Four Outrageously Over-the-Top Volumes
Sci-Fi Thrillers! Women in Peril! Terrorized Travelers! Historical Epics!
Due June 26 from Warner Home Video, Collectible New Giftsets Feature the Movie on which Airplane! is Based and Performances from Dana Andrews, Joan Collins, Jeanne Crain, Joan Crawford, Rory Calhoun, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Charlton Heston, Eleanor Parker and Lana Turner
Burbank, Calif., March 19, 2006 – Warner Home Video will bring “camp” home this summer with the June 26 introduction of Cult Camp Classics, Volumes 1 through 4. The studio which pioneered genre collections such as Forbidden Hollywood and Controversial Classics has gathered together 12 trashy treasures that will bring hours of kitschy fun in four volumes: Sci-Fi Thrillers (Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman, Queen of Outer Space, The Giant Behemoth); Women in Peril (The Big Cube, Caged, Trog); Terrorized Travelers (Hot Rods to Hell, Skyjacked, Zero Hour!) and Historical Epics (The Colossus of Rhodes, Land of Pharaohs, The Prodigal).
The Cult Camp Classics Collections boast the very latest remastered versions along with bonus content such as commentaries from actors, filmmakers and historians as well as original theatrical trailers. Colorfully packaged in super slim, eye-popping packaging, each volume contains three DVDs and will sell for $29.98 SRP and the single titles will be available for $14.97 SRP.
Key gems in the collections include the original film on which the mega-hit comedy Airplane is based (Zero Hour!), Sergio Leone‘s directorial debut (The Colossus of Rhodes), a performance by 1956 Playboy Playmate Yvette Vickers (Attack of the 50 Foot Woman), Joan Collins’ first film (The Land of the Pharaohs) and Joan Crawford’s last (Trog).
Volume 1: Sci-Fi Thrillers
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958)
It’s impossible not to have fun with this all-time kitsch classic which, as fans know, is actually about a very big woman with a very bad attitude. The woman is wealthy Nancy Archer (Allison Hayes), fresh from the looney bin and ticked off. Her rat of a husband (William Hudson) has been at play while she’s been gone, putting the moves on Honey Parker (Yvette Vickers, Playboy’s Miss July 1959) and scheming about the day when Nancy’s fortune will be theirs. That day will never come – not after Nancy has an alien encounter that zaps her metabolism into overdrive. Soon, Nancy’s size matches her rage. She’ll prove that big girls don’t cry; they get even.
DVD Special Features:
· Commentary by Yvette Vickers and film historian Tom Weaver
· Subtitles: English & Français (feature film only)
Queen of Outer Space (1958)
This milestone of movie camp tells the out-of-this-world story of a captain and his men who have landed on a planet where males are outlawed. The good new for them is some women there are eager to break the law! And if that wasn’t enough, the man-hating Venusian queen (Laurie Mitchell) aims to destroy Earth once a Beta Disintegrator is operational. But a gossamer-gowned scientist (Zsa Zsa Gabor) and her curvy cohorts eye the men and they like what they see. This film has sets, costumes and effects from Flight to Mars, Forbidden Planet and World Without End.
DVD Special Features:
· Commentary by Laurie Mitchell and film historian Tom Weaver
· Theatrical Trailer
· Subtitles: English & Français (feature film only)
The Giant Behemoth (1958)
As in his classic The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, director Eugene Lourie plunges viewers into a thrilling stomping ground, unleashing another Thunder Lizard to stomp on everything in sight. Alarming levels of radiation have infused the water, plants and skies, and a radiated paleosaurus rises from the ocean depths. In its path: London. The giant has the strength to topple buildings (King Kong‘s Willis O’Brien contributes rampaging stop-motion effects), a stride that flattens cars, a flesh-searing radioactive ray and a ticked-off attitude. Left in ruins on land, humankind takes the fight to the beast’s undersea realm, where a two-man submarine crew must ensure the torpedo they fire is dead-on.
DVD Special Features
· Commentary by veteran special effects creators Dennis Muren and Phil Tippett (The Academy Award ® winning visual effects and dinosaur supervisors of Jurassic Park provide insight into this ground-breaking stop-motion monster.)
· Theatrical trailer
· Subtitles: English & Français (Feature Film Only)
Volume 2: Women in Peril
The Big Cube (1968)
The only person standing between a multi-million dollar inheritance for Lisa (Karin Mossberg and her druggie boyfriend Johnny (George Chakiris) is step-mom Adriana (Lana Turner), who refuses to approve the pair’s marriage. So the young couple decides to “Cube” momma — lace her prescription meds with psychedelics — and drive Adriana out of her mind. It almost works until family friend Frederick Lansdale (Richard Egan) comes to her rescue. The Big Cube is a cinematic freak-out “for camp followers only” (Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide).
DVD Special Features
· Theatrical trailer
· Subtitles: English & Français (Feature Film Only)
Caged (1950)
“Will she come out woman or wildcat?” trumpeted ads for this women’s prison classic. There’s no question about how the film itself came out. Using familiar but sharply played characters to bring home its reform-minded message, Caged remains a pivotal genre classic. Best Actress Academy Award nominee* Eleanor Parker portrays the inmate whose transformation from sunny innocent to tight-lipped ‘con’ provides its focus. As the tyrannical floor matron, Best Supporting Actress nominee Hope Emerson is 6’2″ of Grade A malevolence. And an earnest prison superintendent, a sour lifer, a street-lamp tramp, a patsy, a society dame and other types add atmosphere to an Oscar-nominated script co-writer Virginia Kellogg researched while posing on the inside as a convict.
