TerrorStorm: A History Of Government Sponsored Terrorism

I picked up this disc on a recent visit to Wills.  The DVD case claims that it is the true story about how 9/11 was an inside job perpetrated by the American government.  It goes on to allege a host of other government sponsored terrorist activities.  There is even a picture of Hitler on the front of the DVD case along with several other images.  The disc sounded like it should be interesting, even if I figured the makers were conspiracy theory crackpots.  I believe in listening to all sides, researching for myself, and then making a decision.

I placed the disc in the player and instead of a typical documentary, TerrorStorm plays like an industrial training film.  There is no room for debate.  The filmmaker, Alex Jones, tells you the facts just as the narrator in a driver’s ed film might tell you that speeding was dangerous and could result in death.  Jones begins by listing several examples of what he refers to as “false flag” events.  These are incidents where a country attacks itself under the guise of being attacked by an enemy to rally support from the masses.  Jones was explaining about the USS Liberty being attacked when the disc began to pause and sputter.  Eventually it stopped and a message appeared that the disc was dirty.  I didn’t have any cleaning cloths, so I ejected the disc and chose a different title.  Too bad, because while technically the writing and narration were not that good, the claims were interesting.

Surrogates

I forget which film I was watching when I first saw the trailer for Surrogates.  I think it may have been Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen.  I watched the trailer and didn’t feel any great desire to rush out and see the film when it came out.  I wasn’t even aware that the DVD was out until I stumbled across it at Wills.  I figured it should be worth the $2.50, so I picked it up.  I still wasn’t planning to put it on the top of my DVD must view pile, but as I scanned my discs for a movie to watch on Saturday, I thought it might be fun to watch a major studio release from the last year since most of what I have discussed have been older films.  I flipped it over and saw a run time of 89 minutes and decided that was a sign.  I had to go to work later and 89 minutes would work out just perfect.

I had read that Surrogates was based on a comic book, but I wasn’t familiar with the series.  All I knew was what I had seen in that one trailer.  I put the disc in and fired it up.  The film opens with voice over and news footage.  Super imposed titles flash up time line information showing in reverse how we got to where we are in the today of the film.  Apparently humanity has been changing.  A company named VSI has released a product that is a robotic surrogate body for people to use.  The original intent was to help the disabled by providing a body that could walk if they were paralysed, or arms if they were missing their own.  As the prices dropped. the use of surrogates became more wide spread until most humans don’t even go outside of their house any longer, preferring to let their surrogates handle things for them.  And just like in Second Life or The Sims or even Warcraft, the surrogate you choose doesn’t have to look a thing like you.  It can be young or beautiful or of a different race or gender.  The best thing is, if your surrogate gets damaged or destroyed, you’ll be perfectly fine.  Just send it to the shop for repairs or buy a new one.  The problem comes when someone gets their hands on a top secret weapon that destroys the surrogate and the operator as well.

Bruce Willis is a FBI agent put on the case, who suddenly finds that there is more to the two strange deaths and that the target may have actually been someone else.  He is blocked in his investigation by the military, VSI and his own agency as well.  The movie plays out as a mystery set in the future.  It reminded me of Blade Runner meets I, Robot with a dash of Minority Report.  Bruce Willis is once again reliably entertaining as the agent looking for the truth as well as a way to deal with his personal life.  The film doesn’t try to pad any of the sub plots as it rockets along at breakneck speed.  Sometimes this is good because it prevents you from asking too many questions,  Other times it can cause you to get a little disoriented trying to remember which person is controlling which surrogate (or surrogates). 

The DVD has very little in the way of bonus features unless you want to watch a music video for a song that plays over the end titles.  The movie however is a pleasant little action diversion.  I give it 2 3/4 stars.

Bitch Slap

One of the sites I frequently check online is http://www.traileraddict.com/ .  Last year I stumbled across a trailer and a featurette for a film called Bitch Slap.  The featurette in particular was quite funny.  I decided if I got the chance I wanted to see Bitch Slap.  Needless to say, the movie never made it to my little corner of the world, however this weekend the DVD did.  I was looking in Target and stumbled across Bitch Slap for only $12.  I figured if it was half as funny, half as clever and half as campy as the trailer and featurette had been, that it was easily worth the price. 

One thing I found interesting was the DVD case.  When Zack and Miri Make a Porno came out on DVD, the retail giants forced Miramax to offer a DVD case with the title listed as only Zack and Miri.  The porno was excised from the title (which is why I bought my copy at Borders in Huntington where the title was still displayed in all its glory).  With Bitch Slap they couldn’t just drop the word Bitch from the title, but they couldn’t risk little kids and the easily offended seeing the word and upsetting some of their customers.  The novel solution was a yellow sticker reading “Get Slapped!” placed on the shrink wrap over the offending word.  Just hope they don’t look at the spine of the DVD.

So Friday night I pop Bitch Slap into the DVD player.  Anyone familiar with the films of Russ Meyer would feel as though they were watching a Russ Meyer lite film as the movie starts.  The film starts with a woman in the desert surrounded by fires and carnage wailing to the heavens about why this had to happen.  Then Memento-like we are taken back to several hours ago.  A car pulls up and the three women emerge from inside.  The camera, however, lingers on the women’s legs and then travels up to stop and linger even longer on their breasts.  We get multiple angle shots of their breasts getting out of the vehicle, sometimes in split screen even.  The only differences between this and Russ Meyer were that the breasts were clothed and they were not freakishly large.  They weren’t small, mind you, but just the normal enhanced breasts that Hollywood seems to be full of.

From this point the film continues in two directions.  The main storyline barrels forward toward the scene of destruction the film opened with, while the secondary story moves backward showing us how these events came to pass and how the various characters came to cross paths.  The reverse reveal isn’t as clever as Memento, but it is much better than a low budget film named Bitch Slap would lead you to believe it could be.  The main storyline sticks to the basics of an exploitation film.  There are bad girls on the run with big guns and there are bad guys out to get the girls as well.  Of course the girls are also just as likely to turn on each other, provided they aren’t trying to “turn on” each other as each of them is shown to be either lesbian or extremely bi-sexual.  It should be noted that the sex in Bitch Slap is just a tease.  There is very little nudity in the film and what little bit there is involves background characters not the main stars.  In fact the main character that gets saddled with the most revealing outfit is not any of the three women.  It is bad guy Gage played by Michael Hurst of Hercules fame, who runs around in a tiny black leathery jock strap.  Trust me, you will never look at Hercules friend Iolaus the same way after seeing Hurst playing Gage.

Speaking of Hercules, the producers, writers and director were alums of Hercules and Xena, so they got Kevin Sorbo, Lucy Lawless and Renee O’Connor to cameo in the film.  Sorbo plays a super secret agent named Phoenix while Lawless and O’Connor play nuns.  The other big name in the film is Zoe Bell who acts as stunt coordinator, stunt double and plays the small role of Rawhide.  Zoe was heavily involved in the Kill Bill films and had a featured role in the Death Proof section of Grindhouse.

I got the feeling that several of the characters in Bitch Slap would have been quite at home in a Tarantino film, but the film itself is just not as fun as Tarantino’s work.  And Quentin wouldn’t have made such an issue of the girl’s sexuality.  Overall, Bitch Slap isn’t a bad movie for what it intended to be, but it seems at times that the filmmakers couldn’t decide if it was an over the top exploitation film or whether it wanted to be a satire of those types of films.  There is nothing wrong with either type of film in my book, but you need to commit to one or the other.  Bitch Slap doesn’t seem willing to do that.

One area where the DVD does excel is in the bonus features.  There is a series of three making of featurettes that form one large documentary on making a B movie.  It is very informative and entertaining as well.  In fact the documentary was easily worth the $12 by itself.  As for the movie, I give it 2 1/2 stars.  I’m not anxious to get Bitch Slapped again any time in the immediate future, but I would check out a sequel or future project from Rick Jacobson and Eric Gruendemann.  I also would love to see America Olivo (Camero) in another film with a more experienced director.  As the crazy one of the trio she plays her role perfectly and she has a great look in the way she carries herself.  The scene with her and the nuns was one of my favorites, and her battles with Kinki (Minae Noji, also a stand out) and her razor edged yo-yo were very well done as well.

She-Wolf Of London

After watching Werewolf of London, I decided to finish of the Wolf Man Double Feature by watching the second feature.  The second feature they chose for this disc was She-Wolf of London starring June Lockhart and Don Porter.  I had heard the title before and I was familiar with a television series from 1990 of that name, but surprisingly I didn’t recall ever seeing any stills of the She-Wolf in Famous Monsters or any of the other monster magazines I read as a kid.  I remembered the She-Creature, the Bride of Frankenstein, even Sister Hyde (from Dr. Jeckyll and Sister Hyde), but no She-Wolf.  I found out why after watching the film; there is no She-Wolf. 

