JOE29

I just noticed a Hammer House of Horror boxset listing on Amazon. It's hard to get much information on it yet. But the pic shows 4 bluray movies. Taste the Blood of Dracula, The Mummy, Frankenstein Must be Destroyed and Dracula has risen from the Grave.
i'm excited to get some more Hammer bluray releases.

Disclaimer:
I know that there are other Hammer threads that I could have used for this. But I thought that this one should have it's own thread. Sorry if I was wrong.

rw2516

That set would be from WB.
The very same day WB is releasing a Special Effects box set:
MIGHTY JOE YOUNG
THEM
BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS
SON OF KONG

Go Warners!

Spiderbite

Now that is a cool set!

Giles

Special Effect Box Set extras:

SON OF KONG (1933)

The showman who brought Kong to New York returns to Skull Island and finds Kong’s son, a spunky 12-footer with a winning personality and his dad’s awesome strength. The filmmakers who created King Kong kept the excitement going with this sequel, released the same year as the original. Robert Armstrong reprises the role of Carl Denham, and Helen Mack is the damsel in distress. The two rescue Kong Jr. from quicksand and get a devoted protector who defends them from fierce prehistoric monsters, including a giant cave bear. But when a mighty earthquake strikes, even the son of Kong may not be powerful enough to save them.



Special Features:

· Theatrical Trailer



MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949)

The team behind King Kong reunited to create another towering ape: Mr. Joseph Young. The simian is shorter and the jokes tongue-in-cheekier, but the Oscar®-winning Special Effects* are just as Kong-sized. A slick nightclub owner (Robert Armstrong) discovers the giant ape frolicking in Africa as the beloved pet of a young girl (Terry Moore). He brings both to Hollywood as a floor show until some no-goods ply Joe with booze and the blitzed behemoth goes bonkers. Highlights include Armstrong’s henchmen trying to lasso Joe cowpoke style, Joe playing tug-of-war with musclemen and plenty of Joe-to-the-rescue action.



Special Features:

· Commentary by Terry Moore and special effects veterans Ray Harryhausen and Ken Ralston

· Featurettes

o A Conversation with Ray Harryhausen and the Chiodo Brothers

o Ray Harryhausen and Mighty Joe Young

· Theatrical Trailer



THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953)

Near the Arctic Circle, an atomic bomb is detonated. This fearsome experiment disturbs the sleep of a giant rhedosaurus encased in ice for over 100 million years and sends it southward on a destructive, deadly rampage! The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms was the first screen adaptation of a work by fantasy-fiction titan Ray Bradbury. It also marked the first time Ray Harryhausen had total control over special effects. He came up with a fantastic creature (constructed at full scale, all 50 tons of it) that swims down from the north to run amok through New York City before being conquered in a spectacular Coney Island roller-coaster finale.



Special Features:

· Featurettes

o The Rhedosaurus and the Roller Coaster: Making the Beast

o Harryhausen & Bradbury: An Unfathomable Friendship

o Armatures

· Theatrical Trailer



THEM! (1954)

Man has split the atom and ushered in a new era. But how could he know he would also create Them? This landmark movie about giant radiation-mutated ants boasts remarkable Oscar®-nominated special effects. Them! begins in New Mexico with a child wandering in shock, a ransacked general store and a battered corpse full of enough formic acid to kill 20 men. It ends with

an epic struggle in the 700 miles of storm drains under Los Angeles, where the insect hordes are beaten, though they spawned a generation of films about radioactive creatures. Some approximate the terror, but few have equaled the artistry of Them!

Special Features:

· Featurette: Ants – Behind-the-scenes archive footage montage on the design and operation of Giant Ants

· Theatrical Trailer

Steve

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Sounds like the DVD features ported over. Not sure there is anything new here.

I must say that 50's SF/x heavy films are the LAST on my list to upgrade to blu-ray. to me, blu-ray actually hurts these films as the sfx are so clearly on a different level than the background, it takes me out of the film experience.

It is hard for me to watch any Godzilla films on blu-ray because seeing all those wires in detail just drives me nuts!

Haven't seen any Harryhausen stuff in high def, but I would think the mattes would really be obvious...

Mr. Cinema

The titles in the f/x set will also be available separately.

Rainet

How good are the Hammer films? I admit i've seen next to nothing. The only recollection i have, were seeing small glimpse of them on saturday afternoons as a kid. What i do remember were eerie atmosphere of the outside countryside. Were the storylines good? Is this set ultimate in terms of the titles?

Steve

[QUOTE=Mr. Cinema;12510775]The titles in the f/x set will also be available separately.

egads. Are these really cardboard sleeves to hold these classic discs???

Giles

apparently there was a commentary track that Ray Harryhausen did with director John Landis for 'Mighty Joe Young' - which at the moment doesn't look like it's getting included.

hanshotfirst1138

Hammer movies, by and large, are very, very dated, and usually narratively catastrophic, but gorgeous-looking (frequently on a small budget) and atmospheric. I'd rent them before you plunge into buying nothing, lots of their appeal is due to nostalgic fans who grew up on them, but that doesn't mean that they aren't quite fun sometimes, IMO.

hanshotfirst1138

FX were done with optical printers then, it was just a different time. They don't look great, but they have a certain low-fi charm.

