Devil's Due (2014/Fox Blu-ray w/DVD)/Moon Zero Two (1969/Hammer/Warner Archive DVD)/The Revengers (1972/Cinema Center/National General/CBS DVD)/The Werewolf (1956/Columbia/Sony/Warner Archive DVD)/Wildcat Bus (1940/RKO/Warner Archive DVD)

Picture: C+ & C/C+/C+/C/C Sound: B- & C+/C/C/C/C Extras: D/C-/C-/D/D Films: D/C/C+/C+/C

PLEASE NOTE: The Moon Zero Two, The Werewolf and Wildcat Bus DVDs are now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series and all can be ordered from the link below.

Here's a good mix of genre releases you should know about....

It somehow took two people to direct the obnoxious, cliche-ridden, tired and pathetic Devil's Due (2014) and it arrives as the long played-out horror genre keeps bombing at the box office. Light years away from Rosemary's Baby or any other original idea, we follow a woman for nearly 90 long, long, long minutes in what seems like a happy, normal life, but she is about to get pregnant and all hell is going to break loose.

Don't expect a supernatural Videodrome or anything that ambitious, because this is so phoned in, the video looks too often like it comes from an obsolete picture phone. I could spend the rest of this review finding adjectives, adverbs, nouns, verbs and past participles to tell you how bad this shaky Blair Witch-like found footage mess is, but life is just too short, so skip it!

Extras include deleted scenes, several featurettes and a lame audio commentary track.

Roy Ward Baker's Moon Zero Two (1969) is the great director's attempt to over at the Hammer Studios to do a Science Fiction film with some comedy and elements of a Western, but an interesting cast, colorful production design and a few moments that actually work are not enough to save this bad mix of genres, mixed model work and the like to really work, yet it has some moments it might be worth it to you to sit through 100 minutes of to see.

The title refers to a space ship owned by pilot James Olson, who has made a few enemies and has a few demanding women around for him. Catherine Von Schell (later of Space: 1999) is a new woman in his life and we get a murder mystery that leads us to a villain (the always amusing Warren Mitchell) and this never becomes a Modesty Blaise-type mess, but never adds up.

A few elements, like hyper-color female hairdos will remind those in the know of Gerry Anderson's underrated live-action sci-fi TV classic U.F.O. (reviewed elsewhere on this site on DVD and actually on Blu-ray only in Japan at high prices as of this posting!) but that show had better scripts, a better set up and better model work. Still, this is worth a look despite being very problematic.

A trailer is the only extra.

Daniel Mann's The Revengers (1972) is a later revenge western with William Holden out to get who massacred his family. The script is on the hit and miss side, but the film has some good moments and interesting acting turns by Woody Strode, Ernest Borgnine (rougher than usual) and looks better than you might expect. Too bad it breaks no new ground, but genre fans will be happy to give it a try from CBS' National General/Cinema City catalog holdings for which everything deserves eventual release.

A trailer is the only extra.

Fred E. Sears' The Werewolf (1956) is Columbia Pictures stand-alone howler (pun intended) of an unintentionally funny monster movie that slyly takes from the 1941 Universal Wolfman, yet tries to update it while following the classic's path. Steven Ritch is the helpless man who cannot remember where he has been or how he got there, but he has a wife and child in this one, which the script takes full advantage of. The make-up is not bad for the time, but very dated by now, yet this has its charms and is a key work in the genre by default, but like Hammer Studios, only one werewolf film was made. Nice to see it on DVD.

There are no extras, but the original trailer for this is also hilarious and worth seeking out.

Last but not least is Frank Woodruff's Wildcat Bus (1940) with Fay Wray as a woman whose father's busing business is being undermined by a group of men seeking revenge against him (guided by someone unknown for reasons unknown) who want to destroy the company and all the workers connected to it. The script has a romance subplot, some humor, some action and is not bad, though one wonders why lawyers or police are not called in as soon as it is obvious sabotage is involved.

I also got a kick out of some of the editing and you can see why RKO wanted to push Wray (King Kong (1933) was still making money for the studio 7 years later!) and Keye Luke even shows up in the 64-minutes-long programmer worth a good look. RKO made movies their own way and you can never have enough of them in print.

There are no extras.

The 1080p 1.78 X 1 AVC @ 32 MBPS digital High Definition image transfer on Due should easily be the best performer on the list, but it is from horrid, lame, often low-def, skewed, messy and motion-blur plagued digital sources that make an HD version nearly pointless, save that it is somehow not as bad as the anamorphically enhanced DVD version also included and the worst performer on this list. As a result, the anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on Moon (originally issued in dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor 35mm film prints) and anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image Revengers can more than compete with Blu-ray.

That leaves the black and white, filmed image quality on Werewolf (in anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1) and Bus (1.33 X 1) softer than I would have liked, especially because they are well-shot films. Yet, they still look better than the Due DVD.

The Due Blu-ray should also be the sonic champ with its DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix and it sadly is, though the soundfield is inconsistent and the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 DVD version shares second lace all on its own. The rest of the DVDs all have lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono presentations which are all a bit weaker than usual, so they tie for third and last place in sonic quality.

You can order the Moon Zero Two, The Werewolf and Wildcat Bus DVDs by going to this link for them and many more great web-exclusive releases at:

http://www.warnerarchive.com/

- Nicholas Sheffo