Hello!

Things did go smoothly on CineSavant’s much-appreciated break … which was essentially two weeks spent in other towns, far away. Good food, good company, pure bliss. Thanks go to Charlie Largent and Alex Kirshenbaum for taking care of essential business. We did manage one new review for every Tuesday and Thursday. Now we’re looking at a flood of good ‘early Fall’ discs to cover, which have our spirits up.

One nice thing is that while I was away, correspondent and friend Bill Shaffer sent in the makings of an excellent CineSavant Column item.

On September 22 Bill wentto the Glenwood Arts Theater in Kansas City, one of the movie theaters owned by the late Wade Williams. The theater was selling old, discontinued Image DVDs of early Williams releases. Bill bought a few, but his interest was taken up by the theater’s lobby display — featuring a wide selection of prime movie posters from Williams’ personal collection. A standout attraction was a couple of full-sized, classic movie robots.

So here is Bill’s selection of killer images of Wade Williams’ poster collection … some real beauties in there. They zoom out to make much larger images. One of the alien robots should need no introduction; the second is the killer metal man from 1954’s Target Earth!

We of course hope that some of the movies that Williams controlled will now be freed up, so they can receive remasters and disc releases.  Rocketship X-M and  Kronos come immediately to mind, but there are others as well. We’re glad that Edgar Ulmer’s  Detour was remastered a few years back, apparently without the benefit of elements in Williams’ possession.

We hope that the great collector’s heirs have his holdings properly inventoried. Williams reportedly held on to some film elements for  Invaders from Mars. Could they perhaps include the original optical elements for the effects shots, that could be used to improve the already fabulous Ignite Films 4K disc for  Invaders?

Thanks to Bill Shaffer …. and thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson