The Blob
(1958) + Son Of Blob (1972 aka Beware! The Blob)/The Don Lane Show 2 (1981 – 1983)/For Your Height Only (1981 Spy Spoof) + Impossible Kid (1982)/My Son
My Son What Have Ye Done (2009/Umbrella PAL Import Region 0/Zero DVDs)
Picture:
C+ & C/C+/C & C-/C Sound: C+
(Height/Kid: C) Extras: B-/D/D/C- Main Programs: B- + C+/B/D/C-
PLEASE NOTE: These DVDs can only be operated
on machines capable of playing back DVDs that can handle Region Zero/0/Free PAL
format software and can be ordered from our friends at Umbrella Entertainment
at the website address provided at the end of the review.
And now
for the latest wave of new DVDs from Down Under you might want to know about…
Irvin S. Yeathworth’s The
Blob (1958) and Larry Hagman’s Son
Of Blob (1972, aka Beware! The Blob)
are now here in a single DVD double feature fans will appreciate. The original classic of the Horror genre with
a young Steve McQueen and friends battling the gooey alien creature of the
title is much fun and has been more imitated than you might think and is a fun
as ever, while the official sequel by Hagman is more fun than you might imagine
with a cast that includes Robert Walker, Godfrey Cambridge, Richard Starr,
Richard Webb, Carol Lynley, Dick Van Patten, Shelley Berman, Cindy Williams and
uncredited appearances by Burgess Meredith and Bud Cort. It gets into the spirit of things and is more
worthy of the original than the nit wit 1988 remake.
The first
original Blob is here in
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 framing with a decent print, though I wonder
if the actual ratio is 1.66, but color (very rich by DeLuxe, though
three-strip, dye transfer Technicolor prints were also made) and the print are
not bad, though this deserves Blu-ray treatment. The film has since arrived on Criterion
Blu-ray with a 1.85 X 1 aspect ratio and you can read more about it at this
link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/12069/The+Blob+(1958/Criterion+Blu-ray)/T
The Son of Blob sequel is here in a 1.33 X
1 print that is a little more worn and has color that is weaker, but it is
still watchable. Extras only apply to
the first film, including a trailer and two feature length audio commentary tracks. One is by Producer Jack H. Harris and Film
Historian Bruce Eder, while the second is by Director Yeathworth and Actor
Robert Fields.
The Don Lane Show 2 (1981 – 1983) is the second 8 DVD
volume of the terrific talk show that we first covered a little while ago with
a few other talk shows at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10789/An+Audience+With+Jasper+Carrott
Here we
get more of the same (though we also hear about more shows not here but taped,
including one with Duran Duran and another with Sean Connery and Barbara
Carrera promoting the Bond film Never
Say Never Again) and some fine shows including interviews and/or
performances by Tom Waits, Simon & Garfunkel, Mel Gibson & Peter Weir,
Suzi Quattro, Emma Thompson, Linda Ronstadt, Cliff Richard, Jack Thompson,
Stewart Granger, Debbie Reynolds, Hugh Laurie, Dean Martin, The Muppets, Graham
Kennedy and David Bowie among others.
The picture and sound are the same and there are again no extras, but
the last episode in this set is the last show taped. Hope we get those other shows.
Featuring
the late Weng Weng, a very short person who wanted badly to be a movie star, For Your Height Only (1981) and Impossible Kid (1982) are two really,
really bad films that were recently featured in the great documentary about
exploitation films made in the Philippines
called Machete Maidens Unleashed!
and you can read more about that at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11034/Caddie+(1976)/Leonard+Cohen+%E2
The first
film is essentially one of the worst James Bond spoofs ever (worse than if the
late Herve Villechaize from Man With The
Golden Gun (1974, and the early seasons of TV’s Fantasy Island)
played Bond, but at least he could act!
The latter film is a bad kung fu mess with more guns, bad gadgets and
even worse jokes! Only see this if you
want to loose several hours of your life!
The 1.33 X 1 image on both transfers are awful, with Kid being much
worse, while the Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is lame and weak, all a few generations
down. There are no extras.
I was not
a fan of the David Lynch-produced Werner Herzog film My Son My Son What Have Ye Done (2009) with Michael Shannon, as
this review for the U.S.
version will show:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10338/My+Son,+My+Son+What+Have+Ye
I thought
maybe a PAL DVD might have better picture and sound at least, but this is
exactly the same disc as the U.S.
edition, including extras. Now you can
see it in two markets.
As noted
above, you can order these PAL import DVDs exclusively from Umbrella at:
http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/
-
Nicholas Sheffo
