JordanGLC

Tokyo Shock/Media Blasters is releasing this Toho gem. Perhaps a nice trend is starting from the 50th anniversary of Godzilla and we'll more of these titles in the future!

shill66

Bring on Matango (Attack of the Mushroom People), please. And I mean PLEASE.

marty888

Nice - any specs yet?

The Exister

Amen to that!

Jaymole

It will be Wide Screen Anamorphic with New English Dub and original language with english subtitles

also coming are:

Attack of the Mushroom People
Dagora, the Space Monster
Varan the Unbelievable

bluesparrow

Fantastic news, I've been dying to see this since DVDsavant's review.

Mutley Hyde

Cool!

cultshock

Excellent news.


Wow, even more good news! Between these and Columbia's nice releases of the older Godzilla films, fans of Toho's SF/Fantasy films are finally seeing their patience rewarded.

shill66

So this is how the world ends.




(I once declared that the world would probably end before we'd get a nice DVD release of Attack of the Mushroom People.)

duff beer

YEAH!!!!!!! HAIL CLASSIC SCIFI

sparks

Last year on eBay I got a DVD-r anamorphic 2.35:1 English dubbed full Japanese running time of it.

Kinda dark in areas, so getting this will really be a treat.

Steve Phillips

Media Blasters? Too bad, they're almost sure to screw up one or all of these movies.

They have such bad quality control there, the lists of discs with major technical snafus grows each month. Worse, they never do anything about them, just leaving the defective discs on the market. Not minor stuff either...huge problems, and not player related either.

Hopefully they'll get on the ball as these movies need the royal treatment.

I'd recommend waiting for reviews before buying any title from this company. They have yet to resolve the issues with these and many other titles: WARLOCK MOON, FACELESS, INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES, TWO ORPHAN VAMPIRES, BLOOD OF THE ZOMBIE, WEREWOLF WOMAN....

cultshock

That's true about the troubles with some Media Blasters discs, and I will certainly wait for reviews of these particular discs as well. On the plus side, they seem to have better luck with their Japanese titles compared to their Eurocult ones.

CaptGideon

Cool news. Any word on price?

I won't mind adding Mysterians to my collection, especially if it has the original Japanese audio track. For years, all I've had was some crappy low quality commerical VHS.

I vaguely recall seeing Dagora years ago. Wasn't that about a big space jellyfish or something? I don't think I was that impressed at the time.

Varan's an OK flick. I'm not sure it's a keeper. But sometimes I buy OK movies just because I figure they're so obscure that they'll go out of print after awhile.

roger_d

Would also love to have Johnny Soco and his Flying Robot and Ultraman .

JordanGLC

If you're talking about the original series, it is unfortunately caught in a legal entanglement. Check out the Henshin!Online archives (article dated 1/2/04) for more info on that.

There are more recent Ultraman discs available, including the Ultraman Tiga TV series. What really looks impressive is the trailer for the upcoming Ultraman movie. Hopefully we'll see that in the U.S.

I was thinking there might be an outside chance of Zone Fighter getting a R1 release this year, what with it being G's 50th and all. Looks like that aint happening.

Sex Fiend

Any specifics about the major problems? I think I own one or two Media Blaster titles (none of the aformentioned), but I don't recall any issues with those.

Steve Phillips

Major authoring problems; not things that are player related but things that happen on all machines...

.....layer changes which skip over minutes of footage which cannot be accessed in any way

......discs stuck in anamorhic squeeze mode no matter if you have a 4X3 or 16X9 set

......dragging motion problems caused by poor PAL to NTSC transfer prior to authoring

......incorrect aspect ratio, overmatting


I don't know all of the titles but all of the above are problems; add HELL HIGH to the list also, and I hear many of the anime titles are also affected.

Most of the issues are probably the fault of a bad authoring house; but Media Blasters is responsible for checking the final product for quality before they ship them out, and should respond the many complaints they've had over the last year or so.

Just be careful and wait the reviews on any of their titles, never pre-order. When they do a disc right, the results are excellent but they have a really bad track record of releasing defective stuff and then not bothering to do anything about it.

Jason

Some basic information available on the Media Blasters Web Site

The cover art has the TohoScope logo, but the listing at Amazon says full screen 1.33:1. This is a widescreen movie (Toho's first widescreen color flick) and has been released WS in Japan. Since it does have the Japanese track with subtitles, I hope they'll get this right.

I wonder why there's no english dub.

sparks

Just got an email from Media Blasters.

It will be 16x9 2.35:1. Nothing was said about it being in Japanese, Japanese with subs or English dubbed.

I asked but it wasn't answered.

shill66

I just received my copy, and wrote up a quick review that I sent to Amazon. Here's what I wrote:

A review of the DVD, March 5, 2005
Reviewer: Steven W. Hill "Owner of shillpages.com" (Chicago, IL United States)

I can't be the only one eagerly awaiting news and information about this release (and the release of "Matango", one of my favorite movies ever). So, having had a copy of the DVD in my hands for about ten minutes now, I want to share information with you!

Picture quality is very good, although a bit soft. It can't compare to a recent film, but then again I've seen enough recent films released to DVD with worse transfer quality than this! The print is stable and clean with good color. The movie is presented as ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN (16:9 enhanced) at about 2.35:1 aspect ratio, starting right off with that cool TohoScope logo. Titles are in Japanese, just like they should be. Menus are 16:9.

