Customer Reviews

The Ultimate Sci-Fi Collection

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Disc 1 Escape From NY
Disc 2 Escape From NY Disc 2
Disc 3 Mad Max SE
Disc 4 Rollerball
Disc 5 Abyss
Disc 6 Abyss Disc 2
Disc 7 Alien
Disc 8 Alien Disc 2
Disc 9 Aliens CE
Disc 10 Aliens Disc 2
Disc 11 Day The Earth Stood Still
Disc 12 Fantastic Voyage
Disc 13 The Fly
Disc 14 Independence Day
Disc 15 Independence Day Disc 2
Disc 16 Journey To Center of the Earth
Disc 17 Neptune Factor, The
Disc 18 Planet Of The Apes 68
Disc 19 Planet Of The Apes 68 Disc 2
Disc 20 Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

Good selections, but not great. While these 14 films include bona fide, must-see masterpieces of the genre, there are a couple of rather cheesy choices: Irwin Allen's "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" and the similarly shlocktastic "The Neptune Factor." Still, you're getting value for money in the other dozen movies. If you want to build a science-fiction DVD library, this is a fine, economical place to start. It's frequently available from Amazon Marketplace sellers for under $50.

There are double-disc sets for six of the films: "The Abyss," "Independence Day," "Escape from New York," "Planet of the Apes" (the 1968 original), and both "Alien" and "Aliens" (a rare instance of a sequel surpassing the initial film). "Mad Max" is the special edition. The remaining films are "Rollerball," "Fantastic Voyage," "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (the 1959 original), "The Fly" (the 1958 black-and-white horror classic), and "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (the 1951 black-and-white Cold War classic).

A good collection, and some first rate movies. So far as I know, however, The Abyss has yet to be remastered in anamorphic format, thus, it's more than likely that the copy of the film in this collection is the same old transfer that was first released nearly a decade ago. On a big, new monitor, it will look pretty poor, and, unless you zoom in, it will be a small little picture in the centre of the screen. Better to wait for the inevitable blu-ray of the film, and the equally inevitable re-mastered DVD release.

The movie selection starts out strong with Day the earth stood still from 1951 and stumbles midway into a preoccupation with voyages and journeys, finally crashing and burning with the addition of the Abyss and Independence day. The selection could be much better and still could be considerably worse.

The packaging, while initially kind of snappy looking, is, when examined an abysmal waste of paper. The discs are held in thick paper sleeves in a binder, and there are several mostly blank title pages leading up to the dismal summaries of every movie a couple critics excerpts and several postage stamp size color photos, and tiny tiny red title credits. Also the original posters for the movies, which should have been reproduced in the full 81/2X12 size this format affords, are printed in a single blue color postage stamp size repeated to make a wallpaper type pattern on the inside front and back cover.

The space saving slimline case is ok, but you don't get the covers of the movies. Which, as previously stated, could be larger than a typical dvd case!! So that's a real BIG failure to utilize the large format.

Finally aside from DTESS which was shot in full screen, the rest are widescreen. Some however like rollerball and abyss are not anamorphic.SO that means this 2008 release is most likely cobbled together from unsold original release dvds they had laying around.

So far 6 of the 10 discs i've tried to watch are defective POTA ID4 JTTCOTE VTTBOTS neptune factor aliens so I'm knocking the rating down to 1 star, and I guess try to get a replacement from MGM.