Beasts Unleashed (1955, 1956)

Eureka are releasing two 1950s monster movies, both examples of low budget (and in one case extremely low budget) monster mayhem, on a single Blu-ray disc. The package is a limited edition of 2000 and comes with an O-card slipcase and a booklet featuring new writing on AIP monster creator Paul Blaisdell and an essay on weird westerns. As for the films:

The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955)

I wrote about this pseudonymously Roger Corman-directed (at least in part) movie when I reviewed its previous DVD release and so you can read all about what I thought of the film in more detail here. Eureka’s 1080p presentation does upscale the film from that release but this is still an ultra-low early AIP effort with grainy black and white photography to match. 

Eureka’s disc offers you the opportunity to watch the film as seen at the cinema (77 minutes 19 seconds) or with a prologue added for TV to help explain the title (78 minutes 10 seconds). Extras include a trailer and a piece by film expert Mark Bourn on alien invasion movies (22 minutes) with special attention paid to THE BEAST WITH A MILLION EYES.

The Beast of Hollow Mountain (1956)

We switch to colour and a 2.35:1 aspect ratio for the second film in the double bill, an American-Mexican co-production for United Artists and shot in Mexico. Taken from pioneering stop motion animator Willis O’Brien’s desire to make a movie featuring cowboys fighting dinosaurs, BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN certainly features quite a few cowboys, lots of cattle and some charming Mexican village dancing. At the hour mark of this 79 minute film we finally get to see the dinosaur that has allegedly been eating the cattle, who is more charming than the dancing and, to be fair, is present to give us some slightly wonky but endearing stop motion action for the rest of the film.

Kim Newman covers ‘Dinosaurs in Cinema’ in a new 17 minute talking head piece where he goes into exactly why the stop motion process used in BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN was different from, say, that practiced by Ray Harryhausen, as well as talking about everything from the early animated ‘interactive’ (watch the piece to find out exactly how) short Gertie the Dinosaur up to the JURASSIC PARK series. You also get trailers for both films.

Beasts Unleashed is out from Eureka on Blu-ray in a limited edition of 2000 on Monday 20th July 2026

Primitive War (2025)

"More Fun than JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH"

Signature Entertainment are giving a much-deserved cinema release to PRIMITIVE WAR, a low budget (around $7 million if reports are to be believed) affair that pits Vietnam soldiers against dinosaurs, has plenty of monster action, and even at 135 minutes won't have you zoning out the way this year's JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH did.

We're in Vietnam in 1968. After some shenanigans rescuing a couple of POWs from the Vietcong, a platoon of soldiers known as the Vulture Squad are recruited to investigate the mysterious disappearance of some Green Berets in a distant jungle valley. When they arrive they are surprised (to put it mildly) to find the place crawling with dinosaurs. It's all the result of some pesky Russian experiment with wormholes, or something, and the Russians are keen to prevent the US from discovering what they have been up to. This the stage is set for a massive smackdown between US soldiers, Russian forces, and several boatloads of dinosaurs.

What you want from a film like PRIMITIVE WAR is lots of dinosaurs and lots of action, and the film doesn't skimp on either. There's also a refreshingly large variety of dinosaurs on display, and while the explanation for what's been going on is hardly the stuff of hard science the film doesn't give you much space to ponder it. 

As a dinosaur movie PRIMITIVE WAR is faster moving and a lot more fun than JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH. As a military vs the monsters movie it's stratospherically better than Neil Marshall's THE LAIR (not difficult) but it's also more entertaining watch than Julius Avery's OVERLORD. The CGI is absolutely fine and while the characterisation is a bit thin in the first act by the climax you'll be able to list all the members of Vulture Squad and how some of them meet their ends. Of course you'll have to watch the film to see who makes it out alive. Here's the trailer:

PRIMITIVE WAR is on general cinema release in the UK through the Odeon, Vue and Showcase chains from Friday 28th November 2025