News

Enter Santo: The First Adventures of the Silver-Masked Man

Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1961 / 72 Min., 76 Min. / B&w / 1.66: 1 / Region Free Blu ray

Starring Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta, Joaquín Cordero

Written by Enrique Zambrano, Fernando Osés

Directed by Joselito Rodríguez

To begin to understand the byzantine nature of Mexican culture, look no further than the town of Tulancingo, home to Mesoamerican pyramids built in 1000 B.C. and the statue of El Santo erected in 1985.

Born in 1917 in the Mexican state of Hidalgo, Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta was a folk hero whose mythological status was manufactured out of whole cloth, the cloth in question being a form-fitting mask that Huerta wore everywhere—at work or a night on the town. Huerta began his wrestling career in the late 30s but he didn’t don the silver mask of El Santo until 1942—ten years later his legendary status was confirmed in a series of low rent...

¡Ai Caramba! It’s the best movie ever made about a killer Spanish Conquistador from beyond the grave. This is probably the most satisfying of Richard Cunha’s monster romps despite being rudimentary in all respects. The script is dire and the monster just a generic bogeyman, but the actors are pleasant and the locations attractive. The filmmakers had the last laugh anyway, as the plain-wrap show garnered a nationwide theatrical release. The Film Detective wisely brought on Tom Weaver to front the extras, as he had the picture fully documented years ago.

Giant from the Unknown

Blu-ray

The Film Detective

1958 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 78 min. / Street Date January 15, 2021 / Available from The Film Detective / 24.95

Starring: Ed Kemmer, Sally Fraser, Bob Steele, Morris Ankrum, Buddy Baer, Gary Crutcher, Oliver Blake, Jolene Brand, Billy Dix.

Cinematography: Dick Cunha

Makeup: Jack P. Pierce

Original Music: Albert Glasser

Written by Frank Hart Taussig, Ralph Brooke

Produced by Marc Frederick,...

The worst nightmare for people with arachnophobia, there's a "crawling terror 100 feet high" on the loose in Tarantula, and ahead of the film's Blu-ray debut on April 30th from Scream Factory, we've been provided with the full list of special features for the 1955 creature feature.

Press Release: Los Angeles, CA – Giant spider strikes! Scream Factory proudly presents the ‘50s horror classic Tarantula on Blu-ray for the first time on April 30th, 2019. This release comes packed with bonus features such as a new 2K scan of the original film elements and new audio commentary. Fans can preorder the film now at shoutfactory.com.

Biochemist Gerald Deemer has a plan to feed the world by using a special growth formula on plants and animals. Instead he creates terror beyond imagining when his work spawns a spider of mammoth proportions!

Feeding on cattle and humans, this towering tarantula has the people of Desert Rock,...

It’s big, it buzzes, and it screams like a banshee. So why is the Mantis monster so ho-hum? Universal-International tries to squeak out another boffo big bug epic, but 1957 screens were already crowded with grasshoppers and scorpions — and the screenplay is derivative — and somebody allowed producer William Alland to throw in every stock shot that wasn’t nailed down.

The Deadly Mantis

Blu-ray

1957 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 79 min. / Street Date March 19, 2019 / 27.99

Starring: Craig Stevens, William Hopper, Alix Talton, Donald Randolph, Pat Conway, Florenz Ames, Paul Smith, Harry Tyler.

Cinematography: Ellis W. Carter, Clifford Stine

Film Editor: Chester Schaeffer

Original Music: Irving Gertz, William Lava, Henry Mancini

Written by Martin Berkeley, William Alland

Produced by William Alland

Directed by Nathan Juran

I grew up partly in the Mojave Desert. Our red ants were aggressive (and they stung!), our grasshoppers big and strong, and our scorpions were as scary as the...

With 2018 coming to an end, Scream Factory is giving horror fans plenty of titles to get excited about in 2019 with a bunch of new Blu-ray announcements for March, including 1955's Tarantula, Man's Best Friend (1993), 1966's The Witches (starring Joan Fontaine), and more!

From Scream Factory: "We’re being attacked by giant insects next Spring as the 1950s cult favorites Tarantula and The Deadly Mantis both scuttle to Blu-ray on March 19th!

Tarantula (1955) – Biochemist Gerald Deemer has a plan to feed the world by using a growth formula on plants and animals. Instead he creates terror beyond imagining when his work spawns a spider of mammoth proportions! Feeding on cattle and humans, this towering tarantula has the people of Desert Rock, Arizona running for their lives. Can this horrifying creature be stopped or will the world succumb to its giant claws? This classic sci-fi film from director Jack Arnold stars John Agar...

‘3rd Dimension!’ ‘Technicolor!’ Paramount underwent a difficult post-production learning curve getting this early entry in the 3-D craze out the door and into waiting theaters. Fernando Lamas and Arlene Dahl decorate the colonial-era costume drama, injecting some heat into their frisky wrestling match meet-cute love scene. Rip those bodices!

Sangaree

3-D Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1953 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 94 min. / Street Date October 16, 2018 / 34.95

Starring: Fernando Lamas, Arlene Dahl, Patricia Medina, Francis L. Sullivan, Charles Korvin, Tom Drake, John Sutton, Willard Parker.

