More Universal Monsters?

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More Universal Monsters?
Topic Started: Aug 27 2009, 08:37 AM (1,505 Views)
Laughing Gravy	Aug 27 2009, 08:37 AM Post #1
Revered in the UK Posts: 11,059 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: August 31, 2005	Jim Clatterbaugh, editor of MONSTERS FROM THE VAULT (the best magazine of its type out there), has advised us that Universal is preparing a set of classic horrors for release this fall. I think this will be similar to the set that was previously a Best Buy exclusive. Jim says he is sworn to secrecy for now but that "all the titles will be making their first appearances on DVD, and two of the titles will be making their home video (any format) debuts." Hmmmmm... The Holy Grail of course would be ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, a Paramount picture now owned by Universal. What has never been on home video from Universal, amongst their classic horrors? THE MAD DOCTOR OF MARKET STREET and THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. RX are the two that spring to mind. There's also THE MYSTERY OF MADAME ROGET and THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD, which qualify, I guess. Oh, and THE SPIDER WOMAN STRIKES BACK. Better known films that have been released on VHS but never on DVD include HOUSE OF HORRORS, THE MAD GHOUL, JUNGLE CAPTIVE and JUNGLE WOMAN, and the Paramount MURDERS IN THE ZOO. Stay tuned.



Cartoonguy	Aug 27 2009, 06:52 PM Post #2
Balcony Gang, Foist Class Posts: 66 Group: Members Member #548 Joined: August 18, 2008	Paramount’s The Monster and the Girl (1941) was another title Universal released on VHS, who knows maybe we will finally see Bob Hope’s The Cat and the Canary (1939) on DVD. Cartoonguy



panzer the great & terrible	Aug 28 2009, 05:37 AM Post #3
Mouth Breather Posts: 10,297 Group: Members Member #13 Joined: September 3, 2005	Scraping the bottom of the barrel again. Time for Blu-Ray! You know, there are hundreds of great Universals these bozos don't know about, but they wouldn't appeal to teenage boys. It's the demographics thing. Universal made lots of excellent weepies in the Thirties. They had John M. Stahl, one if the great directors, but the MBAs have never heard of him.. I've said it before and I'll say it again: some enterprising dumbass should bomb Harvard Business School. That would do something. Bombing the Federal Building in Oklahoma City and the World Trade Center accomplished exactly zip, but if you got rid of a whole raft of MBAs and the idiots who teach them, you'd relieve society of some of its worst criminals.
	We Wear Short Shorts Flying Purple People Eater


Laughing Gravy	Aug 28 2009, 07:15 AM Post #4
Revered in the UK Posts: 11,059 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: August 31, 2005	Um, well, that's a LITTLE drastic. But I will say I know or have met a few Harvard MBAs, and they are, without exception, assholes. But then, I feel the same way about police officers, except for the two that used to work in Mayberry. Okay, that said... If you check the Warner Archives "Best Sellers" list, you will find that the horror/sci-fi titles outsell everything else, and a Universal "Backlot Weepies" series would do very poorly compared to a 3-disc set of the Captive Wild Women films, rotten as those are, I'll bet you. The Mad Ghoul is a nasty, foul-tempered little horror classic, actually, that surprisingly lives up to its ghastly title, and House of Horrors ain't bad a'tall.



panzer the great & terrible	Aug 28 2009, 10:27 AM Post #5
Mouth Breather Posts: 10,297 Group: Members Member #13 Joined: September 3, 2005	Oh, I know. I just wish the old movie thing wasn't so completely dominated by nerds, but how unrealistic is that? I've met any number of nice cops, but MBAs are another matter. Tell me: is there another country in the world where guys with a master's degree boss people with doctorates? Where else do the less educated people run the show? We just came off eight years of a president with an MBA and the country wasn't in worse shape in my lifetime. First thing, kill all the MBAs, and then we can start on the insurance people. There will be more food for the rest of us. Trust me on this.
	We Wear Short Shorts Flying Purple People Eater


CliffClaven	Aug 28 2009, 01:44 PM Post #6
Balcony Gang, Foist Class Posts: 228 Group: Members Member #712 Joined: March 30, 2009	In a universe where you can get box sets of failed sitcoms while Laurel & Hardy fester in a vault . . . Where the Paramount Marx Brothers are mastered from ragged prints and packaged with ten minutes of beyond-pathetic bonus features . . . Where the only Mr. Magoo in sight is the Christmas special and the sorry TV series . . . I got depressed and forgot where I was going with this.



Laughing Gravy	Aug 28 2009, 02:36 PM Post #7
Revered in the UK Posts: 11,059 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: August 31, 2005	I dunno, except I am agreein' with ya. Read http://www.leonardmaltin.com today for a li'l peek into what goes into restoring a film. Fascinating. But you'd think if anything were gonna be restored, it would be those early Paramount Marx Bros. (early Paramounts almost always look like hell, but my gosh, what Criterion found for their Lubitsch set!). It is also worth pointing out that home video has been around since, what, 1979? And it took nearly 30 years for Max Fleischer's POPEYE cartoons to be released. I have nothing against any vintage films that ARE released. Yes, I think if you looked hard, you can find eight films better than the ones Sony released in those Screwball sets a few weeks ago, but that didn't make me curse the Screwball sets. Criterion has released Beastie Boy videos, Benjamin Button, and Chasing Amy when they should've been going after Laurel & Hardy films, but nobody bitches at them (well, not TOO much). Sony and Universal are doing a much better job lately, and Warners is doing much worse. Hmmmm. If VCI Entertainment didn't exist, we sure would be missing a lot of good stuff. Just thought I'd mention that. I'm excited about THIS.



CliffClaven	Aug 28 2009, 11:40 PM Post #8
Balcony Gang, Foist Class Posts: 228 Group: Members Member #712 Joined: March 30, 2009	Ah, yes. A lesson I learned early on was that VCI was about the only logo you could always trust on a public domain DVD title, followed by Roan (do they still exist?). I keep hoping they'll lay hands on decent prints of some particularly ill-served titles like Postal Inspector (Bela Lugosi! Flash floods! Bluebirds on the wallpaper!). And while we're griping, where are Red Skelton's movies? Maybe not classics, but at least as good as a lot of the Bob Hope vehicles. With high-quality legal releases of so much stuff on my wish list, I'm just that much greedier for the stubborn holdouts. Having grown blase about owning the once-unattainable Disney animated features -- they never even ran on TV when I was a lad -- I'm now thrilled to lay hands on semi-obscure fluff like Bullwhip Griffin.



Laughing Gravy	Aug 29 2009, 05:49 AM Post #9
Revered in the UK Posts: 11,059 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: August 31, 2005	Ah, Disney... Funny you should mention them. There seems, to this day, to be disagreement on what the correct aspect for their films of the 1960s should be. They often appear on DVD full-screen, and some say they were shot that way for eventual TV use and just matted for theatrical release, and some say no, there are true widescreen versions sitting in the vaults. I stay neutral, but for somebody of my generation, well... I grew up watching some of these Disney films on the TV show and loving them. Anybody remember... Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks with a Circus The Three Lives of Thomasina The Ugly Dachshund Lt. Robin Crusoe, USN Monkeys, Go Home! The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin The Gnome-Mobile Almost Angels The One and Only Original Family Band



CliffClaven	Aug 30 2009, 06:04 PM Post #10
Balcony Gang, Foist Class Posts: 228 Group: Members Member #712 Joined: March 30, 2009	We are wandering far afield from Universal Monsters, but what the heck. As a late-period Boomer I saw just about all the Disney output. Disney seemed to be the last studio that had an instantly identifiable house style. Monster movies, Sherlock Holmes, Abbott & Costello -- they all had a distinct Universal look and feel (By the sixties, this had devolved into a bland studio-tour look on their cheaper product, where Don Knotts movies and TV dramas looked exactly the same). MGMs always felt a little more plush, even at B level. And Monogram . . . Anyway, all these house styles faded away as the industry changed from a bunch of factories to armies of freelancers moving freely among the studios. Disney, meanwhile, kept that distinctive Disney look and feel on almost everything they did, whatever the genre and even for TV: deep-colored soundstage sets, an abundance of matte paintings and that distinctive music -- it was the same orchestral sound on all the films Gravy listed, and many more. The old Disney house style faded away by the late 70s, a few years before the near-takeover and the arrival of Eisner. But it outlasted all the other studios, and to this day viewers of a certain age can instantly peg an old Disney flick.



CliffClaven	Aug 30 2009, 08:03 PM Post #11
Balcony Gang, Foist Class Posts: 228 Group: Members Member #712 Joined: March 30, 2009	Have to confess, many Disneys age poorly but there are always some consolations. Sticking to the non-masterpieces here: I still enjoy Bullwhip Griffin. It's never as outrageous as you want it to be -- even the cartoon-style fight at the end is a bit restrained -- but the cast is appealing and Karl Mauldin is a great villain, starting the film with a thick beard and mustache and disguising himself by shaving off a bit for each reappearance. Island at the Top of the World is a sort of last-gasp attempt to clone 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Made in 1975, it's fun to look at and the effects are often impressive. The plot and characters are B-movie simple: a millionaire buys an airship and lures a professor to help him find his explorer son. All the Disney elements are there, but it never quite rises above OK. The superstitious, jabbering Eskimo is a bit jarring -- the 70s were a bit late for comic natives. Especially when you see he's played by Mako, a very polished actor who later starred on Broadway in "Pacific Overtures". Still, it holds together better the The Black Hole. Summer Magic is pure Disney comfort food. Hayley Mills is cute, Burl Ives is cuter, and it's a period film ("Time: Rag") in a mellow country community. Lots of light sentiment, low-key comedy and gentle songs. It's Pollyanna with all the drama and tension removed, but sometimes that's exactly what you need. Blackbeard's Ghost: Depends on your mood. Peter Ustinov is the title ghost; Dean Jones is the college track coach he haunts. Jones is surprisingly cranky much of the time; but the plot requires it. In many ways it's almost a parody of a Disney film, but there's entertainment to be had. Extra points if you can make a case that THIS is the film Pirates of the Caribbean ripped off. The Absent-Minded Professor is an oddity. It's set at a college, but the entire focus is on the adult, over-30 characters (aside from Tommy Kirk as the villain's affable idiot son). That's blasphemy for a Disney flick. But it's still pretty amusing and you've got the flying Model T. In Search of the Castaways: Almost generic Disney adventure. Hayley Mills and company travel around the world (nearly all rendered as lush indoor sets and matte paintings) searching for her father. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but non-traumatizing thrills and fun. The Shaggy Dog: Still fun, and very much a 50s time capsule. They've done a sequel and a remake with adult stars, but the perfect update would have had the cast of Malcolm in the Middle. Puberty, surrealism, one REALLY volatile parent . . . you could just see Malcolm growing fur and turning to the camera: "First acne. Now this!" Babes in Toyland is something to put on as background for a holiday party. As a movie it's a botch, but the cartoony set design is pure Mickey Mouse Club, there are nifty gag effects scattered all over and Annette looks very fetching in her fairy-tale costumes. On the down side, the story is weak and the songs are all over the map. I seem to recall that Annette's love lyrics kept coming back to the theme of "Cool your jets till the wedding, big boy."



marlin lee	Aug 30 2009, 09:30 PM Post #12
Charter Member Posts: 5,067 Group: Members Member #6 Joined: September 2, 2005	The Roan Group was bought by Troma. They still sell the Roan Group DVDs and have released at least some new DVDs under the Roan name. The only title I have released by Troma is The Tiger Woman. It is a decent print but not as good as the previous Roan Group titles.



Laughing Gravy	Aug 31 2009, 07:31 AM Post #13
Revered in the UK Posts: 11,059 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: August 31, 2005	Cliff, I like anything with Annette... with the exception of Babes in Toyland, which in her autobiography she called her favorite of her own films. Go figure. Still, that leaves us The Monkey's Uncle, which isn't on DVD, and the sequel, The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, which is. I enjoy the Absent-Minded Professor and its sequel, Son of Flubber, and of course The Shaggy Dog (I liked the belated sequel, The Shaggy D.A., when it came out, too). TWife's fave movie in this vein, incidentally, is The Moon-Spinners, which I've never seen. Didn't Don Knotts and Tim Conway team for a series of comedies for Disney in the 1970s? And I remember seeing The Ugly Dachsund when it came out, one of the few new Disney films I saw (too busy watching monster movies). Oh, yeah, and I hated both Tron and The Black Hole. Almost Angels was a film about the Vienna Boys Choir, and it used to be on the TV show from time to time (cut into 2 parts) and I loved it.



CliffClaven	Aug 31 2009, 11:28 AM Post #14
Balcony Gang, Foist Class Posts: 228 Group: Members Member #712 Joined: March 30, 2009	You need to get Leonard Maltin's book on Disney Films, which covers the live-action features from his lifetime and a few years beyond. Also, the Disney Movie Club has Monkey's Uncle and some other vintage exclusives, including So Dear to My Heart (a boy and his sheep), the original Incredible Journey (the animals don't talk), Kidnapped and a few real curios like Moon Pilot. Some earlier exclusives eventually got retail releases, such as the 1950's Robin Hood. Tim Conway and Don Knotts began to crop up individually in Disney films in the 70s, then were teamed in the Apple Dumpling Gang. They made a sequel, which promoted them from comedy relief to the main stars. Away from Disney they teamed for a batch of low-budget family comedies, but I don't think Disney put them in the same film again. There's a "Special Edition" Apple Dumpling DVD featuring interviews with both. Their interplay is interesting: Conway is a comedian on the lookout for gags; Knotts is a comic actor who makes the character funny. Knotts becomes an ornery Hardy to Conway's restlessly fumbling Laurel. Misadventures of Merlin Jones was actually the first of the two films. Maltin points out the obvious low budget and the fact that it breaks so clearly into two stories -- a sign this was meant to be a two-part TV show. When Merlin Jones was an unexpected hit, Monkey's Uncle was made with more money for special effects (the flying machine) and a Beach Boys/Annette number.



Frank Hale	Aug 31 2009, 11:50 AM Post #15
Balcony Gang, Foist Class Posts: 828 Group: Members Member #59 Joined: October 6, 2005	As I recall So Dear to My Heart was Disney’s personal favorite. I don’t think you mentioned Emil and the Detectives, which I remember as not too bad, although Maltin doesn’t seem to like it. Overall, I find it very difficult to stomach any Disney product made after Walt’s death in 1966. It was a studio on the ropes when Eisner came in. And, as they say, he performed a successful operation but killed the patient.


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