THE MONSTER COLLECTION (2021)
3-Disc Blu-ray
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 107 Minutes, 83 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 and 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:`1)
Directors: Gilles Penso, Alexandre Poncet
Cast: Phil Tippett, Joe Dante, Paul Verhoeven, Jon Davison, Rick Baker, Guillermo del Toro, Kevin Smith, Greg Nicotero, John Landis
Synopsis: A creature double-feature from the depths of the drive-in, The Monster Collection features two impressively comprehensive documentaries by Alexandre Poncet and Gilles Penso, Phil Tippett: Mad Dreams and Monsters, a portrait of the man behind some of the most recognizable movie creatures of the modern era, and The Frankenstein Complex, profiling the workaday wizards who turn rubber, latex, and resin into cinema’s most memorable and terrifying creations.
Phil Tippet - Mad Dreams and Monsters (2019) (83 min)
A wonderful doc from French filmmakers Gilles Penso and Alexandre Poncet that documents the life and career of the Oscar-winning stop-motion monster maker Phil Tippett, a man who sadly is a bit under sung in the pop culture vernacular today, but is well known to industry insiders and monster-kids who grew up on a steady diet of his fantastical robot and monster creations. Tippett was a bit of loner kid who fell in love with fantasy and horror at an early age after seeing a screening of Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion animation work in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, from that point on he dedicated his life to becoming an animator. He began making his own animation films in his bedroom on a super 8mm camera, before eventually breaking into feature films with the super-fun b-movie The Crater Lake Monster, and then onto working on the Star Wars franchise, and loads of other Hollywood blockbusters.
The film features Tippet himself as well as his collaborators like director Joe Dante (Piranha), George Lucas (Star Wars), Steven Spielberg (Jurassic Park), Paul Verhoeven (Robocop), and Industrial Light and Magic legend Dennis Muren (The Abyss) talking about his wild imagination, artisan craftsmanship and how no one did it quite like Tippett did it.
Tippett worked for years as a master of his craft, but it was while working on Spielberg's Jurassic Park that he saw the dawning of the age of CGI special effects, and saw the writing on the wall. Not content to go the way of the dinosaur he adapted to the new format, but with the eye and heart of a stop-motion animator that made his work unique. We also get to meet his wife and business partner Jules Roman, the CEO of Tippett Studios, who runs the business side of things, allowing him his freedom to explore his art while she holds down the business end, which he has very little interest in.
The doc is a bit short at 83-minutes but it's all good stuff with no fluff, they cram it full of wonderful appreciations of Tippett's career, his eccentricities and, and his long and fascinating career that has inspired the imagination of monster kids of all ages for decades.
The Frankenstein Complex (2015) (107 min)
The Frankenstein Complex is an earlier doc from French filmmaking duo Gilles Penso and Alexandre Poncet, it's a love letter to practical special effects beginning with the work of Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff and Jack Pierce on through to the golden age of special effects in the 80's and beyond. Lots of talking heads here, we have Kevin Smith (Tusk), Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy), Steve Johnson (The Abyss), Phil Tippett (RoboCop), Rick Baker (American Werewolf in London), John Landis (An American Werewolf in London), Stan Winston’s son Matt Winston, Joe Dante (The Howling), and Alec Gillis (Starship Troopers) talk quite candidly about their greatest creations, their biggest disappointments, the difficulty achieving their creations onscreen, and tons of great behind-the-scenes anecdotes. You get to hear Steve Johnston talk about how effects guys were sort of like rockstars, and how working with James Cameron on The Abyss was a grueling and how his contribution was largely overshadowed by the CGI water-tentacle seen in the film, foreshadowing Spielberg's groundbreaking Jurassic Park which melded practical and CGI and blew open the gates for digital effects work from that point on.
We also get a ton of talk about stuff like Gremlins and John Carpenter's The Thing, but sadly Rob Bottin of The Howling and The Thing chose not to participate in the doc, but thankfully there's still plenty of love for these film from the participants.
