(1961) Taina Elg, Pierre Brice, Alberto Lupo, Akim Tamiroff.  A Peplum classic, filled with many moments of magic and mysticism.  Thebes is suffering from a horrible drought.  To ward off this dry spell, the evil king is willing to sacrifice a young virgin to the god, Demeter. But the god Dionysus has different ideas, bringing to Thebes an onslaught of rain and sparing the girl’s life seconds before she is to be sacrificed...

(1935) Claude Rains, Fay Wray, Ben Field, Mary Clare, Jane Baxter, Felix Aylmer.  Rains is brilliant as a sideshow mind reader whose powers turn out to be real. Soon he is making a plethora of accurate predictions—deaths, accidents, horse racing results, etc.  However, he is unable to control his prophecies until he...

(1944) Arthur Askey, Anne Shelton, Peter Graves, Ronald Shiner, Jean Kent, Antoinette Cellier, Max Bacon, Joy Shelton. This appears to be the only Lost World-Lost Race musical comedy ever made.  We find it amazing that this film has escaped the eye of sci-fi and fantasy film historians for decades, because in spite of its primary musical and comedy themes, there’s no doubt of the film’s fantastic cinema trappings...

(1939) Aleksandr Shchagin, Sergey Martinson, Olga Shaganova-Obraztsova, Georgiy Uvarov, Mikhail Dagmarov.  This marvelous Russian fantasy is similar to Pinocchio.  It’s a combination of live action and animation and it’s filled with fantastic characters and magical moments...

(1959, aka The Day the Earth Froze) Urho Somersalmi, Anna Orochko, Ivan Voronov, Andris Osins, Ada Voytsik. A superb Finnish fantasy epic about an evil witch who steals the sun and causes just about everything on the Earth to freeze. Also featured are magic harps, fields of snakes, a wizard, and a...

(1956) Boris Andreyev, Shukur Burkhanov, Andrei Abrikosov, Natalya Medvedeva, Nelli Myshkova, Sergey Martinson.  A wonderful Russian fantasy about a legendary warrior who fights to save his people from an assortment of horrible monsters including a dragon, a wind demon, and other legendary creatures.  There are many great scenes and the special effects, for the time, were very well done...

The first disc of this Special Two-DVD Edition contains The Dream Doctor (1936) Julie Suedo Sidney Monckton.  This odd film tells tales of many different characters’ dream experiences and tries to explain them in a paranormal yet scientific way by a woman with strange powers.  The second disc includes A Trip to the Moon (1902) Georges Méliès, Victor André.  This is a short sci-fi classic from early cinema pioneer Méliès.  We've also thrown in trailers and two other short subjects, including Fall of the House of Usher and The Devil's Ball...

ONCE IN A NEW MOON (1934) Eliot Makeham, Rene Ray, Morton Selten.  A dead star approaches Earth.  As it passes by, some kind of gravitational pull breaks off a small chunk of the Earth and hurls it into space, where it becomes a new small moon of sorts.  There’s a little coastal town on that chunk, but it takes a while for the villagers to figure out what the hell’s going on...

KILINK IN ISTANBUL (1967) Irfan Atasoy, Pervin Par, Suzan Avci, Muzaffer Tema.  Kilink is this sinister villain in a weird skeleton suit.  He’s brought back from the dead at the beginning of the movie so he can search for a secret formula that will allow him to basically destroy the world and rule over the tatters that are left behind...  

THE STOLEN AIRSHIP (1967, Widescreen Edition) Hanus Bor, Jan Cizek, Cestmír Randa, Jan Malat, Michal Pospisil.  A marvelous science fiction epic and a group of children who make off with a futuristic airship from a county fair.  They then set out on a series of amazing exploits, all set against some of the most amazing stop-motion animation you will ever see...

RIP VAN WYK (1960, aka RIP VAN WINKLE) Jamie Uys, Wynona Cheyney, Willem Loots.  This movie has little to do with the Rip Van Winkle story.  It’s actually a time travel movie. Set in 1859, Uys hurtles 100 years into the future.  He awakens, un-aged, in 1959—a strange, modern world.  The film gives a very interesting perspective about how someone from the past would react to all things modern—automobiles, radios, TVs, clothing, etc...

(1963, Upgraded 12/29/20) Zdenek Stepanek, Dana Medricka, Radovan Lukavsky. This special edition two-disc set contains the anamorphic widescreen foreign language version with English subtitles, and the flat screen American release version dubbed in English.  A spaceship full of explorers shoots across the galaxy toward a distant star. One of the film’s highlights is when they encounter...

When Hugo Gernsback founded Amazing Stories in 1926, he included the works of the great H. G. Wells.  Gernsback reprinted many of Wells’ best science fiction short stories.  So in this collection, in the exact chronological order in which they appeared, is the complete run of the Amazing Stories-H. G. Wells science fiction short story legacy, all with their wonderful original illustrations...

Armchair Fiction features the best in classic horror and fantasy short story collections, complete with original illustrations. “Masters of Horror, Vol. Four: Arthur J. Burks, the Wizard of Weird Tales” contains fourteen superb tales of horror by another great Weird Tales alumnus...

Armchair Fiction features the best in classic horror and fantasy short story collections.  Here it is…part one of the greatest collection of H. P. Lovecraft works ever put together, "H. P. Lovecraft, the Ultimate Illustrated Weird Tales Collection."  This incredible collection features the very best horror tales of H. P. Lovecraft, complete with their Weird Tales illustrations and publishing dates...  

Armchair Fiction features the best in classic horror and fantasy short story collections.  "Allison V. Harding, the Forgotten Queen of Horror” features some of the best horror tales of the 1940s and 1950s.  Who was Allison V. Harding?  Not much is known about her personal life, but the one thing we do know is that you almost couldn’t pick up an issue of Weird Tales from 1943 through 1950 and not come across one of her stories...

(1954) Giuli Chokhonelidze, Konstantin Russu, Nodar Shashigoglu, directed by Sergei Parajanov.  A young shepherd is given a magic woodwind instrument to help him conquer his foes.  This movie is filled with dark fantasy and has its fair share of creepy moments.  Look for evil wizards, storm demons—even flying sheep...!