(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...

(1963 aka MECHTE NAVSTRECHU) Larisa Gordeichik, Boris Borisyonok, Otar Koberidze, Peeter Kard.  After receiving radio waves from our solar system, the inhabitants of planet Centuria send out a starship toward Earth.  Dues to technical problems, though, their starship is forced to land on Mars...

 (1962) Maria Perschy, Robert Cunningham, Uwe Friedrichsen, Karen Blanguernon, Gustavo Rojo.  Earth is in great peril.  Invading aliens attempt conquest by taking over peoples’ bodies at death.  They then use them as tools for their invasion plans...

(1965) Ralph Seeley, Dick Welsbacher, Marc Clark, Nelson Strong, Suzanne Farrar.  These are the kind of films we love—low, low budget affairs filled with schlocky acting, inane dialogue, pitiful special effects, yet are unexplainably enjoyable.  A couple of overzealous archaeologists dig up...

(1981) Kirsty Wilkinson, Lance Warren, Roy Leywood, William Johnson, Glynis McNicoll, Noel Trevarthn, William Ewens.  This is an amazing mini-series (8.1 rating on IMDB).  Two three-year old twins, a boy and a girl, are lost in the cold New Zealand woods.  Search parties are unable to find them.  They are saved by a strange glow from the sky...

(1989) Daniel Bosch, Marina Giulia Cavalli, Luciano Pigozzi, directed by Antonio Margheritti.  In hopes of getting a scandalous exposé, a lovely ecological activist and her cameraman sneak into a top secret facility where the workmen of a shady corporation are dumping radioactive scrap into the core of a live volcano.  This results in a beam of unchecked energy being shot out into outer space.  What no one expects, though...

(1973) Keir Dullea, Gay Rowan, Robin Ward, Stephen Young, Budd Knapp.  Dullea, as Devon, has been seriously injured.  Rowan, as Rachel, sends out a request for help to an astro-medic ship.  However, there is an alien spacecraft in the area also seeking help. With lives hanging in the balance, the astro-medics are torn over...

(1971) Tom Chadbon, Rob Walker, Robert Oates, Marianne Benet, David Whitman.   A squad of futuristic soldiers wakes up, somehow knowing they need to break into an enemy base.  Their mission is so secret that they have been hypnotically programmed with their instructions and will only recall each step of their undertaking when they hear a pre-arranged cue. Although their plans seem infallible, gradually paranoia begins to...

(1945) Aleksandr Shirshov, Georgiy Millyar, Sergey Stolyarov, Galina Grigoreva.  An epic Russian fantasy with stunning B&W cinematography, full of adventure and derring do. The sets and special effects are beyond spectacular—truly one of the most visually impressive films you will ever see.  A pretty lass and a mighty warrior plan to marry.  Their plans go awry, though, when she’s kidnapped by...

(1957) Ken Utsui, Junko Ikeuchi, Minoru Takada. Over 150 minutes of simple Japanese superhero sci-fi fun. This two-disc set is in Japanese with no subtitles but—as with Vol. One—the plots are so simple that it’s quite easy to follow what’s going on.  Our hero, Starman, once again battles an endless array of villians as he flies about the galaxy, providing even more...

(1963) Renato Salvatori, Rosemary Dexter, Franco Luzzi, Mara Carisi.  This exceptional sci-fi film is filled with satire, comedy, and socially provocative moments.  A factory worker’s corpse is found in a culvert.  At the autopsy, the body miraculously comes back to life!  An alien named Omicron has taken control and slowly starts to learn his body’s functions...

(1964) Mark Stevens, Marianne Koch, Wolfgang Lukschy, Joachim Hansen, Walter Rilla. Stevens is a determined scientist experimenting with the suspended animation of chimps.  Next on the docket…humans!  He makes the decision to use himself as a guinea pig. Before going into deep freeze, though, his wife dies suddenly and he comes under suspicion of her possible murder.  Will he wake from his frozen state only to be...

(1961) Dean Fredericks, Coleen Gray, Dolores Faith, Anthony Dexter, Francis X Bushman, Richcard Kiel.  There is something ultimately likable about this underrated sci-fi B-opus.  Astronaut Fredericks is stranded on a “phantom” planetoid. There he finds a race of miniature people menaced by a fleet of marauding alien monsters who attack in their flaming spaceships. This film is loaded with...

(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...

In our third volume of Robert Silverberg Ace Double novels you get “Invaders from Earth,” a great tale about an outer space scam gone horribly wrong.  In “Collision Course,” the discovery of another, more-advanced race shakes the very foundations of humanity.  “The Silent Invaders” throws one man into the middle of a three-pronged conflict threatening Earth...

(1965) Ronald Lewis, John Gabriel, Jane Downs, Richard Gale, Delena Kidd.  This made-for-TV Brit sci-fi film is absolutely riveting.  A strange tramp collapses near the home of a doctor, who himself has been suffering from bad dreams.  In his nightmares he repeatedly sees someone resembling the tramp.  The tramp is admitted to the hospital, clutching a small, decaying...

(1957) Ken Utsui, Junko Ikeuchi, Minoru Takada.  Another 100 minutes of spaced-out Japanese superhero schlockiness.  This two-disc set is in Japanese with no subtitles but the storylines are so obvious it’s fairly simple to fathom what’s going on.  The big guy, Starman, takes on various bad guys...

(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...