller, Battle of the Worlds, will be heading home as both DVD and Blu-ray product offerings on Aug. 09.

A mysterious object has been discovered and it is heading for Earth.   But after careful analysis, an international astrophysics consortium headed by Professor Benson, determines that it will be a near-miss within the Moon’s orbit.  Whew, world saved!!

Claude Rains drew this key role and, coupled with some pretty solid special effects, Battle of the Worlds turned out to a most enjoyable sci-fi release.  Italian Spaghetti Westerns, sure, but Spaghetti Sci-Fi?

Rains, who was nominated for four Oscars (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Casablanca, Mr. Skeffington and Notorious), turned in a stellar performance as Dryden in Lawrence of Arabia, which was filmed after Battle of the Worlds, but Margheriti’s English-dubbed theatrical release didn’t arrive on these shores until the spring of 1963, so having Rains as the star was a super bonus.

In a plot point that foreshadowed Independence Day, the mysterious object, which has now been dubbed “The Outsider,” suddenly slows down and goes into an orbit around Earth … gulp, that can’t be a good thing!!

In this version of the future, Earth not only has a Mars colony, but the ability to dispatch a spaceship to investigate our surprise visitor, but they encounter a fleet of flying saucers … it’s “war of the world.” 

Like David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum’s character) in Independence Day, Benson is able to interpret the “harmonics” of the saucers and defeat them.  Even though “The Outsider” is in a decaying orbit of our planet, he demands an expedition to the mysterious visitor to uncover its secrets … what scientific treasure await?

Or, will time run out and either “The Outsider” is destroyed … or, horror of horrors, it crashes into Earth!!

Bonus goodies include commentary by film historian Justin Humphreys and newly-minted featurette titled “A Cinematic Outsider: The Fantastical Worlds of Antonio Margheriti.”

 

 

 

 

Full Moon Features Looks To Sept. 13 For The Blu-ray And DVD Debut Of Director Jim Wynorski's Attack Of The 50 Foot Camgirl

Full Moon Features, with sales and distribution expertise provided by MVD Entertainment Group, has tabbed Sept. 13 as the street date for director Jim Wynorski’s Attack of the 50 Foot Camgirl.   Both DVD and Blu-ray selections will be available for genre fans to savor.

Where does one begin?   How about with Roger Corman protégé Jim Wynorski … he honed his filmmaking skills with such Corman-produced gems as Big Bad Mama II, the remake of Not of this Earth (with Traci Lords) and The Haunting of Morella with Nicole Eggert.

He’s one of the most prolific filmmakers around … just seeing his name in the credits signals that what you are about to see is well-worth watching.   Just as examples, Scream Queen Hot Tub Party, Munchie, Dinosaur Island, Sorceress, Bikini Drive-In, Vampirella, Storm Trooper, The Witches of Breastwick … we could go on and on.   You get the idea.

So, when film impresario Charles Band’s Full Moon Features teamed up with Wynorski for a story about a mad scientist invention — a self-replicating food supply — that turns a famous-for-being-famous webcam performer, Beverly Wood (played by Ivy Smith in her film debut), into a 50-foot giant after she gobbles down one of the lab-grown samples, you know that the street date for Attack of the 50 Foot Camgirl can’t come soon enough.

OK, for genre fans, you’ve got Tarantula, starring Leo G. Carroll (immortalized in the opening number to the Rocky Horror Picture Show … “I knew Leo G. Carroll was over a barrel … When Tarantula took to the hills”), who hits upon a plan to solve world hunger by making everything bigger.   What could go wrong with that?

And, also from the 1950s, director Nathan Juran’s classic, Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman, starring Allison Hayes … a “socialite” drives into an alien visitor and grows and grows and grows.   She discovers that her husband is cheating on her and goes on murderous rampage.  Perfect!!

Take famous-for-being-famous, and combined that with the plot elements of Tarantula and Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman and you’ve got yourself a potential film franchise.

But it gets better!!   Once Beverly Wood grows into a scantily-clad buxom beauty of the fifty-foot variety, she discovers that her oily husband, Bradley (Eli Cirino — Bigfoot or Bust), has been cheating on her with rival webcam personality Fuschia (Christine Nguyen — Girls Guns and Blood, Bikini Sorority House, Attack of the Killer Donuts).   She goes after them, but Fuschia is having none of it — she can be famous-for-being-famous as well — and so she ingests some the mad scientist food to take on Beverly Wood in a battle of the titans — not since King Kong faced off against Godzilla has the screen seen such gigantic combat!! 

Mark it on your must-see viewing calendar.  Sept. 13, Attack of the 50 Foot Camgirl on either DVD or Blu-ray from Full Moon Features … you will certainly get an eyeful!!

Bonus goods included a pair of featurettes — “Videozone: From the Set” and “Behind the Scenes.”

 

 

 

 

 

VCI Entertainment's Notorious Western Jesse James' Women Arrives On DVD This Coming Oct. 11

VCI Entertainment announced this past week that actor-turned-director Don “Red” Barry’s 1954 notorious “runaway” Western, Jesse James’ Women, will be heading to DVD in all of its Technicolor glory on Oct. 11.

Westerns are made in “Hollywood,” everyone knows that.   Sure, you may have location shooting in Lone Pine or Monument Valley, but for the most part Westerns of the 1930s, 40s and 50s were Hollywood productions — from the big studios to those of poverty row.   

When exhibitor Lloyd Royal teamed up with his business partner, Tom Garraway, to form the Panorama Pictures Corp. they decided for their first film production it would be a Western, but it wasn’t going to be shot out west … nope, they would do the whole thing in their home town of Silver Creek, Mississippi.  

To that end they recruited popular Western star Don “Red” Barry to star, and for the first time in his film career, direct (the thought being, you know how to make a Western … you’ve been in a ton of them).  

He would star as Jesse James, but the story wouldn’t be about his bank robbing and outlaw ways (sure, there would be plenty of that), but about his women … and it would all be shot in Technicolor and not in black and white!!

The women, well they recruited Peggie Castle (Harem Girl, Wagons West, Invasion U.S.A., The Yellow Tomahawk … and later as Lily Merrill in the Lawman television series) to co-star as Waco Gans, the co-owner of the Golden Bell Saloon.  Also in the cast are the banker’s daughter, Caprice Clark (played by Joyce Barrett), Cattle Kate Kennedy (Betty Brueck) and Delta, a songstress (Lita Baron, aka: Isabelita … as Zia in Jungle Jim and Losana in Bomba on Panther Island, plus such films as Red Sundown and The Broken Star).

With so many attractive young women to juggle, it is only a matter of time before they will all arrive in the same spot at the same time (the Golden Bell), where all hell breaks loose.

Meanwhile, Jesse and his brother Frank (Jack Buetel — as Billy the Kid in The Outlaw … and as Deputy Jeff Taggert in the Judge Roy Bean TV series), along with Cole Younger (Sam Keller) and future turncoat, Bob Ford (Michael Carr — Flying Disc Man from Mars, Apache Warrior), busy themselves with bank robberies and stage coach holdups.  

A very entertaining Western, with an interesting spin on Jesse James … so why “notorious?”   That’s easy, you have an upstart film production and distribution company not from Hollywood, and a film shot in Mississippi, that quickly set the “established” Hollywood community on Panorama’s cast.  This took the form bullying and intimidation from the PCA Administration — the infamous “The Production Code Administration” — who suggested that the film would not be approved for exhibition because of various “moral” issues.

To get back into their good graces, the “cat fights” between Jesse’s lady acquaintances had to be toned down and an insert with a newspaper headline screaming that Jesse James had been shot (bad guys don’t win) were the compromises that had to be made.   

The irony, Lloyd Royal and his fledgling Panorama Pictures laughed all the way to the bank as box office receipts from Jesse James’ Women — complete with theatrical posters and advertising that included the catch-phrase, “Beauty vs Beauty for the love of Jesse James!” — were on the order of twenty-times the film’s production budget!!

Don “Red” Barry did not direct another film and went back to the acting side of the camera for the rest of his film career.

 

 

 

Wild Eye Releasing Tabs Sept. 27 For The Blu-ray Rollout Of The Acid Kind

Wild Eye Releasing, with sales and distribution support provided by MVD Entertainment Group, has selected Sept. 27 as the street date for a Blu-ray edition of the documentary filmmaking team of Dan Jones and Jesse P. Pollack’s true crime horror tale, The Acid King.

On the cusp of summer in June of 1984, four teenagers assembled in the woods just outside Northport, New York (Long Island) and, high on drugs, one of the teens, Ricky Kasso, Jr. — who would come to be known as “The Acid King” — murdered his friend, Gary Lauwers.

Just another drug-related death, but by the time the media got through with it, the murder had ballooned into a Satanic cult slaying.   The hype was furthered along by the hanging suicide of Kasso in his jail cell three days after Lauwers’ rotting body was discovered over the July 4^th holiday period.

