OUT OF THIS WORLD SCI-FI DVD COLLECTION ONE
4-Disc DVD Set
WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (1951)
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953)
CONQUEST OF SPACE (1955)
MAROONED (1969)
WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (1951)
Label: Via Vision Entertainment
Region Code: Region-Free (NTSC)
Rating: M
Duration: 85 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: Fullscreen (1.33:1)
Director: Rudolph Maté
Cast: Barbara Rush, Richard Derr, Larry Keating, John Hoyt
When Worlds Collide (1951) isn't one of those vintage sci-fi that glued me to the TV as a kid, it didn;t appeal to me the way the War of the Worlds or The Day The Earth Stood Still did for some reason. It's basically a cosmic spin of the Noah's Ark tale, featuring airplane pilot David Randall (Richard Derr, Terror Is A Man) who is hired to deliver a photographs from a South African observatory to the New York lab of renowned scientist Cole Hendron (Larry Keating, The Incredible Mr. Limpet). Once examined these photographs confirm that a pair of rogue (Bellus and Zyra) are going to collide with and destroy the Earth in only eight months' time. Hendron launches a massive plan to build an ark to save humanity from extinction, realizing the first planet Bellus will smash into the Earth destroying it, he plans to save a cross-section of earth's people to fly in the ark to the second planet Zyra. Hendron reluctantly teams up with with a wheelchair-bound millionaire Sidney Stanton to fund the project, but the two are at odds as the Stanton wants to use his influence to choose who goes for personal reasons versus Hendron's more selective approach. We also geta love triangle with Hendron's daughter (Joyce (Barbara Bush, It Came from Outer Space) pilot Steve and Dr. George Frey (Stephen Chase, The Blob), and some cool special effects by way of miniature sets of worldwide destruction including New York City Flooding, earthquakes and some stock footage of fires, tornadoes and erupting volcanoes. The worldwide destruction is pretty limited in scope, but I appreciated the vintage miniature work and backgrounds mattes used to achieve them, plus we get a cool silver rocket ship and a pretty optimistic ending. As a kid I probably didn't care for this one too much because the over
abundance of melodrama, the love-story set during an extinction level event didn't connect with me then, not now, but it does deliver some (but not enough) sci-fi world-ending action and destruction set pieces.
Special Features:
- Theatrical Trailer (2 min)
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953)
Label: Imprint Films
Region Code: Region-Free (NTSC)
Rating: M
Duration: 85 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround, English and French Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: Fullscreen (1.33:1)
Director: Byron Haskin
Cast: Gene Barry, Ann Robinson, Les Tremayne, Robert Cornthwaite, Sandro Giglio, Lewis Martin
I must have been eight or so the first time I saw War of the Worlds (1953) broadcast on TV, it wasn't late at night either, it was an afternoon matinee on a weekend, probably on either WPIX or WIGN. At that age it didn't usually take me long to get into a movie, all it had to be was a moving picture on the TV, typically horror or sci-fi, and that was usually enough to ensnare my TV-addled brain. This was something different though, this was actually interesting, something that felt epic with it's serious toned opening narration from Sir Cedric Hardwicke (The Ghoul) announcing that "across the gulf of space on the planet Mars, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our Earth with envious eyes, slowly and surely drawing their plans against us", and that pulled me right in. It was just a few short minutes later that what appears to be a meteor is streaming across the night sky and crashing to Earth in a rural area somewhere Southern California, where scientist Dr. Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry, The Atomic City) and library science instructor Sylvia Van Buren (Ann Robinson, Imitation of Life) just happen to be. In a matter of minute they're on site along with other local authorities and news reporters, and things get under way.
The object is more than what it at first seems though, later that night a threaded hatch unscrews on top of it, revealing an alien technology inside that shoots out a death-ray that disintegrates a few onlookers, including Sylvia's pastor uncle who altruistically attempts to communicate with the otherworldly technology. As panic sets in more of Martian death machines emerge in the area, with the military arrive to engage the alien menace, but to little effect. As this is happening news reports start filtering in from around the world, announcing that more of these Martian vehicles are landing all over the Earth and also devastating the local populations. It seems that a full scale Martian invasion of Earth has begun, and human technology and weaponry, not even the atomic bomb, has any effect on the invading force.
H.G. Wells' source novel The War of the Worlds was based in Victorian era-England, but the film moves the setting to then contemporary '50s Los Angeles, and the Martian war machine are also quite different too. In the novel they're 10-story towering tripods but in the film they go a different route, they look a bit like a floating metallic manta-ray with glowing green lights and a death-ray mounted atop a snakelike arm. Though they're is mention that they have invisible legs, though to the casual viewer these will certainly look to be self-propelled flying spaceships, but if you look close the invisible legs are briefly seen early on, so they are in fact tripods of a sort.
Even as a kid growing up in the eighties having been raised on 70's and 80's films I don't remember thinking while I was watching this that the special effects looked dated. While the effects are certainly vintage looking today back in the eighties as a kid I thought they were damn near state-of-the-art, they were amazing. The green and red death-rays, the ominous hum and thrum of the alien war machines decimating everything in sight, it was bombastic and cacophonous, and I loved it then, and I still do today.
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary by actor Gene Barry and actress Ann Robinson
- Audio Commentary by Joe Dante, Bob Burns and Bill Warren
- “The Sky is Falling: Making “War of the Worlds” Documentary (30 min)
“H.G. Wells: The Father of Science Fiction” Featurette (10 min)
- “The Mercury Theater on the Air Presents: The War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast” (with stills of Orson Welles) (59 min)
- Theatrical Trailer (2 min)
CONQUEST OF SPACE (1955)
Label: Imprint Films
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: M
Duration: 80 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen (1.78:1)
Director: Byron Haskin
Cast: Walter Brooke, Eric Fleming, Mickey Shaughnessy, Phil Foster, William Redfield, William Hopper, Benson Fong, Ross Martin, Vito Scotti, John Dennis, Michael Fox, Joan Shawlee
Produced by five-time Oscar winner George Pal and directed by Byron Haskin, the same team brought us the seminal alien-invader flick The War of the Worlds (1953) comes another slice of science-fiction, this time it's of the more "realistic" variety - mission-to-another-planet. Earth has it's first orbing space station called The Wheel and a new space exploration rocket ship. On it General Merritt (Walter Brooke, The Return of Count Yorga) is in charge of our first extra-planetary mission, an endeavor to the red-planet Mars. Also joining the mission are his son Captain Barney Merritt (Eric Fleming, Queen of Outer Space), Japanese botanist Sgt. Imoto (Benson Fong, Our Man Flint), Irish Sgt. Mahoney (Mickey Shaughnessy, How The West Was Won), scientist Sgt. Andre Fodor (Ross Martin, The Colossus of New York), and the comic-relief, the fast-talking Brooklyn-born electrician Sgt. Jackie Seigel (Phil Foster, TV's Laverne & Shirley).
The trip is fraught with issues, the crew are not exactly simpatico, the radar goes down, a red-hot planetoid nearly impacts them, and Sgt. Fodor is killed by a micrometeoroid while performing repairs during a space-walk. The sergeant's death ways heavily on General Merritt, who throws himself into reading the bible, which combined with his "space fatigue" pushes him over-the-edge, as he starts to question if the mission itself goes against the word of God. He's so demented and consumed by this belief by the time that when arrive at Mars he attempts to scuttle the landing and kill everyone on board. His son manages to overpower him and manage a rough landing, but once they land his pops attempts to dump their water reservoirs and is accidentally killed by his son while trying to stop him. The only witness to the struggle is Sgt. Mahoney, who is weirdly loyal to the General, accusing the Captain of murdering his own father, refusing to see that the General had clearly gone mad.
What ensues is the team exploring the planet and attempting to make due on what limited water resources they have left, until the orbital position of Mars and Earth align properly for the return flight, a year later. Despite Mahoney's objections Captain Merritt becomes the mission leader, with the resentful Irishman constantly reminding him that once they return to Earth he will report the murder of the general and he will be hanged.
