Hello!

First, a happy news repeat from yesterday:

NBC Universal has announced a Creature From the Black Lagoon Blu-ray Legacy Collection that will include a new 3-D presentation of 1955’s Revenge of the Creature! The 3-D Film Archive has completed the Blu-ray formatting work, the scene-by-scene stereoscopic alignment and left/right panel-matching. The job has been executed using 4K scans of the original 35mm left eye and right eye camera negatives. According to 3D expert Bob Furmanek, the show has not been seen in widescreen 3-D since the original theatrical release in 1955.

The street date for The Legacy Collection is announced as August 28, 2018.

Coming really late in the 3-D craze, Revenge of the Creature nevertheless is designed for depth even better than the first smash hit Gill Man movie. The Legacy Collection set will presumably feature all three original Creature pix, including 1956’s The Creature Walks Among Us, which is unfortunately, flat. It’s going to be a monster-lovers’ wish come true for 3-D equipped viewers. Since all three pictures will be widescreen and in 2-D HD as well, there’ll be something desirable for everybody.

The street date for The 3-D Complete Creature Legacy Collection is announced as August 28, 2018.

I didn’t realize just how many Golden Age 3D pix the 3-D Archive has restored. Furmanek reports that only a few Universal 3-D features have not made the jump to Blu-ray ‘in depth’: Jack Arnold’s The Glass Webb; Douglas Sirk’s Taza, Son of Cochise and Budd Boetticher’s Wings of the Hawk. And we’re told not to forget the cartoon The Hypnotic Hick with Woody Woodpecker! Even deeper into his research, Bob says that Universal also have three musical shorts, but that they’re unlikely to see a release due to excessive music clearance costs.

For more information on the restoration and rare Creature memorabilia, please visit The 3-D Film Archive.

And Universal’s Complete Legacy Collection page.

Other Important Blu-ray News:  Kino has posted a long list of their ABC/Selznick holdings, and the prognosis for HD restorations on a title for title basis. A lot of expensive 4K scans are involved. According to Kino, the films Good Times (1967), The Rover (1967), Ring of Bright Water (1969), Midas Run (1969), Jenny (1970), Lovers and Other Strangers (1970), Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came (1970), Too Late the Hero (1970), Kotch (1971) and Zachariah (1971) are ‘coming soon.’ The long-absent Song of Norway (1970) and the excellent The Last Valley (1971), both 65mm road show pictures, are listed as having ‘element issues’ — which hopefully is just the unwieldy format, not a comment on the film elements’ condition. It all sounds good to me.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson