You couldn't ask for five cooler movies: "The Incredible Shrinking Man," "Tarantula," "Monster On The Campus," "The Monolith Monsters" and "The Mole People." Okay, "Mole People" is actually kinda crummy, but it's a cool kinda crummy. All five are in beautiful black and white; "Shrinking Man" is in anamorphic widescreen.
The first three are the work of director Jack Arnold (who contributed the story for "Monolith Monsters"). Jack also directed "The Creature From The Black Lagoon," "It Came From Outer Space," "No Name On The Bullet" and a buncha episodes of "Gilligan's Island" and "The Brady Bunch."
Out of this box, "The Incredible Shrinking Man" is the best movie. The writing's great (by Richard Matheson, from his novel), the acting above par and the special effects ahead of their time. Thought-provoking stuff.
But my favorite of the bunch is "Tarantula." First, it's got Leo G. Carroll, Mara Corday, John Agar and Nestor Paiva. It's got giant insects, a sign of quality among Fifties monster movies. It's black and white. And the pilot in the climax is Clint Eastwood. What more could you want? It's a big drag that it hasn't been given the widescreen treatment: the dead space at the top and bottom makes it look a little clunky.
The other pictures are a lot of fun. And they get the usual top-drawer transfers from Universal. I'm glad to see them treat their sizable stash of classic monster and sci-fi films with respect. They deserve it--after all, they saved the studio from bankruptcy a time or two. But, again, widescreen woulda been nice (these films were shot full-frame to be cropped to around 1.78 or 1.85:1.
Not sure what the scoop is on the whole exclusivity thing. But for the time being, you can only get them at Best Buy. So what are ya waiting for?
1 comment:
I love me some "Rantula" too!
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