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It’s 1940, and the Nazi invasion of France is fully under way. A mother, father, a five-year-old girl and her tiny dog are among a throng of refugees fleeing Paris and jamming roads across the French countryside while German planes drop bombs and strafe their path with a relentless rain of machine gun fire. Soon…

Those scurrilous Italian ‘mondo’ films are difficult to see in original versions; this Something Weird double bill yields an American hybrid of one of the better (?) examples, given the classy touch of a narration by George Sanders. A second oversexed pseudo-docu is a homegrown mongrel (careful, don’t touch) with all the credibility of today’s…

Plenty of films considered politically beyond the pale have been locked up, for reasons good and bad. A German filmmaker born decades after WW2 offers a documentary about the controversy over ‘sensitive’ Nazi films, the propaganda features that encouraged racial hatred and offered lies to support the Third Reich’s oppressive policies. We can easily visualize…

Woo hoo! The pre-Code marvels return for one last go-round — tales of sin and moral turpitude but also serious pictures about social issues that the Production Code effectively swept from Hollywood screens — financial crimes and ethnic bigotry. Forbidden Hollywood Volume 10 Guilty Hands, The Mouthpiece, Secrets of the French Police, The Match King,…

Depraved convicts ! Crazy Manhattan gin parties! Society dames poaching other women’s husbands! A flimflam artist scamming the uptown sophisticates! All these forbidden attractions are here and more — including Bette Davis’s epochal seduction line about impulsive kissing versus good hair care. It’s a 9th collection of racy pre-Code wonders. Forbidden Hollywood Volume 9 Big…

There’s no getting around it — Mario Bava’s one space opera is now confirmed as a classic. Barry Sullivan and Norma Bengell must oppose invisible aliens that possess the corpses of their fellow space men. Bava’s ‘gothic’ Haunted Planet recipe just adds more weird colored lights and swirling fog to his supernatural Gothic formula. The…

The first visitor from outer space in the ’50s sci-fi boom is one very curious guy, dropping to Earth in a ship like a diving bell and scaring the bejesus out of Sally Field’s mother. Micro-budgeted space invasion fantasy gets off to a great start thanks to the filmmaking genius of our old pal Edgar…

What horrors will we find on the planet Yoo-rah-nuss? A cyclopean dinosaur? Nasty spider monsters? A megalomaniac cerebellum that can turn our X-rated sex fantasies into flesh and blood people? Let’s go! Sid Pink’s flashy and slightly idiotic adventure stars space cadet John Agar as an average guy willing to have sex with a phantom…

Hey, Ib Melchoir’s Opus Mars-us is back, in a not-bad new scan and color-grading job. If the nostalgia bug has bitten you deep enough to appreciate a fairly maladroit but frequently arresting space exploration melodrama, this may be the disc for you. Let’s be honest: NOBODY can resist the allure of the fabulous Bat-Rat-Spider-Crab, and…

It’s a review. No, it’s a rant. Stop, you’re both right.  CineSavant’s overt mission is to demonstrate that old movies, especially old Science Fiction movies, are more relevant than ever. There is at present no authorized home video release of this amazing 1952 politico-religious pretzel of a movie. The surprise is that it accurately presages…

René Laloux’s marvelous animated Sci-fi tale is still in a class of its own, mainly because its imaginative- creative level is so high. Who would have thought that limited animation could look this good? The designs are by the impressive artist Roland Topor. Fantastic Planet Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 820 1973 / Color / 1:66…

The Brain from Planet Arous Blu ray The Film Detective 1957 / 1:33:1, 1.85:1 / 71 Min. Starring John Agar, Joyce Meadows, Robert Fuller Written by Roy Buffum Directed by Nathan Hertz (Juran) In 1957, Screen Gems released 52 of Universal’s classic horror films to television in a package called Shock! Typically broadcast around the…