Thanks to some timely help from Lee Broughton in the UK, we have three fat reviews this weekend at DVD Savant:

MGM Home Entertainment's massive Outer Limits: The Original Series, Volume One crams the same number of shows onto its four discs, as filled up four $100 laserdisc box sets ten years ago. The shows are terrific, but Savant experienced some compression depression, and a defective disc in his review screener.

Lee Broughton racks up a continental double dip of two horror efforts from Leon Klimovsky and Juan Lopez Moctezuma. The separate PAL Region 2 discs from a company called Mondo Macabro are Dr Jekyll versus the Werewolf and Alucarda, and will surely please the Eurohorror crowd.

Miramax's plainwrap disc of In the Bedroom is one of the best films of 2001, and is tense enough to make you jump in your seat. A very affecting picture ... Savant's made sure his review contains no spoilers, under his new patented VagueVision review process.

Savant can see the end of the tunnel of his latest editorial mad rush, and is already spinning new discus to reviewus. Please have a great Labor Day weekend. Glenn

Savant rounds out the week with fewer (but more sincere!) reviews.

John Carpenter's The Fog is a good ghost story that becomes an absorbing experience, thanks to the fine extras in MGM's Special Edition. Carpenter is particularly open when telling us how he saved the picture in reshoots. The disc is a fine transfer of this oft- pan'n scanned film, as well.

Savant went on an errand yesterday, and ran into cinematographer Jack Cardiff in a hotel. I'd met him only briefly last year, but this time I actually happened to have a camera with me, and someone to take a snapshot. He's incredibly friendly, as proved by his willingness to have a fan picture taken. So Savant gets to act like a show-off tourist today!

More reviews this weekend! Glenn Erickson

A top-flight detective thriller from Robert Altman, and one of last year's most respected prestige pictures are Savant's picks tonight ... as so many prepare to go back to school in one form or another.

The Long Goodbye is one of those pictures that gets better with age, especially when it can be enjoyed in such a fine-looking DVD presentation. No more grainy pan'scan for us, Ma. Elliott Gould, Nina Van Pallandt and Sterling Hayden do A+ work in this once-dismissed classic.

Miramax's prestige offering last year was Iris, an intelligent and un-hyped account of the last times of Iris Murdoch, a celebrated author who succumbed to Alzheimer's disease. There's a lot to think about here, and not just the tragic theft of a vital woman's intellect and identity. Judi Dench plays the elderly Iris, and Kate Winslet the ambitious & sensual writer of her youth.

More reviews coming, including the new first-season collection of the original Outer Limits teleseries! Glenn Erickson

Apologies from Savant, who's still in a rush with work - one of those jobs where you have to invest every waking hour.

But I do have a short review up for the very good Tarantino film Jackie Brown, that shows that the wunderkind is more than just hip-cynical flash and sharp dialogue. Pam Grier leads a great cast in a gritty, hardboiled crime story with a heart.

This weekend's Criterion Classics shows on The Sundance Cable channel are a pair of dark romances. The sinister The Night Porter screens Saturday night the 24th at 9, and Jean Renoir's La béte humaine Sunday the 25th ant the same time. Both are crazy, doomed love stories, the first between a concentration camp officer and his ex-victim, and the second between a train engineer and a rich man's pet wife.

Well, I'll probably get in a couple more reviews this week - we'll see. Thanks for stopping by! Glenn Erickson

Well, thanks to some help from Savant correspondent Gary Teetzel, we have two reviews today instead of just one ...

Gary's contributed a thorough look at The Return of the Vampire, an oddball Bela Lugosi movie from the WW2 era that has the Hungarian loverboy playing Dracula in all but name. There are some interesting effects, and a werewolf assistant who might as well be JoJo, the dog-faced boy, but this is a pretty unique Lugosi offering, from a major studio at a time when the actor was only seen in films at the Monogram level.

Image Entertainment's The Giant Gila Monster should have been given a Truth in Advertising prize: there's a Gila Monster here, and he really does seem kind of big crawling next to those model cars and HO trains. This was a Texas production directed by Ray Kellogg (The Green Berets) and produced by Ken Curtis, 'Festus' on Gunsmoke.

Savant hopes to keep a minimal number of reviews cranking out here - I just came from a production meeting that promises to have me editing from dawn 'til dusk for a few days, minimum. I'll check in, in any case ... Thanks! Glenn Erickson

Two quickies today ... a gentle spy film from the 80s and Quentin Tarantino's biggest hit to date.

Criterion's Hopscotch is a handsome widescreen version of a very unpretentious Walter Matthau vehicle. His rogue CIA agent plays 'catch me if you can' with new boss Ned Beatty, getting ample help from Viennese ladyfriend Glenda Jackson.

Miramax's new Collector's Edition of Pulp Fiction redeems all the sins of the very ragged DVD from long back, and even offers a rebate for those who bought the earlier copy. The twisted crime saga looks even better now, if such a thing is possible.

There's a stage version of Roman Polanski's Dance of the Vampires, aka The Fearless Vampire Killers on its way on the New York Stage; one of the pages on their Dance of the Vampires website has a huge selection of international posters from the film, along with a quote from Savant's restoration article on the movie. Too proud not to point it out.

