PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 558

Collider is a 2013 movie about some people who wake up in a building slightly into their future. It's a horrible place where the sun burns your skin. No one knows how they got there. They get a visitor and he's a guy who invented a time travel machine. He figures they got caught in his trip and brought along. There are monsters that come out in the night and they'll hinder the groups travel from where they are to  the time travel machine. Some are killed by their own hand and some by the monsters. Reminds me not to go on one of those time travel trips, you never know what sort of dicks you'll meet. It was written by Nuno Bernardo and directed by Jason Butler. It's on Amazon prime and while watchable, I found I was fast forwarding through much of the dull travel time. They spend a lot of time in the basements and tunnels that exist under the city. Not a keeper, that's for sure. I wouldn't need to see it again.

The Survivor is a 1998 movie that was some bit better than the previous movie, it too came from AP. Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman wrote the screenplay and the director is Nick Davis. It's a good bit in the future, humanity has moved into space, living in huge spaceships, the Earth is a wasteland that's only fit for exiling prisoners too. The President's spaceship has some issues and he's fired off the ship in an escape ship. It lands on the planet and he's immediately caught by the big war lord. Richard Moll plays the warlord and it turns out he's the President's son. Richard's son is in a second escape pod ship and he's travelling with a few other escapees. They meet up with the one guy who can save their bacon from the wild gangs that live there. There's an unending wander through the jungle and plenty of fighting and dying. It's below average but Richard's overacting helps to make it a bit more entertaining. Another one I would not need to buy or watch again.

Science Fiction Sunday 557

First up a film from Amazon Prime's catalog of fine free SF films. Turkey Shoot is also known as Escape 2000 and it came out in 1982. Brian Trenchard-Smith is the director, he directed a lot of stuff I haven't seen, I have seen Leprechaun 3 and Leprechaun 4: In Space, neither are great but they are watchable. George Schenck, Robert Williams and David Lawrence wrote the story that Jon George and Neil D Hicks adapted for their screenplay.

It's basically a prison movie but set slightly in the future. The evil warden has planned a hunt with prisoners as the hunted. Steve Railsback and Olivia Hussey are among the five chosen and Michael Craig plays the evil warden. It's all pretty standard stuff, sadistic guards beating the inmates and then chasing them in the jungle. There's a big fight near the end that was fairly good and Steve puts up such a good fight that the warden doesn't survive. I've certainly seen worse prison movies. Not something I would buy but I got through to the end.

Second film from AP is the 2006 SYFY original TV movie Shockwave which is also called AI Assault by someone. It's directed by Jim Wynorski under the name Jay Andrews, Jim c0-wrote the script with William Langlois under the name Bill Monroe. I watched the movie under the name Teddy Jones. It's about a government AI robot project that decides to break out of the plane that's transporting them. George Takei is the pilot of the plane, Robert Picardo is one of the scientists in the plane, he can't stop the robots from escaping. The plane goes down on a small island. Hudson Leick and a couple of other guys are robbers, Josh Coxx is their unwilling helicopter pilot. Alexandra Paul is a scientist. Tim Thomerson, Michael Dorn and Billy Mumy are all military men, they send Navy Seals to the island the plane goes down on. The robbers get forced down onto the island with the robots because of a storm, then gets stranded when the helicopter breaks.  The robots are too clever for everyone's own good. It's all about as good as the usual SYFY movie. There's plenty of running through the woods and the like but it's pretty much below average in interesting stuff happening. Another one that I wouldn't bother buying.

Science Fiction Sunday 556

Dark Storm is a 2006 TV movie directed by Jason Bourque, he co-wrote the screenplay with Sean Malcolm, Brett Schneider and John Cherfer. It's that worst of themes for me. Mad scientist takes over a project working with dark matter and turns it into a weapon. Stephen Baldwin is a scientist who joins with Rob LaBelle to stop him. It's done so uninterestingly that there's absolutely no reason to watch it. I only got through because I started speeding things up a bit. It's on Amazon Prime as all of today's films were. YouTube has a speed control for when you watch a video, something I wish they had on AP. On AP you can hit your left or right arrow keys and move the film 10 seconds ahead or back. Handy for those interminable scenes when there's nothing going on, or when there's a boring fight, car chase, or a tramp in the woods.

Domain is a 2017 film written and directed by Nathaniel Atcheson. It's about 7 people in survival pods that are buried in the ground. A half million pods were made to house survivors of a deadly virus, the population is connected in groups of 6 via a TV system. The people have been there for 5 years and they don't know anything about what's going on outside. Weird things start to happen and people start to disappear. Three of the group escape their pods only to find out it's all a big ass lie. The reason behind the hoax are what bring the movie to below average for me. It's watchable until the unsatisfying payoff.

Fighting The Sky is another below average one for me, it came out in 2018. Conrad Faraj is the director and he co-wrote the script with David Matthew Cummings and Roger Jones. People hear some noises in the sky, turns out it's aliens. It's all kind of amateurish, Conrad and his friends are putting on a show. Another one I was glad to be able to skip through at times. There are lots of scenes with people on the move, driving, walking, running, that sort of thing fills up the time.

Not a stellar trio of SF films but I've seen all the good ones many times.

Science Fiction Sunday 555

I watched the whole series of The Guardians through the day. It's a 1971 British TV show about Britain being under totalitarian rule. It's slightly in the future, the 80s, so it's slightly science fiction. It's created by Rex Firkin and Vincent Tilsley. Vincent wrote the first episode and Hugh Whitemore, John Bowen, Monty Poole, Arden Winch and Jonathan Hales wrote the rest. Directing is by Robert Tronson, James Goddard, Tony Wharmby, Mike Newell, Brian Parker, Derek Bailey and Moira Armstrong. The only one out of all of those people was Mike Newell.

England has had a bit of a financial and political collapse, the General has taken over. He runs things through his own people, he rarely appears in public. The Guardians are British version of Gestapo. Their main enemy in the country are the communists, they get a lot of blame for just about anything bad that happens. News is restricted, people are arrested for speaking out, some disappear, never to be seen again. The Queen and family have left the country and they refuse to return until democracy is restored.

We follow various people around, the Prime Minster and his son, a Captain in The Guardians and his wife, a psychiatrist and his wife, there's a lot of character development in just those 6 people. Of course they affect dozens of characters. Some get killed. There's a resistance in the Quarmby's, they don't know who any of the other cells are, they act alone and more people die.

I knew some of the cast. Gwyneth Powell plays the wife of the Guardians' captain. I most recently saw her in Man Down, playing Greg Davies's mum. She was pretty funny and she's OK in The Guardians. It was only her second TV role, she would have plenty more.

Cyril Luckham plays the Prime Minister. He's been in all sorts of TV programs, I've seen him in Doctor Who playing a character called The Guardian and the White Guardian. He was in a couple of episodes of The Famous Five series from 1978.

That's Graham Crowden from the episode The Dirtiest Man In The World. He is pretty dirty and smelly. Graham has been in all sorts of TV over his 58 year career. That's a Quamby lying there with an umbrella stuck through him. That's Graham's work. The Quamby deserved it, he was going to have Graham killed after he had gotten what he wanted out of him. John Rhys-Davies plays a Guardian soldier.

All in all The Guardians was kind of interesting but why too talky. It's got 13 episodes of about 50 mins each and they're packed with dialog. In the 2nd last episode Gwyneth and the psychiatrist's wife have a conversation for half the show. Everyone discusses everything but much of the conversation doesn't amount to much. I would have preferred a shorter series with a bit more action. The other issue hangs on the lack of a second series. The show ends unresolved. I would have liked it better if it had been a complete story. Glad to have seen it and it seems kind of pertinent now.

Science Fiction Sunday 553

One Under The Sun is a 2017 movie about a mission to Mars. It's pretty boring and hard to get to the end of without speeding it up a bit. It was on Amazon Prime so it didn't cost anything. Avoid it.

The Atomic Zombie Space Creeps is a 2017 alien invasion movie that's pretty amateurish. The aliens have turned some humans into zombies. One guy hasn't turned yet, he tries to help a zombie woman, he also meets an alien that disagrees with the invasion. They travel together in a car, heading to DC, until a passing alien ship stops it with a ray. It turns off the nano tech in the zombie woman and the Earthman still wants to bring her dead body along. Some of the script ideas just makes no sense. It's a slight bit better than the first movie but it's still not more than a 3 to me and that's being generous. There's a bit of a space battle and that was nearly nice to look at. Lucky it's only 54 mins. I wouldn't need to see it again.

