Digi-Schlock: ROGER CORMAN SCI-FI CLASSICS (Shout! Factory DVD)

Roger Corman’s later work has always been treated well on DVD: almost every­thing from House Of Usher on has got­ten nice releases on disc, with his A.I.P. pro­duc­tions in par­tic­u­lar get­ting nice remas­ter­ing jobs and the occa­sional cool extra or two.  It’s a dif­fer­ent story for his ear­lier work.  Much of his pre-A.I.P. mate­r­ial has suf­fered from fuzzy look­ing boots and grey-market releases that never do jus­tice to the crafts­man­ship Corman invested in his early work.

Thus, it’s a breath of fresh air to see a trio of films he did for Allied Artists get­ting a hand­some treat­ment in the Roger Corman Sci-Fi Classics set.  Each film has got­ten a fresh trans­fer from gen­uine film mate­ri­als: they were trans­ferred from neg­a­tives and the improve­ment in clar­ity is sub­stan­tial.  There is light speck­ling appar­ent in each film but the black-and-white pho­tog­ra­phy looks rich and crisp.  Attack Of The Crab Monsters and Not Of This Earth are anamor­phi­cally enhanced while War Of The Satellites is pre­sented in a flat full-frame trans­fer.  It is not revealed on the pack­ag­ing whether the lat­ter title is pre­sented in an open-matte ver­sion or not but the com­po­si­tions do not appear to be com­pro­mised.  Mono audio is pro­vided for each title and they all sound fine.

Shout! Factory has also pro­vided a gen­er­ous com­ple­ment of extras to flesh out the two-disc set.  The first disc fea­tures com­men­taries for Attack Of The Crab Monsters and Not Of This Earth by genre historians/authors Tom Weaver, John Brunas and Mike Brunas.  Both are lively and detailed affairs, with the three men dis­cussing the dif­fer­ences between the films and their scripts, the careers of the dif­fer­ent actors involved and any other inter­est­ing back­ground trivia.

Highlights on the Attack Of The Crab Monsters track include a dis­cus­sion of the dis­puted ori­gins of the crab props and a funny story Weaver tells about how his mom dropped in while he was screen­ing the film at home: she asked ques­tions about what was going on, finally leav­ing after five min­utes when it made too lit­tle sense for her lik­ing.  Interesting mate­r­ial on the Not Of This Earth com­men­tary includes a dis­cus­sion of the dis­agree­ment between Corman and actor Paul Birch that led to him walk­ing off the film before its final day of shoot­ing and the rev­e­la­tion that the film is a child­hood favorite of Bill O’Reilly’s!

Another inter­est­ing inclu­sion on this disc is a pair of intro sequences that Herbert Strock cre­ated for Attack Of The Crab Monsters and Not Of This Earth when they played on tele­vi­sion.  Both come from rough-looking video sources but they’re fas­ci­nat­ing to watch nonethe­less and give younger view­ers insight into what it was like to see these films on tele­vi­sion back in the day. The first disc is rounded out by a video inter­view with Corman in which he lays out the sto­ries behind each film on the set in a tidy, tightly edited 12-minute pack­age.  As always, he is a con­cise and enter­tain­ing sto­ry­teller so it’s inter­est­ing to hear his com­ments on these early efforts.

The sec­ond disc adds even more:  the first is a 25-minute video trib­ute to Corman taken from a vari­ety of inter­views.  Contributors to this piece include Joe Dante, Peter Fonda, George Hickenlooper and Jack Hill, not to men­tion a large num­ber of visual and makeup effects men like Chris Walas, Peter Kuran, Kenny Myers and Phil Tippett.  Each strikes the bal­ance between pay­ing affec­tion­ate trib­ute to their one-time bene­fac­tor and pok­ing fun at the low-rent con­di­tions he had them work­ing under.  Fonda and Dante are among the most insight­ful com­men­ta­tors but Hill also scores a few mem­o­rable moments.  The inclu­sion of Hickenlooper takes on an unex­pected poignance in light of his recent pass­ing, par­tic­u­larly since he is one of the ones who praises Corman most highly.

However, the sweet­est and most sub­stan­tial of these extras is the grand finale: an epic col­lec­tion of trail­ers that cover much of Roger Corman’s fil­mog­ra­phy as a direc­tor.  A few of the early trail­ers are taken from video sources but most come from film ele­ments and look great.  Starting with Attack Of The Crab Monsters and con­tin­u­ing all the way to Frankenstein Unbound, watch­ing these trail­ers back-to-back allow the viewer to chart the growth of Corman’s skill and con­fi­dence as a direc­tor.  His body of work is one of the most impres­sive and accom­plished in the world of the b-movie and this pro­gram of trail­ers allows the viewer to get a sense of it all in one sitting.

In short, this Roger Corman Sci-Fi Classics set is an excel­lent col­lec­tion and a must for afi­ciona­dos of vin­tage b-movies.  Not only does it offer three movies in one neat pack­age, it also offers a sub­stan­tial visual upgrade for each and a bounty of wor­thy extras that takes the viewer deep into Corman-cinema lore.  If you’re a fan, you need this.

Sci-Fi Classics [Triple Feature] Attack of the Crab Monsters: A group of sci­en­tists are trapped on a remote island inhab­ited by atom­i­cally mutated giant crabs. War of the Satellites: An “unknown force” declares war against Earth when the United Nations dis­obeys warn­ings to cease and desist in its attempts at assem­bling the first satel­lite in the atmos­phere. Not of this Earth: A humanoid alien from outer space is sent to earth to bring back human blood to his home planet for trans­fu­sion purposes.