(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...

(1958) Lubor Tokos, Hugh Downs, Arnost Navrátil, Miroslav Holub, Frantisek Slégr.  This is easily the best quality DVD edition of this fabulous science fiction film on the market.  The evil Count Artigas kidnaps the scientist Professor Roch and his assistant.  Artigas takes them to his headquarters inside an enormous volcano, far off at sea.  The machines the professor creates are incredible.  His heavy water experiments soon provide...

(1957) Ken Utsui, Junko Ikeuchi, Minoru Takada.  Over 100 minutes of mindless Japanese superhero sci-fi fun.  This two-disc set is in Japanese with no subtitles but the plots are so simple that it’s pretty darn easy to figure out what’s going on.  Our hero, Starman, battles enemy agents galore, all the while befriending a group of school children and concerned adults.  There are lots of lab scenes, fistfights, and...

(1932) Harry Piel, Fritz Odemar, Lissy Arna, Annemarie Sorensen, Olga Limburg.  Harry is a taxi driver who finds an odd contraption on the back seat of his cab that renders him invisible.  He soon uses it to gain wealth and fame.  Watch for the scene at the racetrack where Harry scores a fortune.  His servant, though, has other ideas...

(1973) Keir Dullea, Walter Koenig, Gay Rowan, Robin Ward, Henry Beckman.  The people of The Ark discover a humanoid alien (Koenig) living in one of their domes.  His spaceship needs repairs before he can return to his own planet, so he enlists help from the Ark members.  But there is some duplicity going on—what is the alien hiding...

(1962, Upgraded 12/30/20) Yoko Tani, Oldrich Lukes, Julius Ongewe, Kurt Rackelman.   A space expedition is launched to the planet Venus.  There they find the planet and its former inhabitants completely destroyed by atomic war.  The crew faces many horrible dangers including a blob-like monster...  

(1959) Ken Utsui, Junko Ikeuchi, Reiko Seto, Terumi Hoshi. What’s not to like?  It’s another hilarious Starman movie. This epic has our hero battling against the sinister brain of Balazar and his crazed minions of Marpetians... 

(1959, Upgraded 12/30/20) Don Sullivan, Lisa Simone, Shug Fisher.   A gigantic lizard terrorizes a small Texas community, smashing cars and trains and scarfing up gobs of people.  The train crash scene is memorable, as is the dance hall scene.  Lots of cool hot rods, including one that smashes into...

(1932) Hans Alber, Sybille Schmitz, Peter Lorre, Paul Hartman.  Great sci-fi about a giant floating platform built in the mid-Atlantic as a refueling stopover for trans-Atlantic flights.  Unfortunately there are plans afoot to stop this daring project.  Albers is the great flier in the center of it all, who falls for the beautiful daughter of the man who built the platform.  Sabotage and intrigue soon... 

(1913) Crissie Bell, E. Holman Clark, Hubert Willis.  Britain's first full-length sci-fi film.  A Martian having offended his ruler is exiled to Earth with the mission to change the heart of a selfish man.  Based on a highly popular stage play, Message to Mars features futuristically clad Martians, thought transference, instant space travel, mind control...

(1972) Mine Mutlu, Kunt Tulgar, Erol Tas, Erol Gunaydin.  This outlandish Turkish sci-fi action film features “the Copperhead,” a masked hero who fights the evil Dr. Satan.  The doctor has designs on conquering the world with robots and other electronics.  He laughs maniacally throughout the film.  There are many scenes that will make you howl and the Sherlock Holmish sidekick is bad beyond belief.  A wonderfully inept film that never lets up...

(1969) Uldis Pucitis, Jüri Järvet, Lembit Peterson, Mikk Mikiver, Karlis Sebris.  It’s a post-apocalyptic world in which mankind has been decimated by an unknown plague.  Cities are on fire; millions have died.  A young couple is detained by the government and sequestered into a beach house to conceive a child in an effort to save mankind. They are soon visited by strange riders and a massive whale dies on their beach...

(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...

(1956) Lon Chaney, Casey Adams, Marian Carr, Robert Shayne.  A 1950s sci-fi standard that we all grew up with. Lon plays an executed killer brought back to life by research scientists, headed by Robert Shayne.  When he realizes he has been brought back from the dead and that his doctors are, essentially, his new captors, he shows his gratitude by killing them!  He then goes on a rampage seeking revenge against those who helped send him to the chair...

(1947) Jean-Pierre Aumont, Maria Montez, Dennis O’Keefe, Henry Daniell. Two Legionnaires comb the Sahara for a missing scientist.  They are captured by strange desert warriors and taken to the lost land of Atlantis, ruled over by a beautiful but ruthless queen who is surrounded by the golden mummies of past lovers. Aumont is great as the stalwart Legionnaire who crumbles to the sexual power of Montez...

(1943) Hans Albers, Hermann Speelmans, Käthe Haack, Ferdinand Marian.  Armed with immortality, Munchausen rides horses, hot air balloons and even cannon balls as he travels the world saving beautiful ladies of royalty.  He is aided by his faithful servant who is armed with a fantastic rifle that can hit targets from 100 miles away and a runner who can sprint great distances in seconds... 

(1934) Harry Piel, Kurt Vespermann, Anni Markart, Rudolf Klein-Rogge.  Verspermann is an inventor who invents a radio-television device that, unfortunately, doesn’t work!  Piel is the suave con-man who convinces him to carry on.  There are tons of lab scenes filled with fantastic electrical devices.  When a freak accident happens, the device is somehow endowed with the ability to see through any object and project the image onto its television screen...

(1924, Fox) Earle Foxe, Grace Cunard, Gladys Tennyson, Maurice Murphy.  A lost sci-fi classic finally makes it to DVD!  In the future year of 1940, a young man, having been rejected by a girl and gone off to be a hermit in a redwood forest, doesn’t realize that men around the world are dying from a new disease called "Masculitis." By 1950, the dreadful plague has killed every male over the age of fourteen except our hermit hero...