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Who Shot Barney? Or should we say, who is going to shoot Barney? Chalk up another excellent Noir Rescue by The Film Noir Foundation, the UCLA Film & Television Archive and Flicker Alley: Joan Leslie is a Broadway star in a group of ‘difficult’ actors, writers, lovers and cheats, trying to prevent a ‘repeat’ cycle of deception and murder. Richard Basehart makes a strong film debut as her confidante, a conflicted poet. The story twists tweak the noir format with supernatural content, almost like the ironic fantasies of The Twilight Zone. The choice extras double our interest in this very different noir.

Repeat Performance

Blu-ray + DVD

Flicker Alley

1947 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 93 min. / Street Date February 18, 2022 / Available from Flicker Alley / 39.95

Starring: Louis Hayward, Joan Leslie, Virginia Field, Tom Conway, Richard Basehart, Natalie Schafer, Benay Venuta, Ilka Grüning, Keefe Brasselle. John Ireland (narrator).

Cinematography: Lew W. O’Connell

Art Director: Edward C. Jewell...

CineSavant reaches back to a U.K. disc released in 2014, because the subject is (what else) a semi-obscure science fiction effort. Favorite John Neville stars as a scientist opposite newcomer Gabriella Licudi, a beauty who may be an invader from outer space. This is the one with the teardrops that burn; not having seen it since 1966 or so, evaluating a ‘new’ Blu was an imperative. The main takeaway is that it’s awfully small-scale and the fantastic content is almost entirely confined to dialogue. But the performances are exemplary and actress Jean Marsh is terrific.

Unearthly Stranger

Region B Blu-ray

Network-bfi

1963 / B&w / 1:66 / 80 min. / Street Date November 3, 2014 / Available from Amazon / 14.99

Starring: John Neville, Philip Stone, Gabriella Licudi, Patrick Newell, Jean Marsh, Warren Mitchell.

Cinematography: Reg Wyer

Art Director: Harry Pottle

Film Editor: Tom Priestley

Original Music: Edward Williams

Written by Rex Carlton based on an idea by Jeffrey Stone...

Okay, the title The Earth Dies Screaming (1964) may be all the way on the nose at the moment, but that shouldn’t discourage anyone from checking it out. After all, you have Hammer legend Terence Fisher directing a small cast through a post apocalyptic adventure with shiny robot aliens walking around. Sounds dodgy you say? It is! But it’s also only 62 minutes short, and in Fisher’s more than capable hands, becomes a taut little gasser.

Released by Twentieth Century Fox, this British production was hampered by an extremely low budget, at least according to critics; the truth is that The Earth Dies Screaming is a Z grade concept dragged up to a B by the sheer magnitude of Fisher’s talent, and a bigger budget may have erased its unique charm.

We open in the English countryside; things appear tranquil until: a train derails, a plane dovetails into a field,...

People will tell you Tom Waits’ best album is Rain Dogs. This is not strictly true. It is perhaps the most Waits-ian of Tom Waits albums, by virtue of having a Waits lookalike on the cover and a song selection that ranges across virtually every genre of music (and combinations thereof) Waits could wrangle. But the best Tom Waits album is not Rain Dogs. Instead it’s Bone Machine (which netted Waits his first Grammy in 1993), and it turns 25 years old today.

Waits explained Rain Dogs’ titular inspiration to Spin in 1985: “You know, dogs in the rain lose their way back home.

Chamber of Horrors

Blu-ray

Kino Lorber

1940 / B&W / 1:33 / Street Date March 21, 2017

Starring: Lilli Palmer, Leslie Banks.

Cinematography: Alex Bryce, Ernest Palmer

Film Editor: Ted Richards

Written by Gilbert Gunn, Norman Lee

Produced by John Argyle

Directed by Norman Lee

Near the turn of the century a struggling war correspondent named Edgar Wallace began churning out detective stories for British monthlies like Detective Story Magazine to help make the rent. Creative to a fault, his preposterously prolific output (exacerbated by ongoing gambling debts) soon earned him a legion of fans along with a pointedly ambiguous sobriquet, “The Man Who Wrote Too Much.”

A reader new to Wallace’s work could be excused for thinking the busy writer was making it up as he went along… because that’s pretty much what he did. He dictated his narratives, unedited, into a dictaphone for transcription by his secretary where they would then...

A few years ago, in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the death of influential film critic Pauline Kael, I wrote the following:

“I think (Kael) did a lot to expose the truth… that directors, writers and actors who often work awfully close to the surface may still have subterranean levels of achievement or purpose or commentary that they themselves may be least qualified to articulate. It’s what’s behind her disdain for Antonioni’s pontificating at the Cannes film festival; it’s what behind the high percentage of uselessness of proliferating DVD commentaries in which we get to hear every dull anecdote, redundant explication of plot development and any other inanity that strikes the director of the latest Jennifer Aniston rom-com to blurt out breathlessly; and it is what’s behind a director like Eli Roth, who tailors the subtext of something like Hostel Part II almost as...

In this episode of Off The Shelf, Ryan and Brian take a look at the new DVD and Blu-ray releases for the week of October 11th, 2016.

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Episode Notes & Links News FilmStruck Links to Amazon

October 4th

Constantine: The Complete Series The Earth Dies Screaming Preacher Swiss Army Man Venture Bros: The Complete Sixth Season X-men: Apocalypse Blu-ray

October 11th

Adventure Time – The Complete Sixth Season The Astro-Zombies Beep: A Documentary History Of Game Sound Boyhood Carrie Dark Water Ghostbusters Glengarry Glen Ross Hannibal: The Complete Series Collection Season 1–3 The Hills Have Eyes Ice Age 5 It’s A Wonderful Life Knight Rider – The Complete Series The Legend of Tarzan McCabe & Mrs. Miller On Dangerous Ground The Thing Credits Ryan Gallagher (Twitter / Website / Wish List) Brian Saur (Twitter / Website / Instagram / Wish List)

Music for the show is from Fatboy Roberts’ Geek Remixed project.

