mike7162

I bet that's exactly what happened. I was afraid the Invisible Man and the Creature wouldn't get releases because of Tom Cruise's Mummy folly, but this is even better news. I had already bought the DVD collection, but I only paid 30 bucks so no worries - someone will get a sweet Christmas gift this year!

Sonic

Same here.

Giles

I'm so down with the 'Creature from the Black Lagoon' Collection coming out in August

Brian T

Just noticed Universal has a couple of singles of the Abbott & Costello monster shows coming out the same day as the big box.

Meet The Invisible Man

Meet The Mummy

Why So Blu?

Meet The Mummy is already available.

dvd-4-life

Is it just me or older b/w movies that are on blu ray don't look that much better than their DVD counterpart.

I remember years ago buying a bunch of WB sci fi movies from the 1950's(Them,etc.) on blu ray and was totally disappointed.

bsmith

Detail is detail, both b/w and color can take advantage of being upgraded to blu-ray. That said, it is still the quality of the source material that determines how much benefit we get going from standard definition to high definition. A source from film (e.g., 35mm) has the potential to be high definition. I have several blu-rays that are barely better than their DVD counterparts (color and b/w) just because the master is old and the source questionable.

The issue you encountered may have been the use of an optical (photographic process) within a shot to create an effect that was common in 50's Sci Fi. An optical, in this case, can come from including a shot that required multiple exposures to get the desired results. Each exposure can reduce detail and thus lessen the quality when upgraded to blu-ray. When a quality source is used it is generally just the scenes based on an optical that may appear to be lesser quality, and some movies have more optical effects than others. My recollection is that "Them" is an excellent transfer to blu-ray for the non-optical scenes, but yes it does use opticals at times and they would appear to be lower quality.

It isn't just Sci Fi movies. I'm sure you have seen both color and b/w movies where a person is driving a car and what you see behind them is low quality. In this case, it was filmed on a stage and the background is nothing more than a rear projection screen projecting as if they are driving on a real road. In other cases, they may use a filter to diffuse the image, this can also reduce detail.

In the end, it is not a b/w vs. color issue, but just the shape of the source material and how it was filmed that determines how much better a blu-ray can look from a DVD.