Audio: the viewer can select from a 5.1 English mix, 5.1 Japanese, mono Japanese, and mono Spanish. Selectable subtitles are in English. Another audio track presents a commentary from Koichi Kawakita and Shinji Higuchi - it's in Japanese, but there are also English subtitles for the commentary. And what's really nice is that you can turn on TWO subtitles at the same time, so if you read quickly, you can see the movie's subtitles at the top, and the commentary's subtitles at the bottom. Cool!

But that's not all. There's one MORE audio track - the isolated score by Akira Ifukube. And the extras? Photo gallery, design gallery, storyboards, trailer, and previews for "Matango", "Dogora", "Varan", "Gappa the Triphibian Monster" and "One Missed Call" (a recent film). The first three previews are original anamorphic widescreen Japanese language trailers, and they look good ("Varan" looks dodgy at the start, but is fine afterward). The trailer for "Gappa" is in English, and is letterboxed widescreen.

Well, seeing the trailer for "Matango" has got me very excited now, and my copy has already shipped and should be in my hands a few days after I'm writing this... so look for a review over on its product page, too, as soon as I get it.

shill66

Well, gosh, it sure SEEMED like a lot of people were interested in these when they were announced!

Anyway, MATANGO arrived today. Here's my review:

It's here. One of my favorite movies - and most eagerly-awaited DVDs - ever. And EVERY single bad scenario I could think of for its DVD release has been stamped out soundly by Tokyo Shock/Media Blasters. Because THIS is exactly what I wanted from a DVD of "Matango" (Attack of the Mushroom People). My dream came true, and it's sitting in my hands.

The movie? Some of you might remember seeing it back when there were things called "local UHF television stations" that showed lots of cheap movies - mostly bad ones, some good ones, but almost universally fondly remembered regardless of their narrative quality. Back when we were kids, all we remembered about the movie was the ghost ship, the mushroom people, and the narrator's unforgettable final lines (dubbed in English, of course). And that it was cool. We may not have noticed that the script is very effective, the character interaction and motivations convincing, and the production design truly remarkable... and there's plenty more about the film that elevates it WAAAAY up above your average Japanese monster movie.

The DVD? Well, now we can finally really see the movie and rediscover it. The DVD boasts a beautiful clean print presented in anamorphic widescreen. The aspect ratio is stated as 2.35:1 on the back cover, which is correct for TohoScope, but the ratio actually measures out to be about 2.53:1. Add to that the fact that the image is actually windowboxed (when looking at the full image, say, on a PC screen, there are black bars on the sides as well as top and bottom), and this movie looks VERY wide on a television.

Just like the other recent DVD release of "The Mysterians" (q.v.), there is a wealth of audio selections: the disc includes a 5.1 surround English audio mix, a mono English track, and a mono Japanese track. There is also a commentary track from Akira Kubo, who plays the lead role of Kenji Murai in the film. It is in Japanese, but there are subtitles for the film AND the commentary... and you can even turn them BOTH on at the same time if you want (one subtitle appears at the top, the other at the bottom).

Just a glorious presentation of the film (at last!) would be enough to please me and other fans of the film, but we also get some marvellous extras. There is a 17 minute 41 second piece called "Spoken Word from Matango writer Masami Fukushima" which is a written narrative of the story accompanied by widely varied video - sometimes stills, sometimes behind-the-scenes footage, and so on. There is also a very generous, in-depth and fascinating interview with special effects cinematographer Teruyoshi Nakano. The interview runs 27 minutes 38 seconds and covers the film from all angles, accompanied at times by some great production stills and behind-the-scenes photos detailing the set, makeup, pre-production artwork and more. It's clear from what he says that "Matango" was MEANT to be a cut above the rest, and the loving care they put into its production really shows in the movie itself. Also included on the DVD is a trailer (16:9 WS), plus previews for "Dogora" (1964), "The Mysterians" (1957), "Varan" (1958) and "Gappa" (1967).

One more thing... if you're already familiar with the movie, you'll probably just want to watch it in the Japanese language with English subtitles on. The impact of the ending is undeniably weakened in the Japanese (original) version, believe it or not. So you, and ESPECIALLY those who have never seen the movie before, will want to watch the movie both ways at least once, and I'll even go so far as to suggest your first viewing be of the English dubbed version. (Don't think it to be sacrilege; the Japanese version is right there waiting for your second viewing, which you'll want to do anyway.) Anyway... THANK YOU Tokyo Shock/Media Blasters for having such remarkable respect for the material to present it to us with every bit as much loving care and attention as any other recent Hollywood blockbuster film released to DVD. Buyers, start your debit cards! You don't want to be without this title!

Jaymole

Thanks for the reviews shill66!

Can't wait till Deepdiscount ships my copies out!

gorgo99

Thanks for the reviews, I'm convinced to get these!

Steve Phillips

I was impressed with the MYSTERIANS disc, and look forward to the rest of the releases! Keep up the good work (and improved quality control) Media Blasters!

The English dub was obviously of recent origin, and not the one from the original U.S. release. I prefer the films subtitled anyway, but the dubbing for the U.S. releases of these and other Toho films are far superior to the "Toho International" versions. I guess there was a reason why the U.S distributors re-did the dubbing in the first place. I'll still keep my old UHF prints for nostalgia's sake. It's not often I do that! Especially for VARAN, which is a far diffeent film in its U.S. version and I'm pretty sure the DVD will only include the original Japanese film without any of the new scenes.