Product Description
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Launching us from a grave past to a space-age future,
these two thrilling double features from producers Richard and
Alex Gordon spin classic tales of hair-raising homicidal mania
and intrepid, death-defying exploration. The Haunted Strangler:
19th-century English author James Rankin (Boris Karloff) believes
that the wrong man was hanged twenty years earlier for a series
of murders, yet in his investigations discovers a secret
all-too-horrible and, for him, gruesomely inescapable. Corridors
of Blood: In 1840s London, Dr. Thomas Bolton (Boris Karloff)
dares to dream the unthinkable: to operate on patients without
causing pain. Unfortunately, the road to general anesthesia is
blocked by a local killer (Christopher Lee), as well as Bolton's
devastating addiction to his own experiments. The Atomic
Submarine: When nuclear-powered submarine the Tiger Shark sets
out to investigate a series of mysterious disappearances near the
Arctic Circle, its fearless crew finds itself besieged by
electrical storms, an Unidentified Floating Saucer, and lots of
hairy tentacles. First Man into Space: In this interstellar
cautionary tale, b U.S. Navy test pilot Dan Prescott, hungry
for fame, jettisons himself beyond Earth's atmosphere, only to
come in contact with a hideously mutating extraterrestrial virus.
(Image Entertainment)
.com
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For sheer entertainment value, Monsters and Madmen is a
more-than-welcome addition to the prestigious Criterion
Collection. Proving that well-made exploitation films deserve as
much scholarly appreciation as classics of world cinema, this
four-disc set lives up to its name with four enjoyable features
(two horror, two science fiction, all above average) that
showcase the consistent quality achieved by British producers
Richard and Alex Gordon. Taking their cue from American
International Pictures (AIP, which Alex co-founded in the
mid-1950s) and Roger Corman's low-budget approach to profitable
production, the Gordons were passionate film buffs who moved into
filmmaking when Boris Karloff brought them a story property
called "Stranglehold," which was eventually produced as The
Haunted Strangler (1958), giving 69-year-old Karloff a
much-needed respite from the forgettable programmers that plagued
his later career. Directed by Robert Day, it's a superbly crafted
thriller in which Karloff plays 19th-century English author James
Rankin, determined to prove the innocence of a man wrongfully
executed 20 years earlier. His quest turns horrifically tragic
when Rankin is overtaken by the dead man's spirit, and the
killer's strangulation spree continues. As part of a
double-feature package, The Haunted Strangler was immediately
followed by Corridors of Blood (1959), another fine vehicle for
Karloff, who plays a doomed physician in 1840s London obsessed
with pioneering experiments in anesthesia. It's a grim
graverobber's tale, with an early role for Christopher Lee as a
macabre character named "Resurrection Joe."
Gaining momentum, the Gordons also produced First Man into Space
and The Atomic Submarine (see previous DVD releases for detailed
reviews), a pair of 1959 releases that took timely advantage of
Cold War headlines, the space race, and advances in nuclear-sub
exploration of the polar ice caps. The former involves a cocky
test pilot's ill-ed exposure to a strange alien substance
which turns him into a blood-sucking predator; the latter is a
sci-fi adventure that culminates in an encounter with an
ill-tempered alien beneath the ice of the Arctic Circle. All four
films guarantee a welcome trip down memory lane for long-time
genre buffs, and DVD collectors of all ages will enjoy the
enthusiastic expertise of Tom Weaver, whose delightfully reverent
commentaries with Richard and Alex Gordon--along with video
interviews with primary cast and crew members from all four
films--serve as detailed testament (owing to Richard Gordon's
wonderfully vivid recollections) to the lasting appeal of these
"B-movie" relics. Theatrical trailers, radio spots, and
exploitative print advertising place the films in proper
historical context, and accompanying booklets offer appreciative
essays by producer John Croydon and critic/historians Maitland
McDonagh, Bruce Eder, and Michael Lennick. Anyone with a passion
for '50s sci-fi and horror will quickly accept Monsters and
Madmen as a crucial addition to their DVD collections, well in
keeping with the expansive Criterion legacy. --Jeff Shannon