Classic Creature Movies (BFS)

 

Picture:     Sound:     Extras:     Films:

Creature (1985)                             C             C+            D            D

Track of the Moon Beast (1976)       C             C-             D            D

Snowbeast (1977)                          C             C              D            D

 

 

With the Alien Quadrilogy out there, you might be tempted by curiosity to check into the cheap triple-film-on-one-DVD Classic Creature Movies, but it ought to be called How NOT to do Creature Films.

 

Creature, aka Titan Find, will give everyone new respect for Titan A.E., the now-cult animated item.  This is so obvious an Alien knockoff that it is shamelessly so.  Also not to be confused with the Ivan Passer/Peter O’Toole film of the same name, this too deals with that moon of Saturn, but I would rather watch the car of the same name in insurance institute crash tests over and over and over and over again.  That would be more original, entertaining and less predictable.  Klaus Kinski is wasted in an inferior supporting role, and that is the only thing that could keep anyone awake.

 

Not even good enough to be a Marvel Comics monster film, Track of the Moon Beast has Chase Cordell as a mineralogist who gets hit by a meteorite, but instead of getting killed, he becomes a killer mutant.  Too bad it is a bore that ranks down there with Meteor (1978).  Director Richard Ashe has no clue how to direct in this (and probably any other) genre, unless he is trying to pioneer one to replace tranquilizers. 

 

Bo Stevens  Yvette Mimieux, Robert Logan, Clint Walker waste their time in Snowbeast, a telefilm penned by Joseph Stephano, who was behind the original Outer Limits and adapted Robert Bloch’s Psycho for the 1960 classic, which was butchered by the horrid Gus Van Sant remake.  Snowbeast is no better and Herb Wallerstein is no Hitchcock, but like Hitchcock would have, he would have been better off passing on this mess.  Nothing is scary, except how boring it is and we are better off not only never seeing the creature, but the film itself.

 

The full screen picture on all four films is average at best, and that is being generous, while Creature is likely not framed correctly at all.  It was not scope, but the less we see the better in this case.  Color is not great in any of them, but looks better in the older films.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 is monophonic on all films, except Creature, which offers lame Pro Logic surrounds from what sounds like distorted Ultra-Stereo.  It could be badly done Dolby-A, but the print cut off the end of the credits where it would tell us.  Text extras are here, but limited.

 

Usually, these BFS sets have some interesting surprises, but this is a flat-out dud.  Only the ultra curious should bother.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo.