Search - Werewolves, Vampires and Zombies on DVD

Not bad Budget public domain collection

Phasedin | New Jersey | 09/09/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"There's clearly no shortage of budget releases of public domain titles in print. So the factor on deciding if one should purchase any particular one is usually the price and the picture quality. Sometimes you will find a rare film in these collections that isn't available in a hundred other compilations.
This colelction does have 2 enjoyable early 70's low budget thrillers that played on TV allot in those late night weekend slots in the last days of pre-cable and all night infomercials, "Grave Of The Vampire"(1972) and "Werewolf of Washington"(1973) which you can purchase seperately for only a little less than you would pay for this entire collection-AND I don't think the transfers available of these 2 films are actually any better from any other source being that they are public domain titles. So, if nothing else, one could save money and get a few more films in the process (and save storage space) by picking up this collection.
I was already familiar with the company that released this compilation "St Clair" through their many music CD releases-those are also mostly compilations of smooth jazz artists-and they do a pretty decent job with those, offering these compilations at a really small price (though they do thend to run a little short and don't have nearly as much material that you could normally fit on a CD, but maybe i'm nitpicking here).
I have only so far seen one movie from this set "The Vampire Happening". There were tell-tale signs of video dropouts, so it appears to be a transfer from videotape, but at least it's a very high quality videotape. Plus they didn't edit out the nudity-this is the full length 101 minute print of this.
These compilations often offer edited versions of the films, so beware, and this one is no exception. We have here a movie, "Atom Age Vampire" a black-and white Italian production from 1961 that's available on TONS of these comilations, and this is only a severly edited 68 minute version.
"Werewolf Vs The Vampire Woman" (1971)is a Spanich Paul Naschy vechicle that's available in a bunch of these sets and also under many different titles. Here we have the original 82 minute American English-dubbed theatrical version, but this film has been restored and available under another title "The Werewolf Shadow" in a longer 95 minute version thats been out already for a few years.
There's also a couple of extras-a fun trivia quiz of about 10 or so questions and about a half dozen or so original movie trailers for other Horror movies. For me these little things really do add to the value of the pack.
The video transfers are acceptable-maybe even a bit better than most of these multi-movie budget sets.
In all I'd say if you're only interested in 1 or 2 of these movies that this may still be worthwhile. You could do allot worse (and I have bought sets with much worse video quality that will probably just collect dust forever).
There is nearly 14 hours of movies here : 10 movies total on 3 discs:

Disc 1: "Werewolf Vs The Vampire Woman" (1971)
"Teenage Zombies" (1959)
"Revolt Of The Zombies" (1936) (pretty dull movie)
"Moon Of The Wolf" (1972)(a cheap made-for-tv movie, only so-so.Better if you were around to catch it when it was new)
Disc 2: "Vampire Happening"(1971)
"The Satanic Rites Of Dracula"(1973)(I love this movie, it's the last Hammer Dracula movie that stars both Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee-this one is also in tons of these sets)
"Wolfman" (1978 this is a very low-budget drive-in style movie NOT the old Universal Movies classic from the 1940's)
Disc 3: "Atom Age Vampire" (1961)a highly edited (probably tv print) of this movie which is available in much longer versions elsewhere
"Werewolf Of Washington"(1973)low budget & intentioanlly dumb American movie
"Grave Of the Vampire" (1972) low budget but more fun in a cheap-drive in or late night "Chiller Theater" movie kind of way.
I will say that in general some of these films are in many compilation packages, but these are really the best looking transfers I have seen in any budget compilation. The movies contained here that are repeated in those 50 Movie Packs on 12 DVDs that sell from anywhere from $19-$30 look MUCH better here than on those big cheap collections. So if these 10 movie sets from St Clair actually contain the primary films you're interested in, AND you don't want to buy them individually, and you still want to save $$ in the long run, i'd say buy the St Clair collections.
Another pretty decent St Clair 10-movie set (on 3 DVDs) is called "Classics From Outer Space" and once again those transfers beat the versions of the same films contained in those Mill Creek Entertainment 50 Movie Packs (which I own several of but am very dissapointed with much of the quality of the transfers all the same)
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