America’s 60 Greatest Unsolved Mysteries & Crimes + Cult Terror Cinema: 12 Movie Collection + Dark Oracle – The Complete Series + Mona The Vampire – The Complete First Season (Mill Creek DVD Sets)

 

Picture: C (Crimes: C+)     Sound: C (Crimes: C+)     Extras: D (Dark & Mona: C-)     Compilations: C+/C+/C/C

 

 

Mill Creek continues their huge campaign of issue and reissuing sets of movies and TV shows with four more collections of DVDs for those looking for something different.  Some of the material we have covered before, but others are new.

 

 

America’s 60 Greatest Unsolved Mysteries & Crimes has ten hour-long shows that look at what they consider unsolved crimes form the obvious (who really killed Marilyn Monroe, et al) to more interesting pieces on Nicola Tesla, Thelma Todd and howlers on the likes of Bigfoot.  If anything, it is a crash course into conspiracy theories and speculative all around, but can get thin quickly if you are not in the mood.

 

 

Cult Terror Cinema: 12 Movie Collection is a mix of titles the now defunct BCI eclipse already issued, mostly from the Crown International catalog, in their now out-of-print Drive-in Cult Classics series which included classic trailers (including concession stand clips, et al) not on this set.  We reviewed the second ands third volumes at this link:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/7724/Drive-in+Cult+Classics+Vol.+2+++3

 

They were often films from their Welcome To the Grindhouse series, also with such nice extras, where we first covered The Teacher at this link:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5823/Welcome+To+The+Grindhouse+%E2%

 

Titles from this set include:

 

Bloodlust (1961 with Robert Reed)

The Creeping Terror (1964)

The Hearse (1980 with Joseph Cotton, Trish Van Devere and Christopher McDonald)

Land Of The Minotaur (1977 with Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasance; Brian Eno actually did the score for this one and the savvy Arthur Rowe (Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Mission: Impossible, Switch, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman) actually wrote the script, but the results are mixed.  I would still like to see a special edition of this sometime.)

The Babysitter (1969)

Carnival Of Crime (1962 with Jean-Pierre Aumont)

Crater Lake Monster (1977)

Escape From Hell Island (1963)

Fleshburn (1984 with Steve Kanaly)

Horror High (1974)

Lurkers (1988)

The Teacher (1974)

 

The older ones I had seen a long time ago were not memorable and the newer ones I had never seen were worth missing.  I would hunt down the older sets or wait for Blu-ray unless you just want the films.  The prints are not too great, as was the case in the BCI DVDs.

 

 

Dark Oracle – The Complete Series is a deservedly short-lived series from their children’s Cookie Jar division about two 15 year-old twins (save their gender) who can find themselves in an animated comic book alternate universe, the drawn versions of which can affect the future.  Faster than you can say “take on me”, this show grows thinner than a tired fantasy film and the never makes the synergy work in the alternate world idea it was pursuing.  Maybe making it for too young a crowd was part of the problem, but I was not impressed.

 

 

Mona The Vampire – The Complete First Season is just more of the same from their Cookie Jar division, which we covered a single DVD of with many other titles from that label at this link:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10119/Busytown+Mysteries+%E2%80%93

 

 

The various aspect ratios throughout the four sets (Unsolved cannot make up its mind of it is 1.33 or 1.78) are poor as expected, while have Dolby Digital 2.0 that is usually mono except for the newest TV product, which is in simple stereo.  Extras are only on Dark (two Cookie Jar bonus shows and odd, live action bore Sally Marshall Is Not An Alien) & Mona (bonus episodes from other Cookie Jar releases).

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo