Arrow Video is set to heat up your June with four more video releases through MVD Entertainment Group, all worth a buy for collectors and film buffs with a taste for the intriguing. Let’s take a look at what’s coming soon:
Nikkatsu Diamond Guys Volume 2 (June 14, $49.95) rolls up first and looks to be the perfect companion piece to the first three-film set. Akira Kobayashi (Tokyo Mighty Guy), and Jo Shishido (Danger Pays, Murder Unincorporated) are the featured actors in this trio of films that like the first Diamond Guys, is limited to 3000 sets. The first collection was a nice set of surprises, so expectations are high for this one to be equally fun and revealing.
Bonus Materials
- Limited Edition Blu-ray collection (3000 copies)
- High Definition digital transfers of all three films in this collection, from original film elements by Nikkatsu Corporation
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation
- Original uncompressed mono audio
- Newly translated English subtitles
- Specially recorded video discussions with Japanese cinema expert Jasper Sharp on Diamond Guys Jo Shishido and Akira Kobayashi
- Original trailers for all three films
- Extensive promotional image galleries for all films
- Reversible sleeve featuring brand new artwork by Graham Humphreys
- Booklet featuring new writing on all the films and director profiles by Stuart Galbraith IV, Tom Mes and Mark Schilling
Three more below the jump, so JUMP! Continue reading
OK, I don’t “hate” The Three Worlds of Gulliver at all, but as a kid, it did take me four attempts to sit through this classic family film without falling asleep. Sure, Ray Harryhausen’s “Superdynamation” effects and that lovely Bernard Herrmann soundtrack make this another perfect one-two punch for movie fans, but something about this flick has always rubbed me the wrong way.
It’s actually pretty fun to watch early 50’s to mid-60’s sci-fi films for their historical as well as entertainment value because the space race was in full blast and Hollywood was finding out fast that NASA was making most of what they were doing obsolete. Granted, other than the opening few minutes, Nathan Juran’s excellent First Men in the Moon doesn’t need to juggle much in the way of realism other than making sure its 1964 astronauts (made up of members of UN countries!) making that moon landing were wearing gear that at least looked up to date. 
When I was much younger, I wondered why Ray Harryhausen didn’t make more films until I found out how long it took him to design all those characters from drawing and painting some outstanding concept art to the construction and creation the visual effects. Let’s just say the man gained all the respect I had after that. That said, 1977’s Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger is an example of what happens when a movie studio decides to rush things a bit too quickly, as it’s not his best work of the decade on display. 
Ha! Motivation-killer flu, you can’t keep me from posting! Anyway, onward! It took Charles H. Schneer and Ray Harryhausen fifteen years to follow up their classic fantasy film The 7th Voyage of Sinbad with the second of three movies starring the fabled sailor and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad both looks and feels almost as timeless as that first adventure.
For years, I disliked most of Clash of the Titans because by 1981, I’d thought I’d outgrown the type of work Ray Harryhausen was doing and it seems that, despite the film’s OK success at the box office, some movie audiences just weren’t into so much classic stop motion animation in such a large scale film either.
When I was a wee bairn, I actually went to two different schools where some kids thought this 1967 film was based on actual facts and at least one really deluded kid thought it was a documentary. Seriously. My ears still spin in opposite directions thinking about that, but I digress. You’re either watching One Million Years B.C. for its faux historical value, Ray Harryhausen’s excellent dinosaur effects or Raquel Welch with a side order of Martine Beswick in that cave gal cat-fight sequence. Don’t deny it, now…
Yet another Charles H. Schneer/Ray Harryhausen production featuring a brilliant Bernard Herrmann soundtrack, 1961’s Mysterious Island is another classic fans of the master stop motion animator cite as some of his best work of the decade as well as a pretty solid genre entry. It’s certainly got a nicely varied cast of creatures going for it from a giant crab, an very angry and huge prehistoric bird, a few huge bees in their cliffside hive and a majorly over-sized cephalopod near the end. You also get a nice balloon escape at the beginning that gets most of the cast to that titular island, a few ladies tossed into the mix courtesy of a shipwreck and a surprise appearance by Captain Nemo that adds another layer of the fantastic to the film…
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