Science Fiction Sunday 552

Back in 1962 there was a British TV show called Out Of This World. It was a spin off of Armchair Theater and it ran for 13 episodes with Boris Karloff as host. That's Boris on the cover of New Worlds Science Fiction, they promoted the show in the magazine. OOTW was created by Irene Shubik for ABC Television. Irene had been a story editor for AT, Sydney Newman was the producer of that series. Irene is an SF fan and she wanted to do a series of adaptations of SF stories by writers like Isaac Asimov. The Sheckley story The Seventh Victim had been adapted for AT as Murder Club, that proved to be a sort of pilot for the new series. Thirteen episodes were commissioned and produced.

After the first series was done both Sydney and Irene departed for the BBC and any further series were not produced. At the BBC Irene produced 4 series of Out Of The Unknown, another SF anthology show as well as many other programs. Only 20 episodes of the 49 exist today. There's a DVD but it's gotten pricey and I'm not that interested in paying $50-100 for it. Sydney of course went on to create Doctor Who.

Out Of This World suffered the dreaded VT wiping and sadly only the adaptation of Isaac Asimov's Little Lost Robot exists as a complete program. It's on a BFI DVD along with two other episodes that are audio only. I watched all of it this morning. The video is typical of the era and the audio is fairly good. There's a nice booklet with an essay about the show. On the disc there's PDF of the script of another episode and Little Lost Robot has an audio commentary.

Isaac Asimov's Little Lost Robot is adapted by Leo Lehmann and directed by Guy Verney. I've been seeing some of Guy's work of late, he directed the episodes of Pathfinders In Space trilogy I watched a couple of weeks ago. He directed an episode of The Saint which I've seen. I've not seen much of his other work.

Maxine Audley plays Dr Susan Calvin; Clifford Evans, Murray Hayne, Gerald Flood, Hayden Jones play all the humans; Roger Snowdon plays the robot. The robots are pretty poor looking but there are 21 of them, each filled with an actor. They don't look much different than what you would have seen produced by the special effects departments of the various TV production companies of the time. Lack of time and low budget drives the look. The budget for each episode was £5000 and even in 1962 that didn't stretch too far.

Gerald Flood is an annoying scientist who's working on a special project. His robot assistant is one of the robots on the project, like the other robots, it's had the First Law of Robotics adjusted for their work. Gerald, annoyed at the robot, tells it to go get lost. It sneaks on board a ship with 20 identical robots that are due to be shipped to another planet. The humans want the robot off the ship but they can't tell the robots apart. The robot won't own up to being the robot they want. Dr Calman is called in to find that robot. She developed the laws of robotics. She does a few tests and finds the lost robot. The side effect is the robots have seen a robot kill Gerald Flood. Susan worries that it might be a bad thing.

It was a good production, I had forgotten the story, I read it 40 plus years ago. I haven't had much interest to go back and re-read his work but I've always had a soft spot for his robot series. The commentary is with 96 year old Leonard White, he was the producer of the show, he's joined by Mark Ward and Toby Hadoke. Toby was moderator on many commentaries for the Doctor Who DVDs. It's fairly interesting but the audio from the program creeps in on the audio commentary and that was kind of annoying.

Tom Godwin's Cold Equations is adapted by Clive Exton and directed by Phillip Hammond. Clive some might remember wrote all 23 episodes of Jeeves And Wooster with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. He wrote plenty of other TV over the years and a few films. Peter would go on to direct 19 episodes of The Avengers and many other TV shows. His last work was on the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series. Tom's story would be adapted in 1989 for an episode of The Twilight Zone and again in 1996 for a TV movie called The Cold Equations.

Peter Wyngarde is Captain Barton, he's tasked with a special delivery to a colony. Jane Asher is a 16 year old girl who sneaks onto his ship, she thinks she can go see her brother and pay a fine for sneaking onboard. Trouble is, there's no fine, just a quick trip out the airlock for a stowaway on a special run. Poor Peter has to deal with telling this girl, it's her or the sick men, there's no fuel to carry the extra weight. Slowly the realization comes to her, she's fucked. She gets a chance to talk to her brother then she gets tossed into space. Tough life if you're stupid.

I'm being somewhat cold but not as cold as space. We're supposed to feel some sympathy for the girl but I don't. Sometimes people screw up and die. It's their lot in life. Don't screw up. The episode runs a bit shorter than the LLR one, I suspect some of the more silent bits were trimmed out. It was recorded by a fan and it's remarkably good for that.

Imposter is based on the Philip K Dick story of the same name, Terry Nation adapted it, Peter Hammond directed. Patrick Allen is Major Peters, he believes that scientist Roger Carter has been replaced by a robot bomb. He's got to find out if Roger is human or a talking ticking time bomb. The episode was also fan recorded but it's incomplete and the sound is of varying quality. It was the first TV adaptation of a Philip K Dick story. The same story was made into a movie in the 80s. At least you can see that.

I was happy to have seen and heard everything. Doubt I'll get back to it for a while but glad to have picked it up.

Science Fiction Sunday 551

City Beneath The Sea is another British children's program from ABC TV and it's followed by it's sequel Secret Beneath The Sea. That's not the ABC from here in the US, it's a different company. John Lucarotti wrote the screenplays for both series which are packed together in a 2 disc set from Network. Guy Verner and Kim Mills share the directing.

Gerald Flood plays science magazine editor Mark Bannerman, Stewart Guidotti plays Peter Blake, his assistant. They attend a science conference where a professor is kidnapped by a man Bannerman later identifies as a  WW2 U-Boat Commander. The Commander's U-Boat is seen off the coast of Dover and the Navy investigates as US and the Russians say it's not theirs. Bannerman and Blake are invited to go on the chase in an atomic powered sub. They are kidnapped by the Commander and manage to hide on the sub when the others are sent off in a small boat. They try to send messages to the British Navy.

Bannerman and Blake are caught and taken to the undersea city of crazy scientist Professor Ludwig Ziebrecken. He's played by Aubrey Morris who you might have seen everywhere in his 67 year career. Ziebrecken comes across nicer earlier in the production with his making a better world blather. He's soon revealed to have a plan for world domination and he's not opposed to killing people to get his goal. Eventually Bannerman and Blake stop his plan and Ziebrecken is killed.

Secret Beneath The Sea takes place a short time after the first series. This one is written by John again and only Kim Mills is directing. Bannerman and Blake are heading for the undersea city in a sub when their old pal the ex-U-Boat Commander drops off a piece of metal with some formulas on paper. Someone's after the metal, it has superior heat resistance and a big metal dealer wants to cash in on the new alloy by hogging the market for himself. Like the mad scientist of the first serial, this POS is willing to have people killed to get his way. Bannerman and Blake will have to put a stop to that.

All in all about average for this sort of show. Like the Pathfinders In Space series this one has fairly decent sets for TV of the time. The underwater effects for people are about the worst of it, some of the models and miniatures are OK. There's an easy to follow story and some good characters. Less annoying kids than the Pathfinders In Space series. Glad to have seen the shows.

Science Fiction Sunday 550

I watched Pathfinders To Mars this morning, it's the sequel to Pathfinders To Space and it came out in 1960. There are 6 episodes, they were written by Malcolm Hulke and Eric Paice, Guy Verney is the director.

The cast has changed a bit, Professor Wedgewood is hurt the 1st episode and he's not in the show for the other 6 episodes. His being hurt is the way the writers keep him out off the ship so the imposter can sneak aboard. Wedgewood knows the scientist personally. George Coulouris plays The Imposter, that's his credit on the 1st episode, we soon find out he's really Harcourt Brown, a crazy man who believes that the static noise from space is chatter from intelligent beings. He strongly believes there is life on Mars and that the space agency should send him to Mars to meet the aliens. He decides to take matters into his own hands, sneaking on board by tricking the real scientist out of the way.

Wedgewood's three children have been reduced to 1, only Geoff makes the cut, he is going to be the radio operator in the ship going to the moon. With Wedgewood hurt, there's a need for a pilot, they naturally turn to the journalist Henderson who had piloted the second rocket to the moon in the last series. Henderson's niece Margret gets to go along and Professor Meadows returns from the last series.

Harcourt repeatedly puts the ship and the crew in danger. He takes over the ship and says he'll kill them unless he gets to go to Mars. He lies and plans to leave the rest of them on the planet once he finds out there's no aliens there. They let him get away with this sort of thing over and over without anything worse than an "Oh, you!".

It's one of the things that annoyed be about the story. It's bad enough Harcourt was able to get on board so easily and then they keep on giving him a pass for his activities, like he's just a bad boy who's been a bit naughty. I just wanted to smack him.

The series ends with the ship taking off for Earth but they can't go fast enough to catch up to the Earth before their air runs out. Harcourt has a plan to slingshot around the sun to increase their speed. The series ends with them still in space, heading for home.

I watched Pathfinders To Venus after lunch, it came out in 1961 and there are 8 episodes. Malcolm Hulke and Eric Paice wrote the screenplays, Guy Verney directed 6 episodes and Reginald Collin two.

The show picks up where the other series ended, it's really like one story over two series. The ship gets a radio message from Captain Wilson, an American spaceman who's ship is stuck in an orbit around Venus. Harcourt tricks the crew and convinces them that Wilson landed, so they land too. It's a jungle with breathable air. There are neanderthals, early humans, and dinosaurs. They took the dinosaurs out of Journey To The Beginning OF Time.

They all rush about, eventually find Captain Wilson, befriend a local orphan early human named Kiki, and nearly get left on the planet by Harcourt. He thinks the place will be ruined by human greed, they've found diamonds and uranium. Yet, in the end, Harcourt decides to stay on Venus with Kiki. Good way to escape punishment for his actions and cheat me out of seeing him get his.

It's a frustrating series, I would have like it better if I was younger, I wouldn't care so much about the annoying parts of the story. I'm not sorry to have seen it, let along spending the few dollars that the DVDs cost, and I might watch it again someday. Realistically, unlikely but who knows. Death may save me.

Science Fiction Sunday 549

Pathfinders In Space is a 1960 children's TV show from ABC Weekend TV. That's not the ABC American's would be familiar with but the Associated British Corporation that produced programs back in the 50s and 60s. They were fused with Rediffusion, despite protests from Rediffusion, and eventually became Thames Television. PIS is packaged with it's 2 sequels in a 3 disc set from Network. They put out a whole lot of old TV as well as all those old movies I've been picking up. Their discs are all Region 2 PAL and not playable in most US DVD players. I have a special all region player and VLC Player will play the discs on most PC DVD players.

Pathfinders in Space is the sequel to Target Luna which sadly doesn't exist anymore. Here's the synopsis for Target Luna from the Wikipedia.

Professor Norman Wedgwood (David Markham) is the head of an experimental rocket group on remote Buchan island in Scotland. His children, Geoff (Michael Craze), Valerie (Sylvia Davies) and Jimmy (Michael Hammond) visit him to watch the launch of his latest rocket, along with journalist Conway Henderson (Frank Finlay). When the pilot is taken ill, Jimmy finds himself taking his place on a mission to the Moon along with his pet hamster, Hamlet. After several harrowing hours in space, Jimmy, Hamlet and the rocket are finally brought down to earth. 

Michael Craze plays one of Professor Wedgewood's sons, some might remember that Michael played Ben Jackson in Doctor Who from 1966 to 1967, the time period which covered the end of the 1st Doctor and into the 2nd. Michael doesn't appear in the sequels to Target Luna and neither do the rest of the main cast.

Pathfinders In Space has 7 episodes and the story is about a rocket flight to the moon. They refer back to Target Luna and Jimmy talks about his trip in the rocket. The current plan is to have two ships launch at the same time, one with the human crew, and the other a remote controlled ship with supplies. That's one of the rockets after it landed on the moon.

The models aren't too bad, typical low budget TV stuff and the miniature sets were about the same. The moon sets leave something to be desired. At one point while they were walking on the moon I could tell that it was draped black cloth filling in for the darkness of space. Some of the boulders seemed to be made of material too. The other sets were adequate, though at times it was pretty obvious that the builders had no money and had to make due.

That man in the picture above is Peter Williams, he plays Professor Wedgewood, and those others are his children in the show. Left to right they are Richard Dean (Jimmy), Gillian Ferguson (Valerie) and Stewart Guidotti (Geoffrey). They're in the spaceship set there. Here's the spaceship in space.

The Wedgewood ship is the one on the left, the other is a derelict ship they encounter on the way to the moon. They find a second alien ship on the moon and work out it's about 400,000 years old. They translate the alien script from a couple of books that were left in the alien spaceship. Remarkable books, they've lasted over 400,000 years.

The kids and a science reporter weren't supposed to be along on the trip. Geoffrey screwed up the navigation device on the remote controlled ship and they had to have the ship manually driven. Of course they pick the reporter, he has no experience or anything, so he picks the two boys to go along. Valerie sneaks on board. They are some stupid children at times. No thinking going on. That's really the writer's fault. Their science is questionable. At one point they made me laugh. Valerie, looking up from a microscope says: "So, that's what radioactivity looks like." I laughed really hard, out loud.

That's a plush animal that was in the alien ship on the moon. It's a six legged animal with a huge nose. Like the book, it's been perfectly preserved for 400,000 years. It was like it had just been made for the show. Anyway, they work out all sorts of info on the aliens. They find a preserved body and it's very human like. When 1 of the 2 Earth ships blows up, they have to figure out who goes home in the one ship and who stays. The ones who stay won't have air after a short while. Pretty serious for a children's program. Luckily, the Professor figures out how to fly the alien spaceship and they all get home. That's some good alien technology, still working after 400,000 years.

Pathfinders In Space was produced by Sydney Newman, he was head of Drama at ABC from 1958 to 1962 and the head of Drama at the BBC from 1962 t0 1967. While at the BBC he created Doctor Who and The Avengers. He hired Verity Lambert to produce Doctor Who, kind of unheard of to have a woman in that position at that time. The series was written by Malcolm Hulke and Eric Pace with Guy Verney directing. Malcolm you might know from the 21 episodes of Doctor Who he wrote, or the 9 episodes of The Avengers. He will write the two sequels to PIS and plenty of other TV in his career, he passed away in 1979. Eric wrote a lot of TV over the years, including 8 episodes of The Avengers. Guy would direct the rest of the Pathfinder series. He had a short career, 1957 until 1970, when he passed away at 54.

It wasn't too bad for a children's show, the kids were annoying at times, the science was often ludicrous, the dialog was weak at time, so were the cast, but it had something going on most of the time. As a ten year old I would have liked the show even more. Mind you, because of the era it was made, it's a lot slower than the shows we are watching today. I'll be watching the first sequel next week.

Science Fiction Sunday 548

I watched Stranded, a 2013 SF movie with Christian Slater on the moon. Roger Christian and Christian Piers Betley wrote the script and Roger directed. A meteor shower hits the lunar base that Christian heads, the meteor has spores that contaminate the crew. Christian and some lady fail to stop the spores, now in the form of one of the human crew, from getting to Earth. It ends with Christian yelling a warning to the Earth authorities that they need to kill the alien. It was watchable but I noticed my mind would wander when the cast got yelling at each other. The alien bits were usually gooey and the actors have pusy make up all over their body. Yuck, huh. It's like Alien with it's enclosed spaces and lurky monster but with a shape changing monster reminiscent of The Thing. Sadly, not quite as imaginative as those two projects were, I re-watch Alien and The Thing but this I probably wouldn't bother with again.

I watched the new Mill Creek Blu-ray of Mothra and really enjoyed that. It came out last month in a nice Steelbook case with a printed transparent plastic sleeve over top. Nice artwork and attractive looking case. I used to be more enthralled by fancy DVD packaging but over the years so much has proved to be inconvenient, bulky or damaging to the discs. Some of these designers need to fuck off!

There are two versions of the movie on the single disc. The Japanese version at 1:40:51 and the US version at 1:30:11. I watched the Japanese first and liked the nice looking picture. I've seen the movie several times over the years, it's one of my favorite Japanese giant monster films, this is probably the nicest image. Mind you I had some VHS bootlegs in the 90s, while they were watchable I've had fleece that was less fuzzy.

Next I put on the US version to check out the commentary by Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski. It turns out to be the same commentary track that's on the Icons Of Sci-Fi: Toho Collection DVD set. I have that set and would highly recommend it to anyone who doesn't need a Blu-ray of Mothra. I think that's most of us. Anyway, the Icons set came out 10 years ago and it's still available. Only a tenner on Amazon for 3 films on 3 discs. The other 2 films are Battle In Outer Space and The H-Man. All are directed by Ishirō Honda and all are entertaining. The Mothra commentary is still a decent commentary, though I would have liked a new one, I wound up watching it to the end. I recently read Steve and Ed's book on Ishirō Honda, he's also the director of the first Godzilla film, interesting book and man. I didn't need the Blu-ray but I'm glad I picked it up.