Curtis, Donald

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (Color Special Edition)

A textbook example of '50s-era science fiction, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers boasts not only a solid script and competent performances, but some genuinely impressive stop-motion effects courtesy of one of the industry's uncontested masters, Ray Harryhausen. Scientist Hugh Marlowe (who faced a more benevolent invader from space five years earlier in The Day the Earth Stood Still) discovers that UFOs are responsible for the destruction of a series of exploratory space rockets launched by his space exploration project. The saucers' helmeted pilots land on Earth and deliver an ultimatum to humanity via Marlowe: fealty or complete annihilation.

Harryhausen's painstakingly intricate saucers and the destruction they wreak (particularly during an assault on Washington, D.C.) are the film's unquestionable highlights, but Marlowe and Joan Taylor (as his wife/partner) are capable leads, and veteran B director Fred F. Sears doesn't let the dialogue and expositional scenes fall apart in between the barrage of effects. Earth vs. the Flying Saucers is a fun and effective slice of sci-fi that should please younger audiences as well as nostalgic return viewers. Sears later reused some of the effects footage for his jaw-droppingly awful 1957 effort, The Giant Claw. --Paul Gaita

Space scientist Dr. Russell Marvin (Hugh Marlowe) and his wife Carol (Joan Taylor) are working on a secret missile project but every time their rockets are launched they are intercepted and destroyed by the more advanced technology of mysterious flying saucers hovering near the Earth. The alien race has completely surrounded the planet giving Earth the sixty days to surrender. The enemy spacecraft appear indestructible and Marvin sets out to find a weapon that can defeat them. The special effects of stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen are legendary most notably in the scene in which flying saucers attack the Capitol building in Washington D.C.System Requirements:Running Time: 167 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: SCI-FI/FANTASY/FANTASY UPC: 043396226197 Manufacturer No: 22619

Lassie Come Home/Son of Lassie/Courage of Lassie

The devoted collie escapes kennel captivity (with help from young Elizabeth Taylor) and braves storms and peril to return home to Roddy McDowall in the all-time classic Lassie Come Home (Disc 1/Side A). Courage runs in the family in Son of Lassie (Disc 1/Side B), as Lassie's progeny stows away on a World War II Allied bombing run piloted by RAF airman Peter Lawford. Wartime heroics are again at the forefront in Courage of Lassie (Disc 2), starring Taylor and shot on beautiful Canadian locations.

Night Passage

Thanks to ultracrisp Technirama photography of great mountainside and river gorge locations in Colorado, Night Passage is often terrific to look at; you can almost feel the autumn sun and brisk air. This should have been another classic Western pairing James Stewart with director Anthony Mann. But after choosing the locations, cast, and crew, and directing the precredit sequence, Mann abruptly resigned. He found Borden Chase's screenplay an "incoherent" rehash of relationships and setups from their previous films, nor was he encouraged by Stewart's determination to play the accordion and sing. Stewart's an ex-railroad cop who became a pariah by letting a prisoner--Audie Murphy's "The Utica Kid"--escape. The two cross paths again in a ghost town where Dan Duryea, doing a zany version of his loony outlaw from Winchester '73, has holed up with his gang. Replacement director James Neilson, a newcomer destined for bland Disney servitude, fosters a lot of flatfooted standing-around. --Richard T. Jameson

All That Heaven Allows - Criterion Collection

Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman were so successful in Douglas Sirk's Magnificent Obsession that they reteamed for this, his first melodrama masterpiece. Young hunk Rock is a strapping son of mother nature, a gardener who woos middle-aged, middle class widow Wyman to the snooty disapproval of her conservative social circle and embarrassment of her self-centered children. Wyman discovers a new life with his open-armed friends and back-to-nature lifestyle, but struggles with life-changing decisions in the face of social pressure and vicious gossip. Living the Henry Thoreau dream, Rock inhabits his personal Walden in a rustic country cabin by a bubbling brook, a dream house lit by a giant picture window overlooking an idyllic countryside where deer pose just outside the window. Wyman's elegant but sterile suburban home transforms into a tomb when she sacrifices her love for the "good name" of her children, and the lonely widow sees her future in the pale, colorless reflection of her TV screen. But don't despair just yet: Sirk's heroines are dynamic and resourceful and no Sirk melodrama ends without a heart-tugging, over-the-top twist. German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who championed Sirk as a master and a mentor, remade the film as Ali: Fear Eats the Soul decades later. --Sean Axmaker

Jane Wyman is a repressed wealthy widow and Rock Hudson is the hunky Thoreau-following gardener who loves her in Douglas Sirk's heartbreakingly beautiful indictment of 1950s small-town America. Sirk utilizes expressionist colors, reflective surfaces, and frames-within-frames to convey the loneliness and isolation of a matriarch trapped by the snobbery of her children and the gossip of her social-climbing country club chums. Criterion is proud to present this subversive Hollywood tearjerker in a new Special Edition.