The film concerns a young couple (Porter and Lockhart) that are engaged to be wed.  The young girl is a descendent of the Allenby’s, whose family line has been cursed with lycanthropy according to legend.  A string of attacks in the park near the house where she lives convinces her that the curse has struck her and that she is a murderer.  As more and more signs point to her being a killer, her aunt Martha (Sara Haden) keeps trying to protect her.  The aunt helps to keep her fiancée away while she deals with the guilt of what she may have done.

She-Wolf of London is more of a gothic mystery rather than a monster movie.  The mystery being whether the young woman is a werewolf and is she committing the murders.  As I stated in the opening, there is no werewolf, she-wolf or otherwise.  That leaves the core of any good mystery, who dunnit.  As a mystery, the film is quite good.  There are only a few possible suspects and it’s not that difficult to figure out which one is the killer posing as a she-wolf.  Still the film is paced nicely and does allow for the possibility, at least initially, that the villain could actually be a werewolf.  Never the less, pairing this film with the Werewolf of London and calling them a Wolf Man Double Feature is a bit of a stretch.  I’m glad I watched the film, and I probably would not have done so were it not for its inclusion in the Universal Monster DVDs.

The DVD features the same type bonus features that the Werewolf of London section featured.  Static bios and production notes as well as the theatrical trailer.  The trailer shows quite a few late in the picture scenes, but it does not give up the two central mysteries.  It’s about a 6 1/2 on the Quarantine scale.

The movie itself is quite enjoyable and nicely atmospheric.  It may not be a true monster movie, but it is worth 2 3/4 stars.

Werewolf Of London

As I have previously stated, I loved the old Universal horror movies.  For some reason Chiller never seemed to play Werewolf of London and all I knew of it were stills that I had viewed in Famous Monsters of Filmland and in a series of trading cards.  I knew the name of Henry Hull, the actor playing the titular lycanthrope, but I had no idea of the plot.  To my mind, the werewolf in this picture wasn’t the real thing; that was Lon Chaney Jr.’s The Wolf Man.  This werewolf was on a par with Oliver Reed in Curse of the Werewolf.  It was a pale imitation.  Imagine how surprised I was to learn that Hull’s werewolf actually came first.  In fact the story is that Jack Pierce designed the Chaney style makeup for Hull, but that Hull refused to wear it.  Pierce redesigned the concept to the less hairy version seen in the film.

During the height of the video age, Universal started releasing all the classic monster movies on video.  They would release a nice grouping every so many months or near Halloween.  When DVD rolled around, Universal released their classic monster movies in a box set, but most of the sequels and single film monsters weren’t included.  Later Universal released 6 horror double feature DVDs that presented 4 more Mummy films, 2 more Dracula films, 4 more Frankenstein films and 2 more Wolfman films.  The Wolfman films were not actually films with the Wolfman, but Werewolf of London and She Wolf of London.  I had purchased the boxset and quickly scooped up the 12 additional films.  I was disappointed they hadn’t released the last 2 Creature movies, but figured those would come in the next round with the Invisible Man sequels and the other films that they had released under the Classic Universal Monsters video logo.  Sadly they ended the series and didn’t release any other monster DVDs until they started the Legacy series to coincide with the theatrical release of Van Helsing.  Even then I had to wait until series 2 to get the rest of the Creature and the Invisible Man.

I had been staying away from the Universal monsters because I initially planned to watch movies I had bought and hadn’t watched that were either essentials or very obscure.  Then I tried to do Oscar winners for February.  I thought October would be a great month to go through the Universal classics.  Unfortunately I ran short on time Wednesday night and so I cracked open the one hour and 15 minute long Werewolf of London.

The mythology of the werewolf in this film is quite different from that in The Wolf Man.  Silver is not required to kill these werewolves and the change may be stopped with the extract from a rare and mysterious plant that only blooms under the light of the moon.  Botanist Wilford Glendon (Hull) is off searching for the rare plant when he is attacked and bitten by a werewolf.  He brings the flower back to London and he is soon approached by a strange Dr. Yogami (Warner Oland) who tries to convince him of the plant’s mysterious powers to prevent the change into man hungry beast.  Glendon doesn’t listen and soon he is changing and women are being found murdered. 

The story in Werewolf of London is actually a little stronger and more complex than the one in The Wolf Man.  There is a love story that seems rather bold for its time concerning a man in love with Glendon’s wife and trying to woo her away.  For comic relief there is a pair of drunken land ladies that rent Glendon a room and then spy on him through the keyhole.  The movie is quite good and I was actually sorry it was as short as it was.  I give Werewolf of London 3 stars. 

The DVD has a few bonus features, but they are mostly static bios and filmographies.  The trailer is included, but it is a re-release trailer.  The trailer does show much of the later parts of the film and rates an 8 1/2 on the Quarantine scale.

Robotech Remastered Extended Edition The Macross Saga 1

I remember Robotech being quite popular in the mid to late 80s.  I loved science fiction and was interested in anime, but Robotech didn’t seem to be playing on any channels where I could catch it.  I was also confused by all the various names; Robotech, Macross, Do You Remember Love, Space Fortress Macross.  I wasn’t sure what the difference was or if it was all the same thing.  I basically decided to give it a pass and not worry about it.  I picked up a few of the toys when they hit the clearance bins and I bought a Macross portfolio, but that was it.  If they were playing it at a convention I was attending, I didn’t worry about catching it.  I browsed the hucksters a little longer.

Robotech had a similar fate in my life when it came to video and DVD.  If I got it on DVD, I wanted to get the best set I could, but that was out of my price range.  K-Mart, however, had gotten a bunch of DVD overstock from ADV and I picked up several of the Robotech DVDs there for $4.99 or less.  I still never got around to watching them.  One day while the wife and I were in Hot Topic, we stumbled across the Robotech mini DVDs,  They had been marked to half price and they were doing an additional 50% off.  I bought all 4 and stuck them in the collection. 

Tuesday night I needed a short disc.  I wanted to watch Lost and I couldn’t stay up much past the end of it.  Unfortunately I hadn’t gotten started on looking for a disc to watch until 8 PM.  I thought about another Happy Tree Friend Blood Sample, but then I thought, “why not give Robotech a try?”.  The AniMini DVDs run about 25 minutes and feature a full episode of the series.  I grabbed Volume 1 which contained Boobytrap, the pilot episode. 

The show starts with a mysterious alien ship crashing on Earth.  The nations of the world band together to discover its secrets and rebuild the damaged vessel.  The day that the ship is preparing to make its debut before a crowd of dignitaries and invited guests, an alien attack force arrives and detects the vehicle.  They immediately launch an attack.  The green fighter pilots and a hot shot circus pilot named Rick Hunter are thrust into combat against the invading army.

Episode 1 did whet my appetite for more.  I’m sure I will pick up and watch the other volumes sooner rather than later, although I’m not ready to go diving into the full size DVDs with multiple episodes per disc.  I’m still not sure how all the various names, titles, series, movies, OVAs, etc. connect together, but at least now I am a little more inclined to watch and figure it out.

The animation is typical anime style of the 80s.  There are lots of static figures to save on animation costs and lots of black lines to denote fast motion.  Using the Night Flight scale, I give Robotech a solid 8.  I want to see more.

Van Helsing: The London Assignment

I have always loved monster movies.  I used to watch Chiller every Saturday night hoping that they would be showing a real monster movie.  By that I meant a classic Universal horror movie.  I saw most of the Frankenstein, Mummy, Wolfman and Creature movies that way.  For some reason I don’t recall seeing Dracula or the original Mummy on Chiller.  I picked up the Universal Monsters boxset on DVD, but still haven’t watched the ones I missed.

In 1999, Stephen Sommers reimagined The Mummy for Universal in a way that made it more Indiana Jones than slowest member of the monster family.  The film was so successful that it spawned sequels and allowed Sommers to branch out to other horror staples.  He decided to reimagine Van Helsing as Hugh Jackman with some supernatural fighting weapons.  Van Helsing had always taken on Dracula, but Sommers new film would have him facing down not only Dracula but Frankenstein’s monster and the Wolfman.  Universal DVD stepped up to the plate and released new Legacy editions of the DVDs for the original monsters.  They also created and released an animated Van Helsing short direct to DVD.  Not content with facing the triple crown of horror, Van Helsing finds himself taking on Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde in this animated adventure.

The film was a neat way to help advertise the film and raise awareness.  It also wasn’t a bad project by itself.  The animation is quite good and the plot, while not without its shortcomings, manages to be better than I expected it to be.  Jeckyll is manipulating Queen Victoria and through a potion derived from freshly slain young women, he is also keeping her young.  Of course the frail doctor can’t be seen killing the women for Victoria’s potion, so he drinks his other potion and becomes Mr. Hyde.  Van Helsing arrives with a helper and begins tracking down Hyde which leads to some well done chase scenes and fight scenes.

Van Helsing: The London Assignment seemed a little pricey for what it was when it first came out, but when I found it at Big Lots for $3, I decided to give it a try.  It took me a few months to get around to watching it, but I ended up enjoying it.  It was much more enjoyable than the Lady Death animated that I watched a while back, and it served its main purpose.  I now want to watch Van Helsing the movie.  I have it on DVD.  I just need to pick a night.

The DVD has several bonus features designed to help whet your desire to see Van Helsing.  There is a nice behind the scenes featurette, an interview with Hugh Jackman and a couple of other features.  All in all it was well worth the $3 and probably would have been worth more.  Much of that is probably thanks to Jackman, Robbie Coltraine and the other voice actors as well as the writing team of Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens.  The Reeve-Stevens’ wrote for Enterprise, Lost World and Batman The Animated Series just to name three.  I give Van Helsing: The London Assignment 2 3/4 stars.

The Hidden

I remember when The Hidden first came out thinking it looked pretty decent.  Through the years I saw the trailer on numerous VHS tapes, but I never got around to watching the film.  I think I actually may have bought a copy of the VHS that I never viewed.  I picked up the DVD in Wal-Mart one time and promptly added it to the collection without watching it.  I decided tonight might be a good tie to break the shrink-wrap and give it a view.

The Hidden was a low-budget science fiction/horror/crime/mystery.  Average law-abiding citizens start robbing banks, stealing cars and killing people, all while listening to loud rock music.  The cops try to shoot them, but they keep on coming.  A FBI agent, Kyle MacLachlan, shows up tracking one of these average citizens.  He seems to know more about the case than he lets on and the officer assigned to assist him, Michael Nouri, wants some answers.  It’s a fairly simple plot, but the cast and director Jack Sholder manage to give it some style. 

The DVD has a commentary track as well as the theatrical trailer, special effects tests, and a cast and crew filmography with hidden trailers for some other films.  For a film that has developed a cult following, the bonuses are a little light.  I would have loved to have seen a featurette doc talking about the making and marketing of the film as well as the cult status.  Maybe the commentary covers some of that, but I don’t have time to watch the film and then re-watch it with commentary.  I might watch it that way at a later date, but not at the moment.

The good news is that the movie is fun and certainly worth a second viewing.  I give it 3 stars.  The trailer gives away quite a bit of the film.  We see the gunfight in the police station as well as the shot of Kyle MacLachlan using the flame thrower.  I give the trailer a 9 on the Quarantine scale.  One quick note about the scene in the prison area of the police station.  I noticed a criminal with a familiar voice in the scene.  I checked the credits and sure enough it is a young Danny Trejo from most of Robert Rodriguez’s films.

Dolemite

When you talk about the icons of blaxploitation films, Dolemite has to be near the top.  Dolemite started out as a character in the comedy act of Rudy Ray Moore and was brought to the silver screen in 1975.  Dolemite is a pimp that gets framed and sent to jail.  He is freed from prison so that they can catch the guys that framed him, that killed a young boy, and that are pushing drugs in the neighborhood.  Dolemite not only wants to do that, he also wants to take back what was his.

That is the plot in a nutshell.  Watching the film I was surprised that it was as iconic as it was.  The fight scenes are poorly choreographed to the point that you can see the blows failing to connect.  The acting is on par with most high school theater productions.  The only thing that makes the film stand out is Rudy Ray Moore.  Rudy is credited as one of the first rappers and he performs two of his routines in this film; Shine and the Great Titanic and The Signifying Monkey.  Moore’s personality and charisma, coupled with his humorous dialogue makes the character of Dolemite fun to watch.

In the genre of Blaxploitation, however, Dolemite is not nearly as entertaining as some of the earlier films like Shaft or Sweet Sweetback.  Part of its weakness may have been budgetary, and part was definitely technical.  The editing is very poor with scenes jumping for no good reason.  The boom mic is visible in several shots.  As much as I enjoyed Dolemite, the character, I just wish the rest of the movie had stepped up to his level.

The DVD is from Xenon and bills that it features the original uncut version of the film.  The cover is a photo montage unlike their Dolemite Collection edition which features the one sheet art.  Bonus features include three clips from the Legend of Dolemite documentary DVD