Cinematography: W. Wallace Kelley, Lionel Lindon

Film Editor: Howard A. Smith

3-D Blu-ray restoration: 3-D Film Archive

Original Music: Lucien Cailliet

Written by David Duncan, Frank L. Moss, from the novel by Frank Slaughter

Produced by William H. Pine, William C. Thomas

Directed by Edward Ludwig

Producers William H. Pine and William C. Thomas turned out profitable Paramount product for fifteen years, although few of their shows were accorded artistic accolades.

Wow! Prime stop-motion animation from the heyday of monstrous science fiction, in a new restoration that puts a brilliant shine on those creepy crawly critters. Richard Denning fights giant arachnids while Mara (swoon) Corday frets and wrings her hands, waiting for the next kissing scene. The new scan clears up a lot of flaws, and gives us a much better look at the Lost Art of stop-motion magic.

The Black Scorpion

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1957 / B&W / 1:78 widescreen / 88 min. / Street Date March 20, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring Richard Denning, Mara Corday, Carlos Rivas, Mario Navarro, Carlos Múzquiz, Pascual García Peña

Cinematography Lionel Lindon

Special Effects Willis H. O’Brien, Pete Peterson

Art Direction Edward Fitzgerald

Film Editor Richard L. Van Enger

Original Music Paul Sawtell

Written by Robert Blees, David Duncan and Paul Yawitz

Produced by Jack Dietz, Frank Melford

Directed by Edward Ludwig

The ’50s big-bug monster show...

This French disc release of the Jacques Tourneur classic gets everything right — including both versions in picture perfect transfers. Devil debunker Dana Andrews locks horns with Niall MacGinnis, a necromancer “who has decoded the Old Book” and can summon a fire & brimstone monster from Hell, no election fraud necessary. Even fans that hate ghost stories love this one — it’s a truly creepy, intelligent highlight of the horror genre.

Night of the Demon

Region A + B Blu-ray + Pal DVD

Wild Side (Fr)

1957 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 95 & 82 min. / Street Date November 27, 2013 / Curse of the Demon, Rendez-vous avec la peur / Available from Amazon UK or Foreign Exchange Blu-ray

Starring: Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, Niall MacGinnis, Maurice Denham,

Athene Seyler

Cinematography: Ted Scaife

Production Designer: Ken Adam

Special Effects: George Blackwell, S.D. Onions, Wally Veevers

Film Editor Michael Gordon

Original Music: Clifton Parker

Written by Charles Bennett and Hal E. Chester

from the...

Jim Knipfel May 31, 2019

With a new King Kong vs. Godzilla movie coming soon from Warner Bros., we look back at the original simian vs. saurian showdown.

After basking in international acclaim for magically bringing King Kong and a fistful of dinosaurs to life in 1933, stop-motion giant Willis O’Brien suddenly found it very difficult to scratch up any work.

After the same year’s obligatory Son of Kong, it would be another 16 years before he got any substantial film work, and even then it was just a smattering. He worked on Mighty Joe Young, The Black Scorpion, and The Giant Behemoth, but as beautiful as the results were, O’Brien’s technique was simply far too slow and laborious, and too expensive for most B-monster movie productions. Finally recognizing he had himself become a dinosaur, he decided to take a different track.

In the last decade of his life, O...

For the last week of July, there may not be a lot of titles being released onto DVD and Blu-ray, but the ones that are making their debut are absolutely an impressive bunch.

On Tuesday, Synapse Films is bringing the 1983 cult classic Curtains to Blu-ray for the very first time ever and Paramount is making every Twin Peaks fan’s dreams come true this week with their Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery box set, which includes all the missing footage that we’ve all been waiting to be released for decades. Other titles coming out include the indie thriller The Den as well as a new Mystery Science Theater 3000 collection from Shout Factory.

Curtains (Synapse Films, Blu-ray & DVD)

John Vernon (Chained Heat, National Lampoon’s Animal House) and Samantha Eggar (The Brood, The Exterminator) star in this horror classic from the golden age of the slasher genre.

A...

When many people think of the great WrestleManias, a select number of events tend to pop up in the mind of most fans. WrestleMania X7 is probably the best WrestleMania of all time and a candidate for the best American wrestling PPV of all time. WrestleMania III is up there thanks to the spectacle of the Silverdome and a rather great event overall. That’s fine and dandy, but I’m going to throw a different WrestleMania into the mix. WrestleMania VII may be the best WrestleMania that nobody talks about.

First, let’s address the elephant in the room and one of the main reasons that most fans tend to shy away from WrestleMania: Gulfsploitation. I don’t even know if that is a word, but that is probably the best name for it. Taking Sgt. Slaughter who at that point had been portrayed as an American hero...

As we begin the month of October, I fondly remember Halloween Havoc, WCW’s annual fall extravaganza. Halloween Havoc was the one pay-per-view I looked forward to every year since it seemed like the company was inventing some weird gimmick. Some of them worked very well (The Thunderdome or Thunder Cage before the threat of lawsuit), others had mixed results (Spin the Wheel, Make the Deal) and others made me cringe (Chamber of Horrors, Sumo Monster Truck Match). Today, I want to talk about the one Halloween Havoc that didn’t have some weird or insane gimmick match: Halloween Havoc 1990 with the tagline “Terror Rules the Ring”. The card emanated from The Uic Pavilion in Chicago, a location that had held two previous Nwa PPVs: Starrcade 1987 and The Chi-Town Rumble.

At The Great American Bash, Sting defeated Ric Flair to win the Nwa World Championship in a fantastic main event,...