DVD Special Features:
· Theatrical trailer
· Subtitles: English, Français & Español (Feature Film Only)
Trog (1969)
People call him Trog, short for a prehistoric cave dweller called a troglodyte. To an anthropologist (Joan Crawford in her final film), he’s the scientific discovery of the age – a wild half man/half ape. To others, he’s walking death. A grocer is impaled on a meat hook, a car is tossed aside like a twig, a child is kidnapped – all after local resident Sam Murdock (Michael Gough) prods the brute into a blind rampage. In true horror tradition, Murdock’s behavior leaves no doubt who the real savages are.
DVD Special Features:
· Theatrical trailer
· Subtitles: English & Français (feature film only)
Volume 3: Terrorized Travelers
Hot Rods to Hell (1966)
Sam Katzman produces this fast-driving drive-in special, whose 200+ credits include Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and Rock Around the Clock. Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain play a straight-arrow couple whose family road trip to a new life in the West becomes a running game of “chicken” with pedal-to-the-metal teens. “These kids have nowhere to go, and they want to get there at a 150 miles an hour,” says a cop about the kids looking for kicks in their souped-up Hot Rods to Hell. This is where the cult-movie rubber meets the road.
DVD Special Features:
· Theatrical Trailer
· Subtitles: English & Français (feature film only)
Skyjacked (1972)
Charlton Heston plays Hank O’Hara, a top pilot who knows how to handle an airliner with ease. But now he faces the unexpected: He’s been Skyjacked. Heston leads a top cast in this thriller from the era of big, edge-of-your-seat disaster films like The Poseidon Adventure and Earthquake. John Guillermin (The Towering Inferno) directs, escalating the tension in a story about a deranged war vet (James Brolin) who demands that a Minneapolis-bound flight make a slight detour – to Moscow. All that stands between the terrified passengers and doom is the steely resolve of Captain O’Hara.
DVD Special Features:
· Subtitles: English & Français (feature film only)
Zero Hour! (1957)
Fish or lamb chops? A wrong dinner selection gives food poisoning to the pilot and first officer of Flight 714 – and that could mean doom for everyone aboard in Zero Hour!, the high-flying film based on a story by Arthur Hailey (Airport, Hotel) and later spoofed in the comedy Airplane!. Dana Andrews portrays the passenger who must overcome the trauma of his wartime experiences to guide the plane. Sterling Hayden plays the flight-control jockey talking Andrews in through bumpy skies. And gridiron great Elroy “Crazylegs” Hirsch is the stricken pilot.
DVD Special Features:
· Theatrical Trailer
· Subtitles: English & Français (feature film only)
Volume 4: Historical Epics
The Colossus of Rhodes (1961)
Filmmakers often begin their directing careers with works of limited scale. Sergio Leone (Fistful of Dollars) began with a Colossus. Spectacle is king in The Colossus of Rhodes, Leone’s first credited film as a director. Sun-bronzed heroes (including toga-wearing Rory Calhoun) battle tyranny. Prisoners scramble for their lives in coliseum pageants of doom. Usurpers connive. Revolution erupts. And towering over all the excitement is the mighty bronze Colossus that straddles the harbor, fighting foes by dropping burning oil from the huge cauldron it holds and firing streams of molten lead from the catapults in its headpiece.
DVD Special Features:
· Commentary by film historian Christopher Frayling
· Theatrical trailer
· Subtitles: English & Français (feature film only)
Land of the Pharaohs (1955)
Director Howard Hawks, who worked brilliantly in practically every movie genre, shows his mastery of the large-scale epic with this gigantic production filmed on location in Egypt. Thousands of extras (9,787 in one scene alone!), magnificently detailed sets (including the pyramid’s inner labyrinth, booby-trapped so no one can learn its secrets and live) and vast desert vistas fill the screen and astonish the eye.
There are also human-scale stories — the Pharaoh (Jack Hawkins) who orders the pyramid as his tomb, dooming untold numbers to unending toil; the architect (James Robertson Justice) designing it to earn his people’s freedom; the slaves constructing it of blood, sweat and tears. And lastly, the beautiful queen (Joan Collins) whose greed leads to murder – and a stunning revenge.
DVD Special Features:
· Commentary by filmmaker/historian Peter Bogdanovich, with interview excerpts of director Howard Hawks
· Theatrical trailer
· Subtitles: English & Français (feature film only)
The Prodigal (1955)
Pagan sect high priestess Lana Turner beguiles a humble Hebrew farmer (Edmund Purdom) away from his faith in this drama based on the Biblical parable of the Prodigal Son. Four sprawling soundstages were filled with opulent sets representing the Holy Land circa 70 BC, and director Richard Thorpe (Ivanhoe, Jailhouse Rock) employed thousands of extras to create an environment rife with all the famine, poverty and unrest the panoramic CinemaScope screen could hold. But the star of the visually spectacular show remains Turner, shimmering in bejeweled gowns that reveal just why she can drive a true believer to the brink of forsaking all he holds dear.
DVD Special Features:
· Commentary by film historian Dr. Drew Casper
· Theatrical trailer
· Subtitles: English & Français (feature film only)
Cult Camp Classic Collection Vol. 1 – 4
Street Date: June 26, 2007
$29.98 SRP Each Volume
$14.97 SRP Single Title
Volume 1: Sci-Fi Thrillers
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman
Queen of Outer Space
The Giant Behemoth
Volume 2: Women in Peril
The Big Cube
Caged
Trog
Volume 3: Terrorized Travelers
Hot Rods to Hell
Skyjacked
Zero Hour!
Volume 4: Historical Epics
The Colossus of Rhodes
Land of the Pharaohs
The Prodigal
Note: All enhanced content listed above is subject to change.
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