A few moons ago, Japanese conglomerate Sony bought out Columbia Pictures and its film library. Monster movie fans breathed a sigh of relief. We figured for sure that our days of waiting for the complete and uncut releases of classic Toho monster/science fiction movies was at hand. This was before the advent of DVD, mind you, which should give you a fairly good idea of how wrong we truly were. Finally, more than 20 years after the copyrights on some of these movies were renewed, a few more iconic fantasy films from the Land of the Rising Sun have made their way to DVD in a three-disc set. It’s about damn time, too.
Keeping up with their recent “Icons” series (see Icons Of Adventure or any of the Icons Of Horror entries), Sony Home Entertainment has released Icons Of Sci-Fi: Toho Collection. This set at long last gives us anamorphic widescreen presentations of The H-Man, Battle In Outer Space, and Mothra in both the English language versions that most of us grew up with, as well as their original uncut Japanese versions. Halle-fucking-lujah!
What happens when you make a movie mashing contemporary sci-fi, stylish film noir, and the proverbial social commentary? Well, chances are, you’ll wind up with The H-Man — a slower-than-average-but-still-fun yarn about gangsters, cops, and a mysterious entity that seems to dissolve its victims into nothingness. Boasting an outrageous soundtrack (love our heroine’s American singing voice!) and some memorable special effects, The H-Man is back in the home video limelight after being unavailable for years.
Battle In Outer Space? Don’t mind if I do! Of all the Japanese science fiction movies ever made, nothing quite possesses the fun of a space adventures (for me, at least — although I love the Godzilla flicks, too!). When an unseen alien race begins to wreak havoc on our beloved planet Earth, the nations of the world finally find an excuse to stop warring against each other — and declare war on the aliens. A joint multi-national expedition (hey, who told the Canadian he could launch the spaceships?) sends up two manned rockets to combat the critters (who have temporarily set up camp on the moon) and, hopefully, save humanity.
Article comments
1 - kirkzilla
is godzilla vs megalon ,godzilla vs biollanteor godzilla 1985 ever going to be on dvd and why is it not now in the usa
2 - Luigi Bastardo
The official answer is "Rights issues" from what I've heard. There's a great widescreen Australian release of "Megalon" (from Madman Entertainment) which I have. Hong Kong has released "Biollante" and "1985" on Region Free NTSC DVD, although I haven't checked those out yet.
3 - kirkzilla
thanks for answering so fast ,also ijust bought the toho icons dvds for about 20 bucks stacking dics on top of each other in the case was kinda lame,they should have made a better 3dvd case ?
4 - Luigi Bastardo
Yeah, they should've. Note the discs themselves are not very "pretty" -- Sony was probably trying to cut costs. Oh, well -- it's nice to see these on DVD.