Thursday, June 9, 2011

War of the Satellites (1958)



In 1990 the BBC broadcast all of Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe movies (as far as I remmember there's 8 of them but some of them aren't by Poe, LOL). I taped most of the films but more importantly I also taped the 30 min two part TV documentary THE CURSE OF CORMAN. I haven't watched it for at least 10 years but I remember one of the things Corman said was that he managed to convince the film company to let him spend the same amount of money on one colour horror movie that he would normally spend of two black & white sci-fi movies.

I watched his colour horror movies back then but for many years it's been difficult to find his old 50s sci-fi movies. Some of them are now on DVD and fortunately SHOUT! Factory recently released a double disc that contains ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS, WAR OF THE SATELLITES, and NOT OF THIS EARTH. There's also a whole pile of awesome trailers plus a documentary. The films are sourced from the original negatives, not some lame video master.

I watched WAR OF THE SATELLITES last night as thought it was pretty good. None of the films exceed the one hour mark by very much but actually I think it works better this way. If you try and jot down new movies that exceed their welcome you'll run out of note pad pretty quickly!

Oh, and Susan Cabot is in the film too! She was also in THE WASP WOMAN (you might remember I recently bought that from Something Weird Video, they claim their version is the only original cinema print whereas all other releases are the TV version). Recommended for sure!