DVD Day

[filkertom]

For all the various and sundry goodies and not-so-goodies today (Fantastic Four Extended Edition? Oy), there are three I simply must have:

• Fantastic Voyage, Special Edition. Raquel Welch in a white body suit. Donald Pleasance's head being eaten by a white blood cell. You know you want it.
• Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster. My initiation into MST3K, twenty-five years before the fact. See, Mothra interrupts Godzilla and Rodan (who are fighting each other) to tell them they must all team up to defeat Ghidrah... and the three monsters sit down and debate it. The original was translated by the Mothra Twins (those hot little fairie babes in the muu-muus, remember?) but I used to have my little sister helpless with laughter coming up with my own translations.
• Attack of the Astro Monster, otherwise known as Monster Zero. The sequel to Ghidrah, it's actually a really exciting and fairly well-written monster flick. And it's got Nick Adams!

Anything on your list this week?

Comments

[vulpine137.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, must pick up Fantasic Voyage, I grew up watching that movie on Saturday afternoon TV. I hope my memories and the reality of it mesh well.

[wildcard9.livejournal.com]

Well now, I can see myself hitting the video store for all three of those. Not much else came out this week or last week that interests me. Still, I will keep my eyes open in case I missed a new release.

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

[timorous wee voice] Um, I liked Fantastic Four, even though they played fast and loose with the storyline. It still beat the living kapok out of the previous live-action attempt. Michael Chiklis stole the show, and has joined my shortlist of Actors Who Can Really Act Through Latex.

Imma get this extended edition, yayz!

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah.. FV is on my list.

"Fantastic Voyage" was the first film I saw without a parent present. Saturday afternoon, my Dad drive my buddy Denny and I to the Woods Theater in Grosse Pointe, made sure we had $5 in our pockets, reviewed when and where he'd pick us up and sent us into the theater (watching making sure we got inside). We got our own tickets, our own popcorn, saw the film and met him out front.

But can you imagine what would happen if you dropped off a pair of seven year olds at the front of a theater and left them to fend for themselves??

Course I developed my very first CRUSH, and have had a thing for Raquel Welch ever since.

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

That was Fantastic VOYAGE, not Fantastic FOUR..

but your comments about Chiklis are spot on.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Pretty much. I actually might pick that one up, because I liked the FF movie... as long as the mook they tried to pass off as "Doctor Doom" was off-screen. I do also have a fondness for the Roger Corman version you invoke, but it's because of its campy low-budget charm, not 'cause it's a great FF movie.

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

Check Tom's first paragraph, love.

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

Many seven year olds dropped outside the theater might never make it inside the theater, they might find the nearest candy store instead. However, since you actually did see the movie, you are a GOOD boy!

Of course, movie matinees introduced us all to our first movie crushes, didn't they? Mine was Sean Connery as James Bond. Triple Feature, bay-beee!

[poltr1]

Talk about a blast from the past. I remember seeing Fantastic Voyage and Monster Zero on TV years ago, before I was a fan.

Since the budget's seriously curtailed on DVDs for a while, and that I'm limiting my collection, I think I'll rent them instead.

[briansiano.livejournal.com]

Right now, my only "must-haves" are the upcoming 11th MST3K box, the remastered _The Third Man_, and the Quay Brothers collection.

And I am _really_ grumbly over the latest news on the upcoming HD remasters of Stanley Kubrick's movies: they're _not_ including _Barry Lyndon_.

Grr.

[foenix.livejournal.com]

I traded in Fantastic Four for the new extended cut, and picked up the Messengers.

[ladystarblade.livejournal.com]

Nothing new on the list yet...I'm just trying to get through Highlander: The Series before I leave town for a while. :-)

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

Someone else who watched GHIDRA THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER as a child :)) Yeah, that's some movie, all right.

[kinsfire.livejournal.com]

I really didn't get very far in the posting, once I saw the words "Raquel Welch in a white body suit". She's still sexy these days. (Sorta like Tina Turner DEFINING perfect legs in "Beyond Thunderdome".

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Absolutely one of the most fun monster movies EVAH. Ghidrah was so over the top, and with Godzilla, Rodan, and baby Mothra, how could you not love it? Especially in contrast with things like Destroy All Monsters, which had a whole bunch of dumb critters that they talked about as if you should care about 'em or they had a history or something. Kinda like WWE. Thank you! I'm here all week.

[tomreedtoon.livejournal.com]

Okay. One film I've been thinking about is the double-sided-disk of Night of the Demon/Curse of the Demon, the Dana Andrews movie. I thought I owned it, but can't find it (but then, ask Luke who's seen my place, it's hard to find anything). It is a beautifully-directed horror story, whose demon from Hell (a muppet-like puppet) was an afterthought by the studio. Ignore that and you have a film that builds suspense without gore or special effects. And unlike most modern horror movies, it is moral.

Another is Dr. No. It was James Bond before James Bond was James Bond - that is, a special-effects-laden macho thing. After the first one, the Bond movies adapted a uniform look; all that John Barry music sounded the same. In Dr. No, there's a lot of Jamaican music that grounds the film in its locale. (I can still hear "Underneath the Mambo Tree", "Three Blind Mice" and "Jump Up" from the soundtrack right now.)

It was also cheap. The later Bond films went nuts in the budget, building bigger and bigger villain's lairs. Dr. No resembles the pile of anonymous crappy British movies I used to have to run on my overnight shift; unknown but elegant actors being extremely serious while saying the worst dialog, and fixed-camera, non-action-oriented photography. In other words, it was authentically British, not Hollywood gone wild or New Wave.

Speaking of Old School Bond....

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I finally watched the new Casino Royale last night. Best frickin' Bond since Goldfinger, certainly one of the three best ever if not the best. Fantastic reboot/origin. Does for Bond what Batman Begins did for the Dark Knight. And, while obviously high-budget, it feels... intimate. Very gritty flick, nothing in the way of over-the-top tech, Bond's characterization central to the story.

[tinrat.livejournal.com]

"The original was translated by the Mothra Twins (those hot little fairie babes in the muu-muus, remember?) but I used to have my little sister helpless with laughter coming up with my own translations."

Giant Monsters debating. If that isn't filk fodder, what is?

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

My maiden name is Reardon. It's perfectly phonetic but no one could pronounce it while I was growing up, so it ended up Rodan. So my family became Mr. & Mrs. Rodan and the Little Rodans. I guess I should be glad our name wasn't mangled into Mothra or Godzilla :))

[zillafan.livejournal.com]

Got my three-headed monster fix of course! Love the commentary tracks... these DVDs offer either the original Japanese and US versions and these two films are the pivotal (or some fans would say apocryphal) films in the Toho Godzilla series of the sixties.

Great fun that reminds me what I used to run home to watch on the small screen during "Monster week".

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

Fantastic Voyage. It's probably my all-time favorite movie. Raquel Welch turned me on to Isaac Asimov. (And that white wetsuit is probably the sexiest thing I've ever seen her wear.)