The news arrived this past week that veteran showman
Phil Hopkins, in collaboration with a “consortium of historians and enthusiasts,”
will be launching the new Film Masters home entertainment packaged media label
on Sept. 26.
For genre-fans, the rollout release from Film
Masters is a pure delight.
This would be none other than director Ray Kellogg’s
back-to-back sci-fi/horror gems — The Giant Gila Monster and The
Killers Shrews — which are being released as a
double-feature/double-disc set on both Blu-ray and DVD. The pair even played as a double-feature when
released theatrically in November of 1959.
Sure, they’ve both been out before, but you can
safely retire those vintage DVD copies that you’ve been treasuring for all
these years.
The whole goal with Film Masters
is the restoration, preservation and re-introduction of films that genre fans, film
buffs and movie-lovers in general have enjoyed watching since they were first
seen at the local drive-in or movie theatre.
For example, The Giant
Gila Monster is a new 4K scan from the
original 35mm film elements … this is the real deal.
As to the films themselves, producer Gordon McLendon,
a Texas businessman, hooked up with veteran f/x wizard and former head of 20th Century
Fox’s special effects unit during the 1950s, Ray Kellogg (over 100 film credits
during that period, including work on such productions as The
Egyptian, Prince Valiant, House of Bamboo, On the Threshold of Space and The King
and I).
They developed a trio of films under the Hollywood
Pictures Corporation, with Ray Kellogg sitting in the director’s chair for the
first time … he was not without experience, having served as a second unit
director on both The Egyptian and South
Pacific while at Fox.
With veterans Wilfrid Cline as the cinematographer
and Aaron Stell doing the editing, both features were produced with
studio-level competency on very modest budgets.
These are “creature features” from the 1950s that
have become iconic treasures from the Baby Boom cinematic sci-fi and horror
cycle of the period. Whether it be high
school hot-rodders battling a mutant Gila Monster or a well-meaning “mad scientist”
trying to solve a future food shortage problem and in the process developing a
strain of ravenous shrews … this choice of a double-feature launch from Film
Masters absolutely nails it!
As to bonus goodies, The Monster Party Podcast provides
commentary on The Giant Gila Monster and
Prof. Jason A. Ney does the same for The
Killer Shrews.
Additionally, there is the original production titled “Ray Kellogg – An
Unsung Master,” and an archival interview with Don Sullivan (as hot-rodder
Chase Winstead in The Giant Gila Monster).