The documentary is based on Jesse P. Pollack’s 2018 best-selling, “The Acid King,” a detailed account of the events leading up to the killing (drugs, drugs and, dare we say it, more drugs), the horrific events of June 19, 1984 and the aftermath, bordering on hysteria, that followed.

Bonus goodies included with the Blu-ray debut of The Acid King from Wild Eye Releasing on Sept. 27 include commentary from filmmakers Dan Jones and Jesse P. Pollack, deleted scenes, a behind-the-scenes documentary, extended interviews, a “Crime Scene” gallery and a podcast.

 

 

 

 

 

Event Horizon: 25th Anniversary 4K Ultra HD From Paramount Home Entertainment On Aug. 09

Paramount Home Entertainment revealed this past week that the mystery at the other end of our solar system, director Paul W. S. Anderson’s Event Horizon, will be celebrating its 25^th Anniversary on Aug. 09 with the release of a new 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack edition.

The Event Horizon, a star ship of the future, disappeared.   But now, it has reappeared in a decaying orbit around Neptune … so away goes the Lewis and Clark to either save the ship, or, at least discover its mysteries.   What they find is a “haunted house” full of death and terror beyond imagination.

Bonus features include commentary with director Paul W.S. Anderson, who is joined by producer Jeremy Bolt, plus there is a five-part documentary titled The Making of Event Horizon, deleted scenes (with commentary) and a pair of featurettes — “The Point of No Return” and “The Unseen Event Horizon.”

 

 

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Preps 4K Ultra HD Editions Of I Know What You Did Last Summer (Sept. 27) And Bram Stoker's Dracula (Oct. 04)

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment announced this past week that director Jim Gillespie’s very clever mixed-genre thriller, I Know What You Did Last Summer, will be celebrating its 25^th Anniversary on Sept. 27 with a new 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack edition.

Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Gellar shine in this part-slasher horror film and part-mystery whodunit after a tragic accident sets a series of revenge murders in motion.

Bonus goodies include an alternate ending, a half-dozen deleted scenes and two new featurettes — “My Own Summer” and “He Knows What You Did.”   Plus, there are also a vintage commentary track on the companion Blu-ray disc, the music video by Kula Shaker titled “Hush,” the short film titled Joyride and the vintage featurette, “Now I Know What You Did Last Summer.”

Also getting a 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack release is auteur filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola’s Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will celebrate the 30th anniversary of Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 presentation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

This will be a 30^th Anniversary edition, which will be available for genre fans to enjoy on Oct. 04.

Bonus features include the newly prepared featurette titled, “Blood Lines – Dracula: The Man, The Myth, The Movies” and the Annie Lennox music video, “Love Song for a Vampire.”

Vintage bonus goodies include two commentary options with Francis Ford Coppola.  One, solo, and the other with visual effects director Roman Coppola and makeup supervisor Greg Cannom.   There are deleted and extended scenes, an introduction by Coppola, and a half-dozen vintage featurettes — “Reflections in Blood: Francis Ford Coppola and Bram Stoker's Dracula,” “Practical Magicians: A Collaboration Between Father and Son,” “The Blood Is the Life: The Making of Bram Stoker's Dracula,” “The Costumes Are the Sets: The Design of Eiko Ishioka,” “In-Camera: Naïve Visual Effects” and “Method and Madness: Visualizing Dracula.”

 

 

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment's Short Order For The Bob's Burgers Movie On July 19

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment announced this past week that the directing team of Loren Bouchard and Bernard Derriman’s animated feature film, The Bob’s Burgers Movie (based on the Emmy-winning television series), will be served-up lickety-split on July 19 as a two-SKU home entertainment packaged media product offering.

The ARR is just 53 days (which suggests a timed release related to streaming on Disney+) and domestic ticket sales were a tasty $31 million.

Planned for release are stand-alone DVD and Blu-ray selections.

Bonus treats include tag-team commentary from filmmakers Loren Bouchard and Bernard Derriman, voice talents H. Jon Benjamin (as Bob Belcher), Dan Mintz (as Tina Belcher), John Roberts (Linda Belcher), Eugene Mirman (as Gene Belcher) and Kristen Schaal (as Louise Belcher), plus co-writer Nora Smith and production designer Ruben Hickman, deleted scenes (with optional commentary), the short film titled My Butt Has a Fever and the featurette, “Making of the Movie: Bob's Burgers.”