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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,...

‘3rd Dimension!’ ‘Technicolor!’ Paramount underwent a difficult post-production learning curve getting this early entry in the 3-D craze out the door and into waiting theaters. Fernando Lamas and Arlene Dahl decorate the colonial-era costume drama, injecting some heat into their frisky wrestling match meet-cute love scene. Rip those bodices!

Sangaree

3-D Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1953 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 94 min. / Street Date October 16, 2018 / 34.95

Starring: Fernando Lamas, Arlene Dahl, Patricia Medina, Francis L. Sullivan, Charles Korvin, Tom Drake, John Sutton, Willard Parker.

Cinematography: W. Wallace Kelley, Lionel Lindon

Film Editor: Howard A. Smith

3-D Blu-ray restoration: 3-D Film Archive

Original Music: Lucien Cailliet

Written by David Duncan, Frank L. Moss, from the novel by Frank Slaughter

Produced by William H. Pine, William C. Thomas

Directed by Edward Ludwig

Producers William H. Pine and William C. Thomas turned out profitable Paramount product for fifteen years, although few of their shows were accorded artistic accolades.

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...

Unbridled Passion by Howard Hughes

Following the release in March of ‘A Man Called Gannon’ (1968), Simply Media in the UK continue to release more Universal-International westerns, this time of 1940s and ‘50s vintage. The new releases, out on 18 April, are ‘Calamity Jane & Sam Bass’ (1949), ‘Cattle Drive’ (1951) and ‘Black Horse Canyon’ (1954). This trio of films are literally ‘Horse Operas’, with the accent on thoroughbred steeds and their importance and role in the working west. Be they cattle drovers, stock breeders or outlaws, where would any of them be without the horse? The answer, of course, is walking.

I’ll review the DVDs in the order I watched them. First up is ‘Cattle Drive’, a 1951 western directed by Kurt Neumann. Chester Graham Jnr (Dean Stockwell), the spoilt, arrogant son of railroad magnet Chester Graham Snr (Leon Ames), is accidentally left behind when the train he is travelling on makes a water stop.

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...

Acknowledging Apache Drums (1951) as the forgotten Val Lewton movie, we must also acknowledge that it's not quite as special as Cat People or Isle of the Dead or any of the others in the chiller cycle, but it does bear comparison with the lesser-known Mademoiselle Fifi and it certainly beats the pants off of Youth Runs Wild.

If the conservative nature of the western format reins in some of Lewton's more sophisticated tendencies, it also allows others to stand out in bold relief, and if director Hugo Fregonese is no Jacques Tourneur, nor even a Mark Robson, he's a perfectly amicable journeyman.

Admitting a certain B-movie banality, what's striking is how Lewton is able to continue his preoccupations into what might seem an alien genre, so that Apache Drums resembles, at numerous times, a supernatural/psychological horror movie, in which the horror is dually located in the American Indian "other,...