It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958)

“Classic SF Horror That Inspired ALIEN and So Much More”

Edward L Cahn’s classic, claustrophobic, alien-on-the-loose horror gets a UK DVD and Blu-ray release from 101 Films.

Col Ed Carruthers (Marshall Thompson) and his crew have travelled to Mars. Now only Ed is left. A second ship is despatched to pick him up and bring him back so he can go on trial for killing all his crew members. Ed claims he’s innocent, and it soon becomes apparent what actually killed his chums.

Someone leaves one of the spaceship doors open and a monster gets on board. The ship takes off. The monster starts eating people (well, draining them of “all edible fluid”). It’s only a tiny rocket ship, and soon the monster has chased them into the attic (if this were a haunted house, which it is, only worse, because in space no-one can hear you...etc etc). 

Will anyone survive? Did the ending of this possibly inspire the ending of Ridley Scott’s ALIEN as much as it inspired the rest of his film? There’s even a scene of people eating and chatting near the beginning where you can imagine little Dan O’Bannon the future screenwriter thinking ‘Wouldn’t it be great if the monster wasn’t just inside the spaceship, but INSIDE ONE OF THE CREW?’

IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE looks horribly dated now, but at the time it must have been a cracker, head and shoulders above contemporary SF fare being offered by AIP, like THE BEAST WITH A MILLION EYES. Edward L Cahn gets some things absolutely right. That little model ship flying through space that we keep cutting back to might look a bit simplistic now, but it’s a great way of reminding us just how isolated the crew is. 

The sense of claustrophobia is increased by clever use of light and shadow, especially in the scenes with the monster - is this the first SF Horror Noir? Inspiring 1970s DR WHO in general (and the Robert Holmes story The Ark in Space in particular) we tend to see only a foot, a claw, or a silhouette. Mind you, when we do get to see him in all his toothy, wobbly-fingered glory he’s actually a cracking monster. I’d be scared if that was after me even now. 

While the acting is nothing special, everything else here definitely is, including some great monster movie music from the composing team of Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter. Watching this, it’s not difficult to see why IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE has been so influential to both TV and film. 101’s Blu-ray transfer is pretty good on the whole. Occasionally it’s a little blurry, and I’d recommend stepping down the resolution a notch on HD TVs, otherwise the image is too bright and looks too speckly. There are no extras. 

Edward L Cahn's seminal IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE is out now on UK DVD and Blu-ray from 101 Films

Invasion UFO (1980)

“A UFO Taster”

Gerry Anderson.

We don’t have many SF TV gods in the UK. While the US has Gene Roddenberry and Chris Carter, Kenneth Johnson and Joss Whedon, many of our cult favourites have been more of a group effort whose 'creators' tend to only get mumbled about. People talk instead of the ‘Phillip Hinchcliffe years’ of DR WHO, or that THE AVENGERS only really hit its stride once Brian Clemens and Albert Fennell got involved.

         But then there’s Gerry Anderson - a man who created not just one cult TV series, but several, with revolutionary model and effects work that’s still fascinating to behold today. Famous for his Supermarionation successes like THUNDERBIRDS and CAPTAIN SCARLET, UFO was Anderson’s early 1970s attempt at a live-action SF series. It’s still held in (deservedly) high regard, not least for trying to do straight-faced (and often downbeat) SF while TV cop shows were still Roger Moore and Tony Curtis in THE PERSUADERS and JASON KING with his remarkable hairstyles.

         And so we come to INVASION UFO, a bit of a curiosity that was made for American and European TV by cutting together big chunks of three episodes (Identified, Computer Affair and Reflections in the Water) with some little bits and pieces of three others (ESP, The Man Who Came Back and Confetti Check A-OK). 

         One presumes the aim was to give audiences a taster for the show proper and indeed, Network are releasing this on Blu-ray prior to bringing out the entire show later this year. The problem is that with such chopping about, while you get a bit of an introduction to the characters and situations, INVASION UFO doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

It does make for a whole lot of beautiful Blu-ray, though. Just like Network’s superb restoration job on SPACE:1999, the image here looks excellent. For some reason however, the original 1.33:1 aspect ratio has been blown up to 1.85:1. It’s actually not too much of a problem - there aren’t any obvious tops of heads cut off & if you didn’t know it was shot in a different aspect ratio you can’t really tell from this. It is, however, sincerely to be hoped that Network get this right for the full release.

