It’s time to celebrate the Irwin Allen disaster epics for what they are — huge, indigestible spectacles that first seem funny and then congeal into a cinematic badness that words cannot describe. This sprawling ordeal tortures good actors and shatters every limit of audience patience. I alone have survived to tell thee. Is a fair review even possible?
The Swarm
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1978 / Color / 2:40 widescreen / 156 116 min. /Extended Edition / Street Date September 25, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: Michael Caine, Katharine Ross, Richard Widmark, Richard Chamberlain, Olivia de Havilland, Ben Johnson, Lee Grant, José Ferrer, Patty Duke, Slim Pickens, Bradford Dillman, Fred MacMurray, Henry Fonda, Cameron Mitchell, Christian Juttner, Alejandro Rey.
Cinematography: Fred J. Koenekamp
Film Editor: Harold F. Kress
Visual Effects: L.B. Abbott
Original Music: Jerry Goldsmith
Written by Stirling Silliphant, from the novel by Arthur Herzog
Produced and Directed by Irwin Allen
“I never dreamed that it would...
The Swarm
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1978 / Color / 2:40 widescreen / 156 116 min. /Extended Edition / Street Date September 25, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring: Michael Caine, Katharine Ross, Richard Widmark, Richard Chamberlain, Olivia de Havilland, Ben Johnson, Lee Grant, José Ferrer, Patty Duke, Slim Pickens, Bradford Dillman, Fred MacMurray, Henry Fonda, Cameron Mitchell, Christian Juttner, Alejandro Rey.
Cinematography: Fred J. Koenekamp
Film Editor: Harold F. Kress
Visual Effects: L.B. Abbott
Original Music: Jerry Goldsmith
Written by Stirling Silliphant, from the novel by Arthur Herzog
Produced and Directed by Irwin Allen
“I never dreamed that it would...
- 10/13/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
In Jurassic Park, Ian Malcolm famously said “life finds a way.” But Jeff Goldblum’s iconic rock star mathematician chaotician almost didn’t find a way, as it’s just been revealed that the character came perilously close to being axed from the film.
The news comes courtesy of Vanity Fair’s Goldblum career retrospective, in which he talks us through iconic roles like The Fly’s Seth Brundle and Thor: Ragnarok‘s The Grandmaster. While the character of Ian Malcolm was quite different in Michael Crichton’s novel (he spends much of the story in a morphine-induced haze and eventually dies of blood loss), he’s still key to the core premise: that a system with as many unknown variables as a tropical genetic dinosaur park is doomed to fail (a theory that’s been proved right many times over).
Goldblum was apparently considered for the role from the earliest planning stages,...
The news comes courtesy of Vanity Fair’s Goldblum career retrospective, in which he talks us through iconic roles like The Fly’s Seth Brundle and Thor: Ragnarok‘s The Grandmaster. While the character of Ian Malcolm was quite different in Michael Crichton’s novel (he spends much of the story in a morphine-induced haze and eventually dies of blood loss), he’s still key to the core premise: that a system with as many unknown variables as a tropical genetic dinosaur park is doomed to fail (a theory that’s been proved right many times over).
Goldblum was apparently considered for the role from the earliest planning stages,...
- 3/30/2018
- by David James
- We Got This Covered
Wow! Prime stop-motion animation from the heyday of monstrous science fiction, in a new restoration that puts a brilliant shine on those creepy crawly critters. Richard Denning fights giant arachnids while Mara (swoon) Corday frets and wrings her hands, waiting for the next kissing scene. The new scan clears up a lot of flaws, and gives us a much better look at the Lost Art of stop-motion magic.
The Black Scorpion
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1957 / B&W / 1:78 widescreen / 88 min. / Street Date March 20, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring Richard Denning, Mara Corday, Carlos Rivas, Mario Navarro, Carlos Múzquiz, Pascual García Peña
Cinematography Lionel Lindon
Special Effects Willis H. O’Brien, Pete Peterson
Art Direction Edward Fitzgerald
Film Editor Richard L. Van Enger
Original Music Paul Sawtell
Written by Robert Blees, David Duncan and Paul Yawitz
Produced by Jack Dietz, Frank Melford
Directed by Edward Ludwig
The ’50s big-bug monster show...