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Happy October, everyone! As expected, our favorite month is kicking off with a ton of horror and sci-fi home releases – 25 to be precise – and there’s a great selection of new and old titles coming our way on October 4th. As far as recent movies, The Purge: Election Year, The Mind’s Eye, Swiss Army Man and Fender Bender all arrive on both Blu and DVD this week, as well as the stunning South Korean horror film The Wailing. Several great cult classics are getting the HD treatment on Tuesday, including Terence Fisher’s The Earth Dies Screaming and Richard Wenk’s Vamp (both hugely underrated films, in my opinion).

Other notable Blu-ray and DVD releases for October 4th include X-Men: Apocalypse, House of Manson, Daughter of Dracula, Sharknado: The 4th Awakens, They’re Watching and Chosen Survivors.

The Earth Dies Screaming (1964) (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray)

Their target: Humanity.

It's a minor -- very minor -- Terence Fisher Sci-Fi suspenser that reaches the bare genre minimum and nothing more. Love the title and love those great stills, but when it's finished you're going to be saying, 'Now all I need is a good alien invasion movie!' The Earth Dies Screaming Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1964 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 62 excruciating minutes of horror / Street Date October 4, 2016 / available through Kl Studio Classics / 29.95 Starring Willard Parker, Virginia Field, Dennis Price, Thorley Walters, Vanda Godsell, David Spenser, Anna Palk. Cinematography Arthur Lavis Film Editor Robert Winter Makeup Harold Fletcher Original Music Elisabeth Lutyens Written by Henry Cross (Harry Spalding) Produced by Robert L. Lippert, Jack Parsons Directed by Terence Fisher

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

So I guess we have to add a third choice for the end of the world: a Bang, a Whimper... and now a Scream. Low-budget science fiction didn't...

Damn the aliens! Save planet Earth! Directed by Terence Fisher, The Earth Dies Screaming (1964) takes place in the UK, where alien robots reanimate dead bodies in an attempt to invade planet Earth. Kino Lorber will give the film the Blu-ray treatment on October 4th.

From Kino Lorber: “Coming October 4th on Blu-ray!

The Earth Dies Screaming (1964) Starring Willard Parker, Virginia Field, Dennis Price and Thorley Walters – Directed by Terence Fisher.”

Synopsis (via Blu-ray.com): “The United Kingdom is invaded by alien-controlled robots, which re-animate dead human bodies. Survivors of the invasion are besieged by the walking corpses of slain friends and neighbors. A crack space pilot returns to Earth to find the planet has been devastated by some unknown forces; so he organizes the survivors in a plan to ward off control by a the killer androids…”

Trailer via ScAYREdotCOM:

The post The Earth Dies Screaming Blu-ray Announced...

In this episode of Off The Shelf, Ryan and Brian take a look at the new DVD and Blu-ray releases for Tuesday, April 26th, 2016. They also discuss the new streaming service: FilmStruck.

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Follow-Up Ryan buys a Blu-ray from Australia! News FilmStruck Alien Day Labyrinth 4k Criterion Collection: July Line-up Kino Lorber: Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother, Road House, The Enemy Below, Caboblanco, Star Crystal, Man on Fire, The Earth Dies Screaming, and Chosen Survivors Scorpion Releasing: Force Five, Haunting of Morella Image Entertainment: The Commitments Twilight Time May 2016 Pre-orders: Garden of Evil, Cat Balou, Eureka, I Could Go On Singing, and Appasionata Links to Amazon 4/19 Barcelona Betrayed Cary Grant: The Vault Collection Dangerous Men Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street Doris Day and Rock Hudson Romantic Comedy Collection Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon Fatal Beauty The File of the Golden Goose...

Child radio star of the 1940s and 50s best remembered for playing Richmal Crompton's Just William

David Spenser, who has died aged 79, was the pre-eminent child radio star of the 1940s and 50s and will be best remembered for his portrayal on air of Just William. The author Richmal Crompton cast him in the role, in a series of dramatisations of her novels about the raucous but endearing 11-year-old outlaw.

This was in 1948, when David turned 14 and was already a seasoned radio actor – performing more than one play a week, he once told me. He had come into acting through a ruse set up by his ambitious mother and a BBC friend: he was lured into Broadcasting House and found himself in a studio being auditioned by the Children's Hour producer Josephine Plummer. For playing the lead in Just William he received the standard juvenile fee of four guineas...

For me, horror movies will always be fondly, profoundly linked to the sweet, wonderful and wide eyed rapture of my late-night trash TV-drenched childhood. Those bygone, misspent hours when I’d subject myself to every manner of sublime cinema, splitting open fantastic and macabre realities that potentially could and in some cases did, exist. One of the too-many-to-count strange shockers that left a major, destiny altering impact on me was veteran small screen director Sutton Roley’s obscure Sci-Fi tinged skin crawler Chosen Survivors, a movie whose chilly, nihilistic, future-shock premise hooked my Twilight Zone weaned sensibilities while also managing to exploit my acute fear of bedroom invading bats.

Before we proceed, let me explain a bit about that fear…

See, there was this one time when I was no more than 8, I was reading a particularly upsetting issue of Marvel comics’ groundbreaking Tomb Of Dracula series, alone, in my...