         What INVASION UFO is very good for is letting you know if you’ll want to watch the entire show. Despite some dodgy and inconvenient fashions (the final segment gives us David THE BEYOND Warbeck, Anouska SCARS OF DRACULA Hempel and Barry PREY Stokes in string vests under the sea) the underlying arc plot - dying aliens want our organs - is played very seriously indeed. In fact the very opening shot feels more like an episode of THE SWEENEY (still five years away) as a trio of innocents are subjected to a bloody machine-gunning - but by a flying saucer.

Extras in this disc include the original 1980 VHS version (if you fancy some nostalgia / giving yourself a headache), a trailer, and full frame opening and closing titles. Oh, and I should probably mention - the opening title music is terrible and is nothing like Barry Gray’s memorable theme. Don’t worry, however, the rest of the music here is 100% pure Barry.

Network's Blu-ray release of INVASION UFO is available exclusively from their site now. Click here to find out more.

Shark Lake (2015)

“Features sharks and a lake.”

But mostly a lake. Admittedly the box art for this is honest in that this film features star Dolph Lundgren and (not very good CGI) shark action in roughly equal amounts, but the screen time afforded both is far outweighed by some dull soap opera antics, those “crowd-pleasing” time wasting standbys of a little girl, a dog, and an old lady who seems to have trapped the spirit of the family cat on her mobile.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We open on a shack belonging to Clint Grey (Dolph). Clint has been illegally keeping rare and exotic reptiles, amphibians and fish. The entire might of the local police force perform a raid, and the two of them end up chasing Clint as he makes his getaway.

In his van.

That has a shark in the back of it.

At least I think so. The van crashes into the lake. Clint gets arrested, and Clint’s three year old daughter gets adopted by soon-to-be “fiercely protective single mom” (thanks imdb) and police officer Meredith Hernandez (Sara Lane).

Five years pass.

Clint gets out of jail and returns to his remarkably clean and tidy-looking shack where the town’s local gang boss wants to have a word with him. “My money or my shark,” says the boss, which would have made a much better title for this film, or possibly for a TV show that will sadly never be. 

Meanwhile, something is eating people who stray into about three feet of water in the 200 square miles of the local lake, presumably by something that’s not just jolly good at hearing old people arguing, but can flatten itself to sneak up on you.

A bear gets blamed. We see the bear for a split second. It looks appropriately miffed to be in this film. Meredith meets a young chap called Peter (Michael Aaron Milligan) in a bar. Peter has glasses and a PhD that obviously isn’t in drama and he mumbles something about sharks. He’s bloody good, though, because he can tell not just the sex of a shark from a small polaroid photo but also whether or not it’s pregnant AND WITH HOW MANY BABY SHARKS.

Meredith and Peter engage in flirtation so mild and lacking in charisma that it’s like watching two blocks of wood trying to mate. 

Meanwhile a slimy shark hunter with a fake British accent turns up claiming to be from that well-known BBC TV series Fish Hunt. He interviews a few local lovelies before tackling the shark and getting everything wrong.

There are more deaths. Every now and then we catch a glimpse of CGI sharkiness. Every now and then we catch a glimpse of Dolph Lundgren. Shark and Dolph and Meredith and Peter meet for a climax of optically enhanced proportions (which isn’t saying much). 

SHARK LAKE really isn’t very good. Nobody seems terribly interested or good at what they’ve been assigned to do, especially the director, who does everything by the numbers, and the actors, who you think would welcome the opportunity to overact in something as ludicrous as this. Instead it’s as if Dolph has dosed everyone with quaaludes in order to make his own reasonable performance the standout (which it is, by the way).

Soda Pictures’ DVD offers you a trailer as extra. There’s an ‘options’ button on the menu but sadly these don’t include ‘eject the disc and go and watch something else’. But then, you can probably work that one out for yourself. 

SHARK LAKE is coming out on DVD from Soda Pictures on Monday 1st August

Buster Keaton: The Complete Short Films (1917 - 1923)

"Timeless comedy"

Previously available only on DVD, Eureka are now releasing the complete short films of Buster Keaton on Blu-ray in an impressive four disc set.

Ikea house?

And it IS impressive. What you get here is all of Keaton’s two reelers that he made between 1917 and 1923. That means thirty two films, each running around twenty minutes, with a total collective running time of nearly nine and half hours.

It will fly by, though. What’s immediately obvious on watching these is that the comedy is timeless, and that, even though some of the restorations are still rather scratchy, the skill and timing at work here shines through despite the limitations of the medium.

The threat of imprisonment features quite a bit in these

An inspiration for pretty much all comedy that followed, Buster Keaton’s influence can be felt on everything from the movies of Jackie Chan to the BBC show The Goodies, from Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoons to the films of Jacques Tati. Each short takes a basic - sometimes off-kilter - premise (Buster is a blacksmith, Buster gets married in Polish by mistake) and then runs with it. As soon as the comic potential of a scene is exhausted it’s onto the next one, sometimes linked by the most spurious of threads. 

And, of course, lots of them end in chases - through LA, around and up and down houses, through the wastelands of the frozen north, and so on, with remarkably resourceful comic use of various props found along the way. 

A night at the opera

Eureka’s Blu-ray set offers new 1080p restorations. As well as the films themselves we get alternate endings for CONEY ISLAND and MY WIFE’S RELATIONS, a pre-release version of THE BLACKSMITH that contains four minutes of extra footage, and there’s often the option of multiple music scores. Joseph McBride provides commentary tracks on six films. 

There’s a new exclusive video essay by David Cairns entitled That’s Some Buster, as well as an introduction by preservationist Serge Bromberg, actor Pierre Étaix discussing The Art of Buster Keaton, and audio of Buster at a party in 1962.

Fantastic acrobatic work in COPS

Finally, you get a massive 184 page book that includes a roundtable discussion on Keaton, detailed notes on each (!) film, a new essay on both versions of THE BLACKSMITH, as well as archival imagery, a chapter on the music, advice on further reading, and more. Truly impressive.

Shame

I’ll conclude this review by saying my plan was to watch these discs and then suggest which of Keaton’s shorts were most worth watching. But that wouldn’t be fair to him or to you, because actually they’re all great. There isn’t a single film here that doesn’t have its moments of startling creativity or laugh-out-loud comedy. My advice? Grab this set, free up a weekend, start on disc one and prepare to be amazed, impressed and astounded. And to laugh. Lots and lots and lots. 

Eureka are releasing BUSTER KEATON: THE COMPLETE SHORT FILMS 1917 - 1923 on Region B Blu-ray on 

Monday 25th July

Absolute Beginners (1986)

Julien Temple’s colourful mid-1980s British movie musical gets a sparkling Blu-ray and DVD release courtesy of Second Sight.

London, 1958. Struggling photographer Colin (Eddie O’Connell) is going out with Crepe Suzette (Patsy Kensit). Crepe (actually, nobody ever calls her that) is an aspiring fashion designer working for Henley (James Fox). 

When she revolutionises hemlines by taking them up rather than down (and engaging in one of the movie’s many dance numbers while going about it) she leaves Colin for the promise of Paris and as much James Fox as she would like (ie none at all, really).

In order to win her back, Colin decides to compromise his idealism by getting a job with pop promoter Lionel Blair. Along the way he has entrepreneur David Bowie sing to him from a giant typewriter, gets to meet fascist lunatic Steven Berkoff in full fascist lunatic Steven Berkoff mode, and gets involved in the Notting Hill race riots before he manages to save the girl from Henley (who turns out not to be that interested in girls anyway) and have her to himself. 

A brave move by a small British film company whenever it might have been made, but especially in the cinematic doldrums that was the UK industry in the mid-1980s, time has been very kind indeed to the ambitious, colourful spectacle that is ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS. I reviewed the BFI's new Blu-ray of Val Guest's energetic, slightly bizarre late 1950s Soho odyssey EXPRESSO BONGO on here a while back, and if you liked that movie, you'll like this. 

ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS certainly has things wrong with it (you really need actors like Gillian Hills and Oliver Reed to carry the lead roles) but there’s so much right that the movie’s 108 minute running time just flies by. 

The 'right' things include some great songs (including the cracking main title theme by David Bowie as well as Ray Davies’ mordantly witty Quiet Life), amazing sets, daring photography, buckets of cameos for those who want them, and above all a radiantly glowing depiction of city life that British cinema sadly seems rarely capable of achieving. 

Second Sight’s disc comes with a new 53-minute documentary courtesy of David Gregory and Severin Films. It’s absolutely worth a watch, featuring interviews with writer-director Temple, Palace Pictures boys Nik Powell and Stephen Woolley, DP Oliver Stapleton, production designer John Beard, and actors Eddie O’Connell and Ed Tudor-Pole (but no Patsy Kensit). 

The story of the film’s financing, production and the aftermath will probably hold few surprises for anybody familiar with the crazy world of film production but it’s nice to see that at least all those interviewed here seem to have come through the experience relatively unscathed.

ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS left a lot of viewers non-plussed back in 1986, and I have to admit I was one of them. Too young and too used to cinema fare like ALIENS, TOP GUN and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, I hadn’t grown up enough, seen enough or read enough to appreciate just how very good, and how very special, Julien Temple’s debut feature is. ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS is a remarkable, flamboyant, daring, and quite marvellous film, and Second Sight’s presentation shows it at its best. 

Julien Temple's ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS is out on Blu-ray and DVD from Second Sight on Monday 25th July 2016

The Time Travelers (1964)

It’s time for another slice of ropey 1960s ‘classic’ SF courtesy of Fabulous Films, as they release Ib ANGRY RED PLANET Melchior’s THE TIME TRAVELERS on UK DVD.

A group of scientists led by Preston Foster (1932’s DR X) open a time portal that takes them just over a hundred years into the future. The landscape has become scorched and barren (some very effective location filming - California has rarely looked as alien as this). 

Pursued by mutants the team take refuge in a cave, which turns out to lead into the underground base of all that is left of human civilisation following a nuclear war (which we see via stock footage). Leader John Hoyt explains that, as well as building rather peculiar-looking androids with numbers written in shaky marker pen on their chests, the underground community is busy building a rocket ship. Earth is no longer able to support life and the only option is to escape the planet.

Everything goes wrong. The rocket gets destroyed. Our heroes rebuild their time portal and return to 1964 only to discover they’ve got that wrong as well - because of a mistake their earlier selves are still in the laboratory but moving very slowly. The ending suggests that they are trapped in a time loop.

THE TIME TRAVELERS has a pretty downbeat ending for a 1964 science fiction film. Despite having a tiny budget, it boasts ideas used a few years later in Irwin Allen’s TIME TUNNEL TV series, as well as the third season 1968 STAR TREK episode ‘Wink of an Eye’.

It’s all rough and ready fun. Sadly, unlike ANGRY RED PLANET or REPTILICUS there are no giant monsters, but THE TIME TRAVELERS is actually better made and a bit more interesting than either of those. Fabulous Films’ DVD boasts a pretty good print with vivid colours (director of photography on this was a young Vilmos Zsigmond). There are no extras. 

Ib Melchior's THE TIME TRAVELERS is out on UK DVD from Fabulous Films on Monday 11th July 2016

Cocoon (1985)

Ron Howard’s mid-1980s feel-good science fiction fantasy gets a 30th anniversary Blu-ray release courtesy of Eureka.

Friendly aliens are trying to retrieve members of their kind who came to earth “one hundred centuries ago”. To do this they employ down-on-his-luck Jack Bonner (Steve Guttenberg) to take them in his boat to the sea trench where the alien cocoons have been safely stored. Once removed, they store them in a local swimming pool, not knowing that the pool is used illegally by some naughty pensioners from the nearby retirement home.

The cocoons have the effect of revitalising the oldsters, providing them with a ‘fountain of youth’. Of course, the aliens plan to take the cocoons away with them, but will they offer the old people the chance to go with them?

COCOON could have been awful - sickly, sentimental and dull. The fact that it isn’t is down to Ron Howard’s careful direction of a group of seasoned actors, allowing them off the leash in the early stages of the film but ensuring their performances become more measured and considerate as the film goes on and the issues raised by the plot become more serious. 

There aren’t many horror or science fiction movies that are completely owned by the old people (I can think of COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES and that’s about it) but COCOON is one, and it’s actually a better treatment of its subject matter than Steven Speilberg’s similarly-themed ‘Kick the Can’ segment of TWILIGHT ZONE - THE MOVIE. There are some youngsters in it, but Steve Guttenberg and Tahnee Welch’s relationship is a bit boring and Howard quite rightly concentrates on all the fun his elderly cast is having. 

Extras on Eureka’s disc include a commentary track from Ron Howard, five featurettes including behind the scenes, a profile of the director, as well as pieces on the actors and on creating the aliens. You also get TV spots, trailers for the original, and a trailer for COCOON 2: THE RETURN, as well as a booklet with new writing on the film. 

Ron Howard's COCOON is coming out on Blu-ray from Eureka on Monday 18th July 2016