The Black Scorpion
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1957 / B&W / 1:78 widescreen / 88 min. / Street Date March 20, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99
Starring Richard Denning, Mara Corday, Carlos Rivas, Mario Navarro, Carlos Múzquiz, Pascual García Peña
Cinematography Lionel Lindon
Special Effects Willis H. O’Brien, Pete Peterson
Art Direction Edward Fitzgerald
Film Editor Richard L. Van Enger
Original Music Paul Sawtell
Written by Robert Blees, David Duncan and Paul Yawitz
Produced by Jack Dietz, Frank Melford
Directed by Edward Ludwig
The ’50s big-bug monster show...
- 3/27/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Let’s face it, most of us have a soft spot for things blowing up in movies, and for a long time movies have been happy to feed our appetite for destruction. But it wasn’t always that way.
I know it’s hard to imagine, but there was a time when explosions weren’t so common in movies. Back then, big-budget movies had dancing and singing, and everyone had a merry time. After WWII though, things started to change. In newspapers and magazines, Americans were being exposed to terrible images of war-torn Europe and Japan. This imagery was haunting, yet it sparked some imaginations. At first, Hollywood was careful not to glamorize it. They figured out a way to show massive destruction and violence while making it fun and moderately profitable instead of soul-crushing and distasteful. The 50’s became known for its low-budget cheese-fests; sci-fi B movies featuring such...
I know it’s hard to imagine, but there was a time when explosions weren’t so common in movies. Back then, big-budget movies had dancing and singing, and everyone had a merry time. After WWII though, things started to change. In newspapers and magazines, Americans were being exposed to terrible images of war-torn Europe and Japan. This imagery was haunting, yet it sparked some imaginations. At first, Hollywood was careful not to glamorize it. They figured out a way to show massive destruction and violence while making it fun and moderately profitable instead of soul-crushing and distasteful. The 50’s became known for its low-budget cheese-fests; sci-fi B movies featuring such...
- 9/14/2015
- by feeds@cinelinx.com (G.S. Perno)
- Cinelinx
On Tuesday we showed you several new stills from Fox's forthcoming series Terra Nova, a big budget series slated to appear in two parts on Monday, May 23 and Tuesday May 24…with the rest of the show kicking off in the fall. The series contains some heavyweight producer talent — a lot of it as we noted the other day — including Steven Spielberg, Brannon Braga and René Echevarria.
Terra Nova follows a group of humans — specifically the Shannon family — as they travel back in time millions of years to prehistoric Earth in order to save the human race from extinction, nearing wrapping up time travel and an environmental cautionary tale in an action adventure tale that clearly borrows from Avatar (dense, tropical jungles) and Jurassic Park (dinosaurs).
A new trailer description arrived today, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly, who got a screening of it during the press tour. Below is there description:
“The trailer introduced a dystopian future,...
Terra Nova follows a group of humans — specifically the Shannon family — as they travel back in time millions of years to prehistoric Earth in order to save the human race from extinction, nearing wrapping up time travel and an environmental cautionary tale in an action adventure tale that clearly borrows from Avatar (dense, tropical jungles) and Jurassic Park (dinosaurs).
A new trailer description arrived today, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly, who got a screening of it during the press tour. Below is there description:
“The trailer introduced a dystopian future,...
- 1/13/2011
- CinemaSpy
In 1993, audiences gazing on the truly imposing sight of dinosaurs come to life in Jurassic Park felt the same sense of jaw-dropping awe displayed by the movie’s human characters. Nothing in movie history could compare to what Steven Spielberg and his CGI crew were able to put on the screen: not the herky-jerky stop-motion-animated lizards of 1950s monster-on-the-loose movies like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), nor the pet store lizards made up to look like supposedly threatening beasts in Irwin Allen’s back lot The Lost World (1960), and certainly not a man in a rubber reptile suit rampaging through a miniature Tokyo in the original Godzilla (1954). But as impressive a sight as it was, once the novelty of Jurassic’s CGI creations wore off, so did some of their appeal.
Jurassic Park earned a whopping $350.5 million domestic gross, and while its sequels were, without question, major box office successes, none...
Jurassic Park earned a whopping $350.5 million domestic gross, and while its sequels were, without question, major box office successes, none...
- 1/2/2011
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
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