"Actor: J. Carrol Naish"

• Cult Action Extravaganza | DVD | (21/04/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The Cult Action Extravaganza three-disc set offers three very different movies that have nothing in common bar residency in Siren's film archive. They are: The Most Dangerous Game (1932), Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (1953) and Get Christie Love! (1974). The Most Dangerous Game is a classic, one of the first talkies to get pictures moving after five very static years following the birth of sound. The plot finds resourceful hero Joel McCrea and heroine Fay Wray being hunted on the island of the insane Zaroff (Leslie Banks). One of the grandfathers of the summer blockbuster, the film's setup has been reworked many times since, notably in John Woo's Hard Target (1993). By modern standards it's technically primitive, though still gripping stuff, complete with the jungle set built as a test run for King Kong (1933) and graced by Max Steiner's prototype of all Hollywood action scores. Beneath the 12-Mile Reef is another landmark or rather watermark. The third-ever CinemaScope production, this was a prestige release with Technicolor location filming at Key West, Florida of never-before-achieved underwater cinematography and four-channel stereo recording of a superlative Bernard Herrmann score. Even a still-impressive underwater battle with an octopus pre-dates the more famous giant squid of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). The humans aren't bad either, with a young Robert Wagner making a charismatic if ethnically unconvincing Greek lead as sponge fisherman Tony and Terry Moore playing Juliet to his Romeo with real vivacity. Starring Theresa Graves, Get Christie Love! is a tame TV movie imitation of early 1970s female blaxploitation films such Pam Grier's Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974). Running a standard TVM 73 minutes and with a low budget and content sanitised to US network standards, this is lightweight stuff about an undercover cop determined to smash a drugs ring. Nevertheless the movie was popular enough to spawn a short-lived TV show and is significant for being the first time a black woman took the title role in any American network production. Tarantino completists may be interested, as before he paid homage to Christie Love in the dialogue of Reservoir Dogs (1991). On the DVD: Cult Action Extravaganza presents the films in their original aspect ratio and sound format; The Most Dangerous Game and Get Christie Love! are 4:3, mono. The former is faded b/w with reasonably sturdy sound, though the transfer suffers from compression artefacting. No one would expect great quality from a 1974 TV movie, but Get Christie Love! suffers from both a poor print and a mediocre DVD transfer. Beneath the 12-Mile Reef is presented in the extra wide 2.55:1 of early CinemaScope and though sadly not anamorphic both the seascapes and underwater cinematography are still impressive. The four-channel stereo sound is revelatory, clear, detailed and years ahead of what we have come to expect early 1950s films to sound like. --Gary S Dalkin

• Cult Movie | DVD | (17/10/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £39.99

  A 10 disc boxset made up of 10 horror films from the Ultimate Cult Collection. Titles include: Brides Of Blood (Dir. Eddie Romero & Gerardo De Leon 1968): A brutal orgy of ghastly terror as the brides of blood are sacrificed to the non-human creature! Scream in horror at the classic 'Blood Of The Vampires' presented in its original uncut version from original negatives in this tale of the undead who live on the warm blood of human victims. Horror Of The Blood Monsters

• Bulldog Drummond - Double Feature - Vol. 3 | DVD | (20/03/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.99

  Bulldog Drummond In Africa: Captain Hugh ""Bulldog"" Drummond will not let anything get in the way of his wedding preparations. He has his phones shut off and refuses to take orders from Scotland Yard. But when his bride Phyllis goes to pick up Drummond's friend Colonel Nielson she finds that he's been kidnapped. Drummond investigates and learns that Nielson has been spirited away to Morocco. Losing no time Drummond and his friends hop aboard his plane and fly down to North Africa to rescue Nielson. But they have to dodge bombs bullets and lions before they can complete their task. Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police: In ""Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police"" once again Captain Hugh ""Bulldog"" Drummond of Scotland yard tries to go through with his marriage to Phyllis but once again his plans are foiled. A dead body turns up and the murderer is Borjei Islanyani a man masquerading as Phyllis's butler. It seems that Islanyani is in search of a treasure buried underneath Drummond's castle. He kidnaps Phyllis and takes her into the castle's catacombs. So Drummond and his ""secret police"" - his butler Tenny his friend Algy and Colonel Nielson - embark on a search for the missing bride. But the catacombs are vast and perilous and the villain is resourceful.

• Dracula vs. Frankenstein | DVD | (27/02/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.75

  In the late 1960s and early 70s, a bizarre alliance between the Filippino movie company Hemisphere and the American exploitation outfit Independent International yielded a series of weirdly interconnected horror movies, most of which work the word Blood into the title. The Filippino items are strangely fascinating vampire and mad scientist pictures with oddball colour effects and a mix of naive serial-style thrills and extreme-for-the-era sex and gore; the American efforts, from director Al Adamson, are shoddier, thrown together from offcuts of previous pictures, and are lead-paced but nevertheless curiously appealing. Gaze in awe at mutant killer trees, slobbering hunchbacked servants, faded matinee idols, stripper-turned-actress heroines with concrete blonde hairdos, evil dwarves, John Carradine or Lon Chaney, footage cut in from completely different films, Dracula and Frankenstein meeting hippies and bikers, red filters when the vampires attack, chanting natives! Plus lots of exclamation marks! Plus lurid trailers! "The kings of horror battle to the death" in Dracula vs Frankenstein. The last of the Frankensteins (J Carrol Naish) works in a carnival horror house with his sidekick Groton the Mad Zombie (Lon Chaney Jr). A Frank Zappa-like Dracula (Zandor Vorkov) and a monster with a face like a big mushroom slug it out. The film also features Russ Tamblyn as a beach biker and a Vegas showgirl heroine on LSD. This Region 2 DVD is sadly bereft of the extras found on the US Troma Region 1 disc. --Kim Newman

• Dracula vs Frankenstein | DVD | (19/01/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  The Kings of Horror Battleito theiDeath! Count Dracula meets Dr. Frankenstein and the two revive the infamous Monster for a blood bath of thrills and chills. Off-the-wall wild scream classic!