Hello!

If the news from Film Masters is true, we’re in for a pleasant surprise. A series of Roger Corman films are going to be shown at Cannes this year, and it looks like Film Masters is behind the recent restoration of Corman’s gangland saga Machine Gun Kelly. The 1958 feature stars Charles Bronson, Susan Cabot, Barboura Morris, Morey Amsterdam, Richard Devon and Jack Lambert. It’s quite a kick.

In the link to the original (very good) trailer one can see the blurb for a process called ‘Superama.’ It’s not a dodge, like American-International’s misleading ‘Wide Screen’ logos … it’s a variation on the film format SuperScope, grabbing a 2:1 slot out of the middle of a flat image. I saw a 35mm print of Machine Gun Kelly projected at Warners in 1978, when James Ursini was hired to do research for a film company. The anamorphic re-position cropped out at least one hand-held gun positioned low in the frame.

We assume that A.I.P. also made flat prints available … old 16mm TV prints were flat, with lots of ‘free space’ top and bottom. Film Masters says A.I.P. released two features format-adjusted for Superama in 1958, but there is actually a third.

Film Masters promises a ‘larger announcement,’ which we hope will mean a disc release. It’s a nice movie to book-end with Roger Corman’s later studio picture  The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.

Next up, Joe Dante circulated this link to the “Missing Movies Newsletter” for Spring 2026, which celebrates two re-found movies —

The first is a 1989 adaptation of a Jim Thompson novel, The Kill-Off, directed by Maggie Greenwald. The page has a link in which Ms. Greenwald herself explains what happened to her movie, and how she found it.

The second movie is a ‘gritty independent action film’ by Sam Firstenberg, Riverbend, also from 1989. We get to learn the story of the recovery of that film as well.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Some good news on the disc-viewing home front, thanks to a little help from friend Allan Peach and a win-win deal with Daughter #1.

I marked the date when I stopped being 3-D capable last year: on March 9, 2025 my fabulous 65″ LG TV died, the one that had both 4K and 3-D capability. Ever since electronics companies stopped manufacturing 3D monitors, I knew my days with 3-D were numbered. I’d even resigned myself to the inevitable: passive Blu-ray 3-D is terrific but not something to weep and wail over. Well, not too much.

We won’t go into my piddling reasons for not wanting a video projector, some of which have 3-D capability, but all of which use active glasses. The beauty of passive 3-D was that the glasses don’t have batteries. A dozen pairs cost very little.

It just so happens that my daughter’s TV is an old 40″ Samsung from 2015 with active 3-D capability. Serious 3-D enthusiast Allan Peach convinced me to try it out. She generously contributed it to the cause; and we drove it back from her place last week. Allan’s research showed the right glasses to order, and now we are in business once again.

The glasses were a bit pricey, and the first set I bought had a malfunctioning pair that didn’t synch with the TV no matter what we did. The Amazon replacements (next day service) made me fully functional. The TV is the one in my office to check discs for menus, extras, etc., which will work out well.

You needed to know ALL of this. At least we will be able to review the anticipated Jerry Lewis disc, and also the klunky but cute Cat Women of the Moon, whenever that comes out. The 3-D looks almost as good as on the old giant set. The 3-D reviews will flow.  At least for a little while longer, the thirty or so Blu-ray 3-D discs here will be able to do more than collect dust.

A public service of C.S.I. — CineSavant Self-interest Industries.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Here’s something nice for special effects fans, posted quite a while ago by by Ellen Woodrue.

Correspondent Lee Kaplan pointed us to this documentary on a fascinating film artist, Emilio Ruiz del Río.  He’s been creating film illusions with hanging miniatures and complex perspective tricks since the 1940s; we first learned of him through  David Lynch’s Dune in 1984. The ingenuity and precision employed are truly fantastic.

The hour-long show was directed by Sigrid Monleón for Aiete-Ariane films in 2008. Other notables contributing are Enzo G. Castellari, Guillermo de Toro, Ray Harryhausen, José López Rodero, Juan Piquer Simón, and Eduardo Noriega.

I could bring up Spanish language closed captions, and friend Malcolm Alcala showed me how to shift them to other languages. But the effects work on view needs no translation. The title does … it means ‘the ultimate trick.’

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

We’ll be back to the regular flow of incredible, world-shaking disc reviews presently. We went thin across this last weekend because we were away at a favorite spot. A 50th anniversary year is a good time to make a round-up of visits mit der loved ones, and the City By The Bay is my personal favorite away from home place in the U.S.. It’s just as un-affordable as Los Angeles, but many times more photogenic.

I’m crazy about that bridge, our own 7th wonder of the world. The weather seems to change every 20 minutes, so the bridge makes a fresh impact every time. I’d like to be able to sit a hour staring at it.

I won’t start listing the films that feature the Fort Point below … the day was cold so we pitied the poor Civil War- era soldiers that were stationed there long ago … the place is colder inside than out, and for some reason the wind howls through the inside harder too. The interior is not as big as it looks in this wide-angle photo. How they ever landed a helicopter in there, I’ll never know.

Of course, going up north is also an opportunity to visit the old Mustang, which daughter #1 is keeping up quite nicely.

And that brings us to a round-up of upcoming discs that caught our Eye … we’ve some real goodies to look forward to.

Since today’s review is an anti-nuke picture, we’ll start with Severin Films’ announcement a few days back of a pair of movies that were England’s biggest contribution to the Civil Defense controversies of earlier decades. Peter Watkins’ game-changing faux-documentary The War Game was produced for the BBC but barred from airing and became a short feature; it’s probably the most potent ‘public service message’ ever produced.

The Reagan/Thatcher-era shocker Threads goes much further to describe the ways that a nuclear exchange would destroy the fabric of civilization. It’s also a must-see, for those that can take it. We should expect that the promised 4K encodings, from original film materials, will present both shows in a new light.

We still have our noses to the web feed to learn when Severin plans to bring out its hinted-at 4K disc of Cy Endfield’s Zulu Dawn, the last of the big-scale colonial epics. Severin’s long-term planning has brought us at least one ‘miracle disc’ every few months in the last couple of years.

Sony just announced a 4K disc of the Schneer/Harryhausen/Juran The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, which is of course going to get a lot of attention. After being worked over several times in the last 20 years, they finally delivered a really satisfying Blu-ray a few years back, you know, the one where the Roc chick regained its best color.

The buzz I’ve heard is that a new 4K scan and remaster will be hard pressed to look better that what we already have. We’re eager to see what the remastering experts can do with it, and hope that they can keep the colors and grain in check. No radical revisions, please … but we’re sure we’ll like whatever we get.

Note that the cover poster touts the ‘sheer magic’ of Dynarama. That proves that the art came from the 1975 reissue. For 7th Voyage the process was called Dynamation. The term Dynarama was confected for The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.

Also without a nailed-down release date is Film Masters’ promised color remastering of the George Pal Destination Moon, which has had trouble looking good on home video. This is not a remaster from Technicolor elements. That would be fantastic, and we aren’t holding our breath for any such miracle. But the clips we’ve seen on the web look very promising.

The release includes Film Masters’ own version of Monogram/Walter Mirisch’s Flight to Mars to sweeten the deal. We of course love to see a super 4K remaster of the Lippert/Neumann Rocketship X-M with its top-rank music score by Ferde Grofé. All three pictures were tied up for decades by the Wade Williams Collection; hopefully other Williams holdings (Kronos! Kronos!) will be surfacing soon as well.

And then there are discs that we only dream about. These are not expected in English-friendly versions.

Gary Teetzel forwarded some information about a string of new Toho 4K releases. We never buy Toho discs because they’re domestic products with no English-language tracks or subtitles. It was a thrill in the 1990s to play a no-English laserdisc of The Mysterians because it was the only ‘Tohoscope’ video available. Perhaps some of these will be picked up for distribution here. There have never been Region barriers between U.S. and Japanese discs.

We’re of course curious to see how these favorites would fare in 4K. From right to left we read Rodan (1956), The Mysterians (1957), Mothra (1961), Gorath (1962), Atragon (1963). Although we reviewed it, Gorath hasn’t been released here in any form. It’s the final film in Ishiro Honda’s space trilogy.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

That’s something you don’t see every day. On my way back home I caught this sight at the New Beverly Cinema in Hollywood. You really don’t expect to see director ‘one shot’ William Beaudine on a modern marquee. In fact, I doubt that his name ever was a common sight on a marquee. The screening is actually the tail end of a Quentin Tarantino- curated series.

Beaudine began directing in 1915. His last TV work was in 1968, just two years before he died. He directed hundreds of silent shorts, big silent features for Mary Pickford  (Little Annie Rooney,  Sparrows), an occasional higher-profile picture like  The Old Fashioned Way and then countless poverty row pictures. We recognize some of his genre items:  The Ape Man, Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla and many, many Bowery Boys pictures.  Walt Disney liked him and put him to work in TV on The Adventures of Spin and Marty and the feature Ten Who Dared. And at the tail end there’s always  Billy the Kid vs. Dracula.

All this comes to mind with today’s marquee on Beverly Boulevard — Quentin ‘always on film’ Tarantino has quite a precedent going with his mid-week showing of Beaudine’s pictures  Make Me a Star  (1932) and  Don’t Gamble with Strangers  (1946). They have promise. The first is a Paramount remake of ‘Merton of the Movies’ with Joan Blondell & Stuart Erwin, and the second is a Monogram programmer with Kane Richmond. Writer Jim Hemphill put together a March 30 IndieWire article that goes deeper into the William Beaudine legacy. Both features appear to be available on Warner Archive Collection DVDs.

That’s Quentin for you — genuine Hollywood film culture is not dead.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson