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Stars: Peter Cushing, Edward Judd, Carole Gray, Eddie Byrne, Sam Kydd, Niall MacGinnis, James Caffrey, Liam Gaffney, Roger Heathcott, Keith Bell | Written by Edward Mann, Al Ramsen | Directed by Terence Fisher

Island of Terror, directed by Terence Fisher, is a 1966 British horror film that stands out for its intriguing premise and unique creature design, though it often pales in comparison to the director’s more iconic work within the Hammer Horror series. While Fisher is best known for his stylish and atmospheric contributions to the genre, including classics like The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958), Island of Terror offers a more subdued and, at times, uneven experience.

Set on a remote island off the coast of Ireland, Island of Terror revolves around a group of scientists investigating a series of mysterious deaths linked to an experiment gone awry. The plot is straightforward, but it manages to build a sense of isolation and dread effectively.

At the intersection of big-star international dealmaking, the 70mm epic, and the humble sword ‘n’ shield actioner, this comic book viking saga stacks one absurd, borderline bad taste action scene on top of another. It’s an irresistible mash-up of earlier successes, well directed visually by Jack Cardiff. Richard Widmark at forty must play the Viking action hero, Russ Tamblyn at thirty is still a physical dervish, and Sidney Poitier takes on the strangest casting of his career. Plus, low sexist comedy from a platoon of hearty Brit thesps!

The Long Ships

Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 137

1964 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 126 min. / Street Date June 29, 2022 / Available from Viavision / Aus 34.95

Starring: Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier, Russ Tamblyn, Rosanna Schiaffino, Oskar Homolka, Edward Judd, Lionel Jeffries, Beba Loncar, Clifford Evans, Gordon Jackson, Colin Blakely, Paul Stassino, Leonard Rossiter, Jeanne Moody, Julie Samuel.

Cinematography: Christopher Challis

Production Designer: Vlastimir Gavrik, Zoran Zorcic

Art Director: Bill Constable...

By Lee Pfeiffer

Kino Lorber has released a Blu-ray edition of the 1965 comedy Strange Bedfellows, which existed primarily to reunite Rock Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida, who had a box-office hit with Come September several years before. Like most of the romantic comedies of the era, there is little to separate this from a standard sitcom episode aside from the running time. Hudson plays a London-based executive on the rise who spontaneously marries a tempestuous Italian bombshell artist played by Lollobrigida. The newlyweds find their mutually insatiable sex drives are the only thing they have in common. Politically conservative Hudson is constantly at odds with his wife's liberal activism. They soon separate but after seven years, Hudson has a reason to stall the divorce proceedings he has put in place. Seems his even more conservative boss wants to promote him to be his right hand man- on the proviso that he is happily married.

What’s the best Ecological Thriller of all time? Finally available in a good Region A disc is Val Guest and Wolf Mankowitz’s thrilling, realistic account of our world turned topsy-turvy, and perhaps plunging into a fiery oblivion. The violent shifts of climate and weather patterns echo today’s global warming chaos. Newspapermen Edward Judd and Leo McKern track down a frightening government secret; Janet Munro is the confidential clerk that leaks the truth. One of the top all-time British Science Fiction films is also a great newspaper story about the importance of a free press. Extras include a new Richard Harland Smith commentary.

The Day the Earth Caught Fire

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1961 / B&w / 2:35 widescreen / 99 min. / Street Date July 7, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Janet Munro, Leo McKern, Edward Judd, Michael Goodliffe, Bernard Braden, Reginald Beckwith, Renée Asherson, Arthur Christiansen, Pamela Green, Robin Hawdon.

Cinematography: Harry Waxman...

What’s the best Ecological Thriller of all time? Finally available in a good Region A disc is Val Guest and Wolf Mankowitz’s thrilling, realistic account of a world turned topsy-turvy, and perhaps plunging into a fiery oblivion. The violent climate/weather pattern shifts predict today’s global warming chaos. Newspapermen Edward Judd and Leo McKern track down a frightening government secret; Janet Munro is the confidential clerk that leaks the truth. One of the top all-time British Science Fiction films is also a great newspaper story about the importance of a free press. Extras include a new Richard Harland Smith commentary.

The Day the Earth Caught Fire

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1961 / B&w / 2:35 widescreen / 99 min. / Street Date July 7, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Janet Munro, Leo McKern, Edward Judd, Michael Goodliffe, Bernard Braden, Reginald Beckwith, Renée Asherson, Arthur Christiansen, Pamela Green, Robin Hawdon.

Cinematography: Harry Waxman

Art...

Gangland London, 1960: Expatriate director Joseph Losey gives the Brit crime film a boost with a brutal gangster tale starring the ultra-tough Stanley Baker — and seemingly every up & coming male actor on the casting books. A committed thief returns to his craft the moment he’s freed from prison, but the emphasis is on the nasty betrayals and squeeze-plays of the criminal underworld, that conspire to foil Baker’s plans.

The Criminal

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1960 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 98 min. / Street Date February 18, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Stanley Baker, Sam Wanamaker, Grégoire Aslan, Margit Saad, Jill Bennett, Rupert Davies, Laurence Naismith, John Van Eyssen, Noel Willman, Kenneth Warren, Patrick Magee, Kenneth Cope, Patrick Wymark, Paul Stassino, Tom Bell, Neil McCarthy, Nigel Green, Tom Gerard, Edward Judd.

Cinematography: Robert Krasker

Film Editor: Reginald Mills

Original Music: John Dankworth

Written by Alun Owen and Jimmy Sangster

Produced by Jack Greenwood...

Olinka Berova is as sexy as Ursula Andress, but even with a new woman producer Hammer’s She sequel doesn’t give her new She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed much of a chance — the story just sits there and the kingdom of Kuma is woefully under-produced. Good photography and acting help, but one doesn’t earn high marks for the Boys from Bray.

The Vengeance of She

Blu-ray

Scream Factory

1968 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 101 min. / Street Date February 26, 2019 / 29.99

Starring: Olinka Berova (Olga Schoberová), John Richardson, Edward Judd, Colin Blakely, Jill Melford, George Sewell, André Morell, Noel Willman, Derek Godfrey, Danièle Noël, Gerald Lawson, Zohra Sehgal, Christine Pockett, Dervis Ward.

Cinematography: Wolfgang Suschitzky

Film Editor: Raymond Poulton

Original Music: Mario Nascimbene

Written by Peter O’Donnell based on characters created by H. Rider Haggard

Produced by Aida Young

Directed by Cliff Owen

Aida Young took her first full producing credit for Hammer on 1968’s The Vengeance of She...

Queen Ayesha returns as a potentially deadly reincarnation in The Vengeance of She, and with the Hammer film coming to Blu-ray on February 26th from Scream Factory, we've been provided with the full list of bonus features, including new interviews and a new audio commentary.

From the Press Release: She used her beauty to bring kingdoms to their downfall and men to their knees! On February 26, 2019, Scream Factory is excited present the highly sought-after Hammer Film cult classic The Vengeance Of She on Blu-ray. Directed by Cliff Owen and based on characters created by H. Rider Haggard, this high camp fantasy film classic stars John Richardson, Olinka Berova (Lucrezia) and Edward Judd (Island of Terror). Noel Willman (Doctor Zhivago) and Colin Blakely (Murder on the Orient Express) also co-star in the movie. A must-have for movie collectors, this definitive Blu-ray release contains special bonus content including new 2K scan of the original film elements,...

Indicator follows up The Wonderful Worlds of Ray Harryhausen, Volume One: 1955-1960 with, wait for it, Volume 2: 1961-1964, featuring three of Harryhausen’s most ambitious productions. Good news for fans, the UK company delivers another robust box set with beautiful transfers and an abundance of extras including newly produced interviews, a small treasure trove of promotional ephemera and a limited edition 80-page book with essays from Kim Newman and Tim Lucas. The set is region free, playable on Blu-ray devices worldwide.

The Wonderful Worlds of Ray Harryhausen, Volume 2: 1961-1964

Blu-ray – Region Free

Indicator/Powerhouse

Street Date November 13, 2017

Starring Herbert Lom, Joan Greenwood, Niall MacGinnis, Nigel Green, Lionel Jeffries, Edward Judd

Cinematography by Wilkie Cooper

Produced by Charles Schneer, Ray Harryhausen

Directed by Cy Endfield, Don Chaffey, Nathan Juran

Raging thunderstorms and a tempestuous score from Bernard Herrmann kick off 1961’s Mysterious Island as a water-logged crew of Union...

I’ve always had a great appreciation and fondness for horror anthologies, and I devoured horror comics as a kid; whether it was House of Mystery or Creepy magazine, they never failed to fire my imagination in short, sharp bursts. When the Romero/King collaboration Creepshow (1982) came out, my dream of seeing these kinds of stories translated to film was nothing but revelatory. I soon discovered it was not the first of its ilk, and began a journey through dusty video store shelves looking for its long-lost relatives. One of my first (and favorite) finds was Vault of Horror (1973), a five-fingered punch to my nascent, pubescent, omnibus-loving heart.

Released by Cinerama Releasing stateside in March and produced by Amicus (the fine folks behind its predecessor, Tales from the Crypt), Vault of Horror (aka The Vault of Horror, for the easily confused, I guess) was not as well received by critics as Tales,...

He was looking for a cure to cancer, but the scientist instead found something else that was deadly in Island of Terror. Starring the legendary Peter Cushing, Island of Terror is coming to Blu-ray on June 20th from Scream Factory, and we've been provided with three Blu-ray copies to give away to lucky Daily Dead readers.

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Prize Details: (3) Winners will receive (1) Blu-ray copy of Island of Terror.

How to Enter: We're giving Daily Dead readers multiple chances to enter and win:

1. Instagram: Following us on Instagram during the contest period will give you an automatic contest entry. Make sure to follow us at:

https://www.instagram.com/dailydead/

2. Email: For a chance to win via email, send an email to contest@dailydead.com with the subject “Island of Terror Contest”. Be sure to include your name and mailing address.

Entry Details: The contest will end at 12:01am Est on June 26th.

Scream Factory has a special treat in store for Peter Cushing fans, as they will release Island of Terror (1966) on Blu-ray sometime this summer.

From Scream Factory: "Heads up for fans of the late great horror legend Peter Cushing. We will be releasing one his more obscure and underrated films, Island Of Terror from 1966 on Blu-ray in early Summer! Film is directed by Terence Fisher (The Gorgon, Dracula: Prince of Darkness).

Pre-order links will go up sometime next month."

Synopsis (via Blu-ray.com): "When the inhabitants of Petrie's island succumb to a mysterious disease, doctors Brian Stanley (Peter Cushing) and David West (Edward Judd) are asked to investigate. Puncture marks on the corpses reveal the horrifying truth: the islanders and their animals are being killed not by a disease, but by a strange type of silicate organism that sucks the bone from their bodies. As the death toll...

By Tim Greaves

Numerous actors have occupied the role of Sherlock Holmes over the decades, some more suited to the shoes of author Arthur Conan Doyle's famous consulting detective than others. One of the finest portrayals is that by Ian Richardson. Yet, sadly, his is also one that is often overlooked, not leastways because he played the character just twice (in a pair of 1983 films made for television), but also because his light was to be quickly eclipsed a year later by the arrival on TV screens of Jeremy Brett, whose interpretation of Holmes is considered by many to be the definitive one.

Sy Weintraub – who produced several Tarzan movies throughout the 60s and was executive producer on the popular long-running Ron Ely TV series –teamed up with Otto Plaschkes (whose producer credits include Georgie Girl and The Holcroft Covenant) with the intention of making several Holmes adventures headlining Richardson.

★★★☆☆It's amazing how in the space of fifty odd years public taste and opinions have changed. Take for instance the classic Science Fiction thriller The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) - newly restored and released on DVD and Blu-ray to coincide with the BFI's Sci-Fi: Days of Fear and Wonder season (running from October through to December). Directed by Val Guest, the filmmaker responsible for Hammer's groundbreaking 1950s Quatermass films, and starring Edward Judd and Janet Munro, The Day the Earth Caught Fire brings a gritty tabloid realism to a terrifying subject that was very much in the public consciousness at the time of its release.

'Henry V' Movie Actress Renée Asherson dead at 99: Laurence Olivier leading lady in acclaimed 1944 film (image: Renée Asherson and Laurence Olivier in 'Henry V') Renée Asherson, a British stage actress featured in London productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Three Sisters, but best known internationally as Laurence Olivier's leading lady in the 1944 film version of Henry V, died on October 30, 2014. Asherson was 99 years old. The exact cause of death hasn't been specified. She was born Dorothy Renée Ascherson (she would drop the "c" some time after becoming an actress) on May 19, 1915, in Kensington, London, to Jewish parents: businessman Charles Ascherson and his second wife, Dorothy Wiseman -- both of whom narrowly escaped spending their honeymoon aboard the Titanic. (Ascherson cancelled the voyage after suffering an attack of appendicitis.) According to Michael Coveney's The Guardian obit for the actress, Renée Asherson was "scantly...

The gray rolling seas thundered through the forest of pilings under the piers, sometimes cresting enough to send a geyser of wind-whipped froth up onto the decking. Other places, it poured through the gaps the wind and tide had eaten through the dunes and poured into the beach town streets. It pulled boats large and small from their moorings in the lagoon marinas and piled them like a child’s toys up on the land. Some in apartment buildings would tell of the cars in the ground level garage floating against each other bathtub playthings. But there was nothing childlike in the way it took entire houses, made seaside villages look like an extension of the ocean and not the land.

For the day and a half I watched Hurricane Sandy pound my home state of New Jersey – which was all the time I had before I lost my cable...

Apocalypse is an ever-popular idea in cinema. After all, what could be more dramatic than the possibility -- or even the actuality -- of the end of everyone and everything that you've ever known. It's an all purpose metaphor, and can be used to tell all kinds of stories, in all kinds of tones, as highlighted by this weekend's comedy-drama "Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World," which sees Steve Carell and Keira Knightley brought together by the impending end of civilization.

The film's only semi-successful at melding romantic comedy with the end of days, as you'll find from our review, but there's plenty in the film to recommend it as well. And if you're still looking for a little more end-of-the-world drama, we've picked out five lesser-known examples that are worth seeking out Asap. Check out our selections below, and let us know your own favorites in the comments section.

We know the greats; movies like Metropolis (1927), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Star Wars (1977).

And there are those films which maybe didn’t achieve cinematic greatness, but through their inexhaustible watchability became genre touchstones, lesser classics but classics nonetheless, like The War of the Worlds (1953), Godzilla (1954), Them! (1954), The Time Machine (1960).

In the realm of science fiction cinema, those are the cream (and below that, maybe the half and half). But sci fi is one of those genres which has often too readily leant itself to – not to torture an analogy — producing nonfat dairy substitute.

During the first, great wave of sci fi movies in the 1950s, the target audience was kids and teens. There wasn’t a lot in the way of “serious” sci fi. Most of it was churned out quick and cheap; drive-in fodder, grist for the Saturday matinee mill.

By the early 1960s,...

 

Trolling through Joe Dante's Trailers From Hell site, we came across this: the original trailer for the marvelous 1964 sci-fi flick First Men in the Moon starring Edward Judd and Lionel Jeffries as Victorian era astronauts, with effects by Ray Harryhausen. John Landis provides the suitably enthusiastic commentary on the trailer. Click here to view

Click here to order special edition DVD from Amazon for less than $5!

The shopping season starts early if you have a gamer who is also a horror fan on your chopping list. On Tuesday, Namco will release the much anticipated Splatterhouse on both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. If you have been following Uncle Creepy on Twitter, you've heard him gush about this game. According to him ... there are lots of things gushing in this title.

If you're not much of a gamer, there aren't many horror goodies to get excited about this week. Unless you're down for an Asylum created CGI whale competing with your turkey (pun intended), along with a couple of other creatures. Rounding up the list is a British import and a cool looking indie offering that looks to make you shed some plasma.

Splatterhouse (Video Game) on Xbox 360 & Playstation 3

By Namco

Follow Rick and his mystical Terror Mask as he unmercifully tears, cuts and beats his way...

Between Dimensions [1] is a continuing feature that examines science-fiction on the screen in all of its forms: big or small, good or bad. Man fumbles the planet... The first in a continuing series If you want to sample the golden age of science fiction, The Day the Earth Caught Fire is a good place to start. Since British director Val Guest made the film in 1961, this apocalypse is a little more cerebral than what we’re used to (e.g. the recent new gold standard of 2012). With limited effects, Guest relies on good actors, disaster news reels, and clever staging to make his story real. Set in London, Decf sharply conveys the nervousness of a world discovering nuclear fission for better or worse. In this case, much worse. The premise is simple – two simultaneous nuclear explosions (thank you USA and Russia) knock the earth off its axis. England’s weather...