Seeing all these guys in shorter featurettes on special edition Blu-ray has always been a highlight for me, but seeing them on a full-length doc digging into the nitty gritty of making these films was almost sensory overload I loved it so much. Digging up dirt on each other, exposing the challenges of making these iconic creatures and effects, and the struggles of adapting from practical to digital, and how the blend of both schools makes for the best effects today, even commenting on how Underworld was way too heavy on digital, in the words of Rick Baker, “just because you can have a hundred werewolves running across the ceiling, doesn’t mean you should", 'nufff said.
Audio/Video: Both docs arrive on Blu-ray from Doppelgänger Releasing, each housed on their own Blu-ray disc, framed in 1.78:1 widescreen in 1080p HD. Sources can vary and the image quality waxes and wanes with the vintage and archival footage, but overall both films are handsome, well-edited and well-shot docs, but you can tell there's some lower resolution stuff throughout. That said, there's plenty of fine detail in the image most of the time with good clarity and color throughout.
Audio on both discs comes by way of both English DTS-HD MA 2.0 and 5.1 with optional English subtitles. Some of the dialogue slips into French momentarily, but the majority of what we are hearing is English and sounds terrific with no issues. It's a doc so don't expect a robust 5.1 sound design, but the score from co-director Alexandre Poncet sounds great. A nice touch is that both score are available as isolated tracks in uncompressed DTS-HD MA 2.0.
As entertaining as the docs are the feast of extras, with each of the docs get their own array of extras on their respective discs. The Phil Tippet doc gets an audio commentary with Tippett and the directors, but there is commentary on The Frankenstein Complex. Each disc also offers a making-of documentary about the documentary, which are both fun and well done. There are also 12-18 minutes of deleted scenes for each films, galleries and a trailer for the film, plus the option to view the film with the previously mentioned isolated score track in uncompressed DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo.
Just those extras would have been fantastic, but no sir, we get a third disc which is dedicated to even more extras for both films, plus a collection of Phil Tippet shorts and stop-motion animation, and a virtual tour of Phil Tippett sculpture creation spanning from Star Wars on through to Dragonslayer, Coneheads, Cloverfield and Hellboy!
Just those extras would have been fantastic, but no sir, we get a third disc which is dedicated to even more extras for both films, plus a collection of Phil Tippet shorts and stop-motion animation, and a virtual tour of Phil Tippett sculpture creation spanning from Star Wars on through to Dragonslayer, Coneheads, Cloverfield and Hellboy!
The extended interviews and conversations on this bonus disc, combined with the the short stop-motion animation films and virtual gallery make this worthy of a purchase all on it's own. Some og the goodies include a 23-minute master class with Guillermo del Toro; an hour-long xxtended conversation with John Landis and Joe Dante, plus a half hour extended interview with Mick Garris, another half hour with Steve Johnson and John Vulich. These guys are all luminaries of genre filmmaking, and these interviews are a goldmine as they lay on the love for those who inspired them and talk about their own creations.
My favorite nuggets here are the stop-motion animated Phil Tippett shorts, we get both the 10-minute Prehistoric Beasts (1985) and the 3-minute MutantLand (2010), plus 15-minutes of early animation tests he made in his bedroom on super 8mm as a kid! Extras are capped off with a 22-minute virtual tout showcasing 360-degree videos of some of his iconic movie sculptures.
The three-disc set arrives in a four-panel fold-out digipack adorned with gorgeous illustrated artwork on all sides with some beautiful illustrations of iconic horror and fantasy creations from Pan's Labyrinth, Star Wars, Gremlins, An American Werewolf in London, Frankenstein, Robocop and many more. The discs, also adorned with attractive imagery, slip into a cardboard pockets, which I am not a huge fan of, and I am not a fan of digipacks in general, while they do offer plenty of space for artwork they do tend to wear with use rather quickly,, and my copy is already showing dog-eared signs of wear. Also, the cardboard stock is a bit flimsy itself, and a slipcover of some sort would have afforded bit more protection to the digipack.
Special Features:
Disc One: Phil Tippet: Mad Dreams and Monsters Extras
- Feature Commentary with Phil Tippett and Directors Alexandre Poncet and Gilles Penso-
- Isolated Score Track (DTS-HD MA 2.0)
- Making the Monsters (101 min) HD
- Deleted and Alternate Scenes (12 min) HD
-Photo Gallery (10 min) HD
- Theatrical Trailer (2 min) HD
Disc Two: The Frankenstein Complex
The Frankenstein Odyssey (57 min) HD
Deleted and Alternate Scenes (18 min) HD
Digital Craftsmanship (15 min) HD
Photo Gallery (88 min) HD )
Theatrical Trailer (2 min) HD
The Frankenstein Complex Musical Score (DTS-HD MA 2.0)
Disc Three: Bonus Disc
Frankenstein Complex Conversations and Interviews
- Master Class with Guillermo del Toro (HD; 23:22)
- Extended Conversation with John Landis and Joe Dante (59 min) HD
- Extended Conversation with Mick Garris (27 min) HD
- Extended Conversation with Steve Johnson and John Vulich (29 min) HD
- Q & A with Joe Dante, Alexandre Poncet and Gilles Penso (20 min) HD
- The Lair of Rick Baker (9 min) HD
- The Lair of Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr. (14 min) HD
- Paper Monsters: The Art of Charles Chiodo (13 min) HD
- Living With Monsters: The Art of Kevin Yagher (15 min) HD
- Sympathy for the Devil: Interview with Bernard Rose (10 min) HD
- The Gremlins Pool: Interview with Sacha Feiner (11 min) HD
- From Latex to Pixels: The Art of Gino Acevedo (9 min) HD
- The Beauty and the Beasts: The Art of Ve Neill (14 min) HD
Mad Dreams and Monsters Interviews
- Joy of Working with Phil: Interview with Paul Verhoeven (6 min) HD
- Phil Will Fix This!: Interview with Joe Johnston (15 min) HD
- Animating with Phil: Interview with Tom St. Amand (6 min) HD
- Phil's Vision: Interview with Chris Walas (9 min) HD
- Friendship, Robots, and Dinosaurs: Interview with Dennis Muren (14 min) HD
- From Stop-Motion to CGI: Interview with Craig Hayes (5 min) HD
- Memories and Archives with Phil Tippett (12 min) HD
- Dinosaur Supervisor with Phil Tippett (5 min) HD
- Starship Troopers 2 with Phil Tippett and Jon Davison (3 min) HD
- "Dinosaur!" with Paul Verhoeven and Jon Davison (5 min) HD
- Mutant Fish with Joe Dante (4 min) HD
- Modern Craftsmanship with Alec Gillis (8 min) HD
- Robot Design with Craig Hayes (16 min) HD
- Musical Storytelling with Alexandre Poncet (15 min) HD
Phil Tippett Short Films
- Prehistoric Beasts (1985) with optional commentary by Phil Tippett (10 min) HD
- MutantLand (2010) with optional commentary by Phil Tippett (3 min) HD
- Phil Tippett's Early Animation Tests (14 min) HD
Virtual Museum of Phil Tippett's Creations
Star Wars & The Empire Strikes Back (1 min) HD
Dragonslayer (1 min) HD
Golden Child (29 sec) HD
Howard the Duck (1 min) HD
Robocop (2:40) HD
Willow (1 min) HD
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1 min) HD
Pinocchio & Gargoyles (1 min) HD
Coneheads (1 min) HD
Jurassic Park (1 min) HD
Dragonheart (2 min) HD
Starship Troopers (2 min) HD
Evolution (2 min) HD
Blade 2 (1 min) HD
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (1 min) HD
Hellboy (1 min) HD
Cloverfield (1 min) HD
If you're a monster-kid or a horror fan and love hearing about the behind-the-scenes magic and mayhem of genre filmmaking this is a must-own set. Three discs of wall-to-wall love for old school practical effects from the mouths of the directors and rockstar special effects guys that made the magic happen, a warts and all tell-all. These are the guys that gave you nightmares and supercharged your imagination as a kid, and the story of how they brought those iconic images to life is a story worth hearing over and over again. I love this three-disc set, it's a handsome and comprehensive package from Doppelgänger Releasing, highly recommended, and essential movie-magic sets of docs and extras.