Work's piling up, but Savant has ambitions of keeping the flow of reviews on their way. Why? The reviews must flow, is all. He who controls the reviews, controls the Universe, or something to that effect. Thanks for putting up with all this! Glenn Erickson

A pair of great discs to toss at ya tonight. Doing my best to keep up and am really enjoying the entertainment:

MGM's most coveted double bill (still not due for a couple of weeks) is a combo of The Premature Burial & The Masque of the Red Death, two highly-anticipated Corman-Poe films. This time around, there are even extras, a pair of nicely produced interview short subjects. Ray Milland makes a nervous morbid Englishman, and Vincent Price a perfect depraved Italian!

Fox's Flaming Star is Savant's favorite Elvis movie, mainly because it's not a musical but a rather violent and politically-oriented revenge Western. Elvis is great (terrific title song too) - his guitar is retired after the first scene and he doesn't kiss anyone but his Native American mother Dolores Del Rio! Fiercely directed by Don Siegel.

This week's Sundance Channel Criterion Classics screenings are a wonderful Czech comedy on Saturday night, Aug. 17, The Fireman's Ball. An equally beautiful Soviet tearjerker follows on Sunday, August 18, Ballad of a Soldier. Both shows start at 9PM on the Sundance Cable Channel.

Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson

Just one review, after three days gone, but Savant has an excuse, honest. Just got out of town to Arizona for a couple of days ... 120^o heat, you know the drill. After seeing tonight's review film the night before, I imagined 12-foot creepy crawlies roaming around every Joshua tree and behind every rock.

Warner's new DVD of is a stunner, a new transfer that gives the picture more punch than ever before. It's a superior monster thriller, a kind of film noir / insect fear combo that set a standard for big bug movies not topped until Aliens thirty years later. The disc has a terrific extra too, outtakes of the monster ant props in action.

More editing is on the horizon (about time too) , but there's plenty of excitement to review. Thanks for hanging in there! Glenn Erickson

Three titles on two discs tonight ... with a lot of good genre product coming out, there are going to be a lot of MGM reviews around here soon.

The Oblong Box and Scream and Scream Again is a Midnite Movies double bill and presents two beautiful anamorphic-enhanced horror thrillers at an irresistable low price. The movies themselves are a mixed bag: a late-60s Gothic tale with Vincent Price and Christopher Lee, and a crazy mixed up stew of spies, cops, and mad surgery featuring Price, Lee, and Peter Cushing in sketchy parts. Both titles look better than ever.

Also from MGM is the single-title release of Dan O'Bannon's comedy gorefest, The Return of the Living Dead. It's far too gross for mom and the kids, but has an underlying streak of macabre fun that's hard to resist for us confirmed horror addicts. And horror comedies that work at all, are a rare breed indeed.

It's plenty hot here ... thanks for the fun, and Savant will be back with more, probably on Sunday. Glenn Erickson

Image Entertainment comes through again with a perfect-quality disc, of a 45-year-old horror film.

The show is The Unearthly, a not-particularly-good mad doctor movie with John Carradine, Allison Hayes, and Tor Johnson. But monster fans will be shocked to see it looking so good - we're too used to the fuzzy old television copies.

The first of this week's Sundance Channel Criterion Classic screenings is a wonderful early sound comedy from France by René Clair called Le million. It's showing at 9PM on Saturday Aug. 10. On Sunday night at the same time, the Sundance Channel will be showing Carl Dreyer's very chilling Day of Wrath, a tale of witchcraft from Denmark.

There's more classic foreign films and vintage horror coming from DVD Savant - MGM double bills, and another Visconti masterpiece. Thanks again, Glenn Erickson

Happy weekend! It's overcast and cool in LA, perfect review-writing weather. Today, it's two sword 'n sandal epics, one top-rank Mario Bava film, and the other a well-remembered Ray Harryhausen show.

Fantoma's Hercules in the Haunted World has been kicking around for a long time in a mangled, terribly-dubbed American retread. This major find premieres the European uncut version, complete with original Italian dialogue. Mario Bava again creates an epic journey out of colored lights and creative direction. With Reg Park and Christopher Lee.

Warner's Clash of the Titans is very handsome disc of a picture that's not a Savant favorite, but can boast animation highlights that allowed Ray Harryhausen to retire in style. Harry Hamlin's pouty Perseus seeks his fortune, with plenty of help from Laurence Olivier's Zeus.

Savant congratulates writer Nathaniel Thompson on his 30th birthday, which was celebrated at a swank little party last night at the Egyptian theater. Nathaniel works for Image Entertainment, and writes for Video Watchdog as well as his own cool site, Mondo Digital. And he also seems to be cooking up some kind of feature film, but I'm not sure exactly what ... Anyhoo, happy 30th, thou young pup. Glenn Erickson

You can tell when a film is disturbing - writing about it is like walking on thin ice. MGM's DVD of The Last House on the Left is a title that's been hotly debated ever since it came out. Censored by everyone, including outraged projectionists, even its makers don't have a handle on an uncut version. MGM's deluxe, extra-laden disc has full input from Wes Craven and Sean S. Cunningham, organized in part by author David Szulkin, so this release will hopefully settle a lot of arguments about the film.

Lee Broughton checks in with a Region 2 PAL Guest Review of a sophisticated period musical drama, The Music Teacher, which he describes as a superior class-act drama about duelling empresarios in high-toned music circles a hundred years ago. Savant's grateful for Lee's help attracting readers with access to these Region 2 releases.

Up soon, more Criterion, and more horror from MGM and Fantoma! Thank you, Glenn Erickson