This is one of those "realistic" 50's sci-fi entries that was really total horseshit when it comes to the actual science, but let's give them credit, there was a lot we did not know about space and space travel back in the day. I sort of loved how it snows on Mars as the crew celebrate there first Martian Christmas, and are able to use the snow to replenish there water supplies. I wonder if that's were The Flaming Lips got the idea for their Christmas on Mars film/album? I also thought it was a bit odd that the atmosphere of Mars is Earthly sky blue with white fluffy clouds, but at least the sand was red. The stage sets used to realize the Mars are also pretty cool, as do The Wheel and mission spacecraft and matte paintings, they're executed and add a lot of visual flair to the flick. This is one I saw at least once as a kid on TV programs on one of those weekend matinee programs; it captivated me then, and it still was quite entertaining all these years later - even without the benefit of stop-motion creatures or rubber-suited aliens.
MAROONED (1969)
Label: Via Vision Entertainment
Region Code: Region-Free (NTSC)
Rating: M
Duration: 129 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 with Optional English, French and Japanese Subtitles
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen (2.35:1)
Director: John Sturges
Cast: Gregory Peck, Richard Crenna, David Janssen, James Franciscus, Gene Hackman
In the orbital-peril flick Marooned (1969), which came out just a few months before the nearly doomed Apollo 13 mission and is based on the 1964 novel by author Martin Caidin, three U.S. astronauts - commander Jim Pruett (Richard Crenna, Wait Until Dark), "Buzz" Lloyd (Gene Hackman, Night Moves), and Clayton "Stoney" Stone (James Franciscus, The Cat O' Nine Tails) - are the first crew of an experimental space station. The astronauts are only about five months into a planned seven-month mission, but due to Buzz's erratic behavior it's decided that they should end the mission and return to earth in the Apollo Ironman One spacecraft. As they orbit the Earth in Ironman One the rocket malfunctions, stranding the crew in orbit with oxygen supplies running low. As the pressure to find a work around mounts tensions rise both inside the capsule and at NASA where Director of Manned Spaceflight Charles Keith (Gregory Peck, The Omen) and Chief Astronaut Ted Dougherty (David Janssen, Two Minute Warning) debate what can be done to save them, including sending an experimental and untested spacecraft to rescue them. Onboard the spacecraft the astronauts are told to remain calm and let the eggheads at NASA worry about what to do, but they take it upon themselves to at least attempt to save themselves, all the while the already troubled Lloyd begins to crack under the increased pressure. A solid sci-fi thriller set in space that predates stuff stranded-in-space like Apollo 13 and Gravity, finely directed by John Sturgess (Bad Day at Black Rock) with an eye for authenticity the science and situations hold-up, and while the film can be a bit static there are some tense moments with a heavy claustrophobic atmosphere, and it's got some goosebump-inducing actual footage of the Apollo 11 launch.
The 4-disc DVD set arrives on region-free DVD from Via Vision Entertainment in standard definition looking like these are coming from older non-restored masters and not from the same masters as recent Blu-ray releases available for each of these films. Audio is lossy Dolby Digital in either 2.0 stereo or dual mono for each films and they're not dynamic but they do the job. The four discs arrives in a clear flipper tray keepcase, the disc themselves are black backgrounds with silver movie logos on each.
The only real set of extras comes by way of War of the World's which offers two commentaries, the first with actor Gene Barry and actress Ann Robinson, and a second "fan" track with Joe Dante, Bob Burns and Bill Warren; in addition to the 30-min “The Sky is Falling: Making “War of the Worlds” Documentary, the 10-min H.G. Wells: The Father of Science Fiction featurette, plus the hour-long The Mercury Theater on the Air Presents: The War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast with stills of Orson Welles, and a 2-min Theatrical Trailer.
There are vastly superior HD versions available of all four films courtesy of Via Vision Entertainment's premium sub-label Imprint Films which all have terrific extras and desirable packaging, but if you're just looking for an entry level introduction or re-visit with these vintage sci-fi classics this standard-def set will do nicely.
