and one of the Martians in INVADERS FROM MARS (1953). Evidently Wolff had difficulties wearing the large fly head and appears only in the shots where Philippe kills Max and Alan. In the end, with the
help of Inspector Beecham (Price’s TOWER OF LON- DON and INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS cast mate John Sutton), Philippe and the fly are successfully separated and all is well—conveniently overlooking the two murders our hero has committed. This title has been previously released on DVD
by 20th Century Fox in a 2000 combo set with THE FLY (1958), where the values of its 2.35:1 framing were made apparent for the first time in decades. The BD transfer, evidently sourced from an archi- val 35mm positive element, is presented in 1080p 2.35:1 with a 2.0 Stereo DTS Master Audio track that sounds very much like 1.0 Mono. The
anamorphic lensing of Brydon Baker (FROM HELL IT CAME, THE ASTOUNDING SHE MONSTER) is necessary to a fuller appreciation of the film, whose backgrounds are sometimes more emotive than its foregrounds—as in the case of the protagonists’ first visit to Andre’s disused laboratory, where his pained chalk scrawls from the first film (“LOVE YOU”) remain in evidence. As often happens with Cinema- Scope pictures, close-ups have a tendency to look vertically compressed and the comparative clarity of most shots exposes the presence of blurrier stock footage inserts and optical brightening during the teleportation scenes. Some digital clean-up is ap- parent, as are occasional overlooked minor scratches. It doesn’t look bad but, all things told,
it’s the least satisfactory of the VINCENT PRICE COLLECTION II presentations. A trailer is included, as well as a gallery of fine quality poster materials and surprisingly poor still images.
David Del Valle is joined by Brett Halsey for an audio commentary that finds Del Valle repeatedly calling for a reappraisal of the film, but offering few reasons why, other than that it stars Vincent Price and that his childhood matinee audience was en- tertained by it. It’s a lively track, with warm per- sonal memories of Price offered by both participants, with Halsey singling the film’s star out as the hap- piest experience with a co-star he ever had. Halsey is also refreshingly candid about the fact that he turned the ten-day, $1000 job down twice before a Fox executive strongly encouraged him to accept. He reluctantly did and it led to a Fox contract re- sulting in better-paying roles in A-pictures like Jean
Negulesco’s THE BEST OF EVERYTHING (1959), RETURN TO PEYTON PLACE (1961) and the TV series FOLLOW THE SUN (1961-62). Because he worked fewer than the ten days allotted to the film’s production, Halsey’s recollections are sometimes
spotty and the conversation goes off-book into other interesting areas, like his earlier days as a Univer- sal contract player, or his later years in Italian genre films, but there are frequent allusions to his lifetime friendship with actor David Hedison (who played Andre Delambre in THE FLY) and their long-run- ning, tongue-in-cheek feud about which of the two films is better.
Finally, THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, which shares a disc with THE TOMB OF LIGEIA. Making its domestic Blu-ray debut, the US/Italian co-pro- duction is another public domain title that has been offered by many different DVD labels over the years. Due to its stark and shabby (though not exactly “neorealist”) look, contrasting Roman EUR District locations with ramshackle sets, the film is never going to look fabulous but the visual rendering here is as good as it will ever be—crisp, detailed and clean, with solid blacks, and including slightly more picture information in the periphery over previous widescreen releases. The 2.0 DTS-HD audio track is also strong (and in sync, which we understand is not true of a recent overseas release), but does not go the extra mile as did an Image Entertainment laserdisc release that offered a separate music and effects track.
The audio commentary by David Del Valle and Derek Botelho is loose and chatty, falling prey to frequent confusion and speculation. Del Valle is the main commentator, but he occasionally throws questions or opportunities for debate to Botelho, who pronounces Italian names admirably and pro- vides what information he can, much of which ben- efits from his earlier research into Italian cinema for his book THE ARGENTO SYNDROME. Neither par- ticipant has a clue who really directed the picture, how it came together, or exactly where, but what Del Valle remembers of what Vincent Price shared with him about the filming, and his experiences of making films in Rome, is of interest. It’s when they go off-notes into guesswork that things get wob- bly. Frankly, there’s a lot of errata here, some of it apparently caused by working from a too-small ref- erence monitor (early on, they identify what are clearly extras playing corpses as dummies), some of it caused by lack of adequate preparation (they lament the film’s lack of blood-sucking seconds before someone is suddenly bitten in the neck), and some brought about by the simple imperative to keep talking.
As for who really directed the picture, it was directed by both Sidney Salkow (its US credited di- rector) and Ubaldo Ragona (its Italian director of credit), not by one or the other; they worked in a
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