Well, back in the days, guys like the creators of those old kaiju movies used to count on stuff like the jitter of a 35mm film projector to hide that kind of stuff. Alas, nowadays, digital has a way of laying bare that kind of stuff (the edges of Poltergeist or Ghostbusters have a way of looking ragged on Blu-ray), but it's definitely better than Lucas-ing it, and frankly, given how crappy standard-def looks on my big-ass HDTV, I'd rather have it HD, warts and all.

PhantomStranger

The better Hammer films are fantastic. There is a reason why an obscure British film studio is still fondly remembered decades after its last successful film. They weren't all winners but it's essential for horror fans to give them a chance.

GoldenJCJ

If you want to try them out before you buy the box set, TCM is doing a Hammer Horror marathon this coming Monday (6/22/15) in honor of Christopher Lee. Set your DVR, I think they'll be playing most, if not all, the movies included in the box set.

Neil M.

Like GoldenJCJ suggested, I would sample a few titles first before buying. Hammer films have an interesting and uneven history. The 50's films are probably the best in terms of quality. The 60's and 70's have many good entries but some films followed a set formula and others started to follow the trends of 70's horror instead of defining it. This set has decent titles. Based on what WB owns the right to, I think the Volume 2 set will be better in terms of titles.

I feel the exact opposite. I think the old SF/x holds up a lot better than most cgi from the 90's.

Paul_SD

I think that sensibility, that is pretty common among classic horror fans, applies more when you are talking about the franchise characters like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, etc.

And even then I wouldn't agree that the earlier films were all that great.
I'll take Taste The Blood Of Dracula any day over the original which I just watched again on the UK Bd recently. I still struggle to comprehend the allure that film holds. I know it started the Hammer horror 'industry', and is special when viewed in the context of the time it was released. But for a new viewer I just don't think it has anything there, dramatically, to generate much enthusiasm. Dracula in it has a page of dialogue at the beginning of the film as he greets Harker in his castle, but after that- nothing. It's interesting (in theory) that they reduce him to a force of nature/destruction- but most of the havoc he wrecks is done off screen and what we actually see are the ramifications. In that respect he's almost like the shark from Jaws- except we don't have anywhere near the interesting conflict of the three shark hunters to engage us while we anticipate his next attack.

And as much as (Horror of) Dracula continues to disappoint me, I'll never bother watching the first Frankenstein film (Curse of) again which I found to be a big snoozer like Dracula. The only other Hammer Frankie I've seen is the Universal one (Evil of?) and that was also another I can't see myself ever revisiting.

OTOH, some of their 70's output like Vampire Circus, Kronos, Twins Of Evil, Hands Of The Ripper, Countess Dracula, and others are among the ones I've enjoyed the most. And just about all of those are already available in Region A on Bd.
I would also highly recommend the Universal held titles like Brides Of Dracula which IS a great movie and one of the best Hammer Horrors even though it lacks Chris Lee in the title role. Curse Of The Werewolf is also an interesting, very atypical, slow boil werewolf movie.

Brian T

Can't entirely agree with some of the dismissive comments above beyond the obvious fact that Hammer Films, like any studio, then as now, ran a gamut of quality, but there are far worse horror films from the era than Hammer's worst. Any "new viewer", especially those registered at a site like this one, should already know enough to find the context that old films won't necessarily spell out for them, rather than just speeding through them and/or blowing them off because better stuff came along afterwards (naturally), I also think the appeal of many of the Hammer films plainly goes beyond "nostalgic fans" -- the studio simply found a very profitable niche and made a lot of entertaining movies within it: great ones, good ones, some well-intentioned misfires for balance. But if you're looking to sample the films in this particular set cheaply (and because both of the new Blu-ray 4-packs are considerably overpriced), these older DVD sets are much better value, despite some overlap:

TCM Greatest Classic Film Collection: Hammer Horror
http://www.amazon.com/TCM-Greatest-C...dp/B003M8NGG2/

4 Film Favorites: Dracula
http://www.amazon.com/Film-Favorites...dp/B000U1ZV7G/

Rainet

Thank you for all the feedback. I think I will check out that marathon run next week. If any calculations, I did enjoy Christopher Lee in The Wicker Man. So I don't need any modern day scares to be entertained. The mojority of horror films I enjoy are from the 70s. But I do love any decade of horror. Hammer films are the only films for some reason just alluded me.

Doc Moonlight

I'd also recommend Hammer's second Frankenstein film, REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN, my personal favorite among all of the Frankenstein films.

JOE29

You can't go wrong with the Hammer Dracula and Frankenstein movies. I agree that there are a lot of klunkers in the Hammer area too
Plus there are still some Hammer movies that I haven't even seen yet.

JOE29

[QUOTE=Mr. Cinema;12510775]The titles in the f/x set will also be available separately.

Good. I'd rather have them separately anyway.

dvd-4-life

It's too bad that WB,Universal and Anchor Bay can't get together and put out all the Hammer movies on Blu-ray together.

sparks

Too bad that all the films shown on TCM were either worse than what was released on SD or the same prints as the SDs...none of what is to be released on BD!

zyzzle

At first I thought this meant that the 1979 TV series would be released, but am crestfallen that this is not the case.

rbrown498

Me too!

Neil M.

Some info came out this weekend at Comic-Con. Warner has said that Curse of Frankenstein and Horror of Dracula require more work and that is the reason why they aren't in volume one. They also said there will be future volumes with non-Hammer titles as well. So this basically isn't just a collection of Hammer titles, even though Volume one contains all Hammer titles.