Category: Sci-Fi

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Here is the last half-hour of Robinson Crusoe on Mars. Director Byron Haskin can be heard at the end saying, “My God! A voice from Mars!”

My appreciation of Criterion Collection home video goes back to its beginning, when Citizen Kane and King Kong were released on the old Laserdisc format. The discs included a commentary audio track, and extras such as trailers and production stills. These features are now taken for granted, but 20+ years ago they were exciting and ground-breaking.

Criterion specializes in releasing high-quality specialty videos for titles that are hard-to-find and/or haven’t been presented properly. Mike Dobbs has posted some interesting background on a new Criterion set of low-budget horror and sci-fi movies, including a couple that feature Bill Pratt, aka Boris Karloff. I’ll be looking for these cheesy classics on Netflix, but when will there be a Queen of Outer Space DVD?

A long time ago, seeing bloopers and deleted scenes from movies was a rarity. But along came DVDs and it started to seem that scenes were being shot solely for the purpose of padding out supplementary material.
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This post will be nothing new to die-hard Star Wars fans, but here are a couple of scenes that didn’t make it into the release of the first movie, which is coming up fast on its 30th anniversary.
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If you don’t yet know about Star Trek New Voyages, click here. My buddy Bismo introduced us to New Voyages, which is but one of several amateur re-creations of the various Trek TV series. I think it’s by far the best.

For more background on the amazing phenomenon of fan-produced Trek TV, click here. While you’re reading that, you can listen to an NPR feature on New Voyages. Here’s the link.