THE TUNNEL (1933) Jean Gabin, Madeleine Renaud, Robert Le Vigan, Andre Nox.  There’s a big meeting between the world’s fifteen richest industrialists.  A project is launched to build a tunnel from Long Island to Europe.  As the tunnel progresses, its workers are faced with many perils...

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...

APRIL 1st, 2000 (1952) Hilde Krahl, Josef Meinrad, Judith Holzmeister.  In the year 2000 the world is run by the World Global Union.  Smaller countries are still allowed to have their own puppet governments, but none have total freedom—that is, until Austria’s new President declares his country’s freedom.  But within hours WGU forces are streaking toward Austria...

THE FINAL WAR—Widescreen Edition (1960) Tatsuo Umemiya, Yoshiko Mita, Yayoi Furusato.  This is a sci-fi nuclear destruction film that fans have been clamoring to see for years.  And though no English subtitles currently exist, the storyline here isn’t all that hard to follow, even if it is in Japanese only. The scenes of nuclear destruction are pretty well done for the time...

BATTLE OF THE WORLDS—Special 2-Disc Anamorphic Edition (1961) Claude Rains, Bill Carter, Maya Brent.  This two-disc special edition features a beautiful anamorphic widescreen English language edition on one disc, with the foreign-language anamorphic widescreen edition (with English subtitles) on the other.  The plot is simple but fun: Earth may be destroyed by a runaway planet controlled by a giant computer...

SHIKARI (1963) Ajit, Ragini, K.N. Singh, Helen, Madan Puri.  This is the Indian version of King Kong and it's so bad, that it’s a delight.  The plot involves the efforts to capture King Kong by a circus company. The Circus owners and their scientist adviser take off in a big ship to Kong’s island.  The final scene when Kong storms the native village is mesmerizingly bad...

(1967) Guy Madison, Luisa Baratto, Diana Lorys.  Madison is a journalist who gets involved in the search for a leading brain surgeon, who has mysteriously disappeared.  The search takes him to the African desert where they discover Devilman.  Devilman’s plans are simple: using a new brain-transplanting procedure, he intends to rule the world...

THE UNKNOWN MAN OF SHANDIGOR—Widescreen Edition (1966) Daniel Emilfork, Marie-France Boyer, Howard Vernon. This is one of the most unique European sci-fi-intrigue thrillers you will ever see—seriously.  It’s filled with brilliant filmmaking unlike anything you would ever see in other similar films of the era...  

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...

(1959) Rushdi Abazah, Edmond Tuima. What you’ve got here is all you’d expect in a B&W ‘50s sci-fi film, similar to Missile to the Moon.  You’ve got a scientist who’s built a moon rocket.  He shoots off toward the moon with two stowaways.  There's a big spaceship and a cool robot.  They land on the moon and find a strange race of beautiful women.  After many horrifying and dangerous situations, they launch back toward Earth...

(1968) Hideaki Nitani, Naoko Kubo.  One of the worst movies ever.  Indeed, at a whopping 1.6, Mighty Jack has the lowest IMDB rating we’ve ever seen. Yet in spite of the bad film hoopla, this movie is filled with mindless fun.  It’s got tons of late ‘60s Toho-style special effects with many minatures of flying submarines, rockets, ray guns, etc. The plot has Mighty Jack (a counter-espionage team) fighting to save Earth from “Q,” an organization hellbent on world domination...

(1977) Sonny Chiba, Jun Etô.  A squadron of Japanese Self-Defense Force soldiers find themselves transported through time to their country's warring states era, when rival samurai clans were battling to become the supreme Shogun. The squad leader, Lt. Iba, sees this as the perfect opportunity to realize his dream of becoming the ruler of Japan...

(1983) Pip Donaghy, David Gwillim, Lila Kaye, Ron Pember, Merelina Kendall.  This six-part, two-disc mini-series is a vivid retelling of the classic H. G. Wells story and probably comes the closest to the Wells original than any other screen version.  Donaghy is superb as Griffin, the man destined to go mad because of his own fantastic discovery...

(1955) Orhan Erçin, Zafer Önen, Türkan Samil, Özcan Tekgül, Mirella Monro.  This really isn’t much of a movie, yet somehow it kind of works (5.5 on IMDB).  There’s a flying saucer, a dorky robot, an elixir of life, and a plethora of cheesy alien dames who have come to Earth looking for…you guessed it…men!  And who do they find?  

(1961) Eugenia Balaure, Haralambie Boros, Emil Botta, Florin Piersic.  This is perhaps the most surrealistic, offbeat sci-fi film ever made.  It starts with a man accidentally walking into a nuclear test area.  He is apprehended by a squad of men dressed like spacemen, all of whom are holding big ray guns.  He is soon released, but later finds himself the recipient of a fantastic, futuristic suitcase nuclear bomb...

(1963) Gerald Flood, Peter Williams, Stewart Guidotti, Denis Goacher, Richard Coleman, Delena Kidd.  A sequel to the earlier sci-fi mini-series “City Beneath the Sea,” again taking place in the undersea city of Aegira.  A journalist goes to the ocean floor to look for a rare metal known as “Phenicium,” which—as it turns out—is pretty vital for outer space research...

(1968) Mauro Parenti, Lucretia Love, Gordon Mitchell, John Karlsen.   The title character is a masked superhero very much in the mold as Diabolik.  There’s a great pre-credit sequence where he takes on a shipload of drug dealers.  Our hero then pops in and out the rest of the way as he searches for a magical golden relic, all the while trying to keep the bad guys from looting King Tut’s treasures...  

(1970) Dean Jones, Philippe Leroy, Gastone Moschin, Rafael Alonso.  Jones is a professor working on a cure for the common cold.  He also happens into a mysterious Indian potion that makes one invisible, which he has occasion to use.  When a gang of crooks find out about Jones' invisibility serum, naturally they come after him.   Will Jones discover his antidote, beat the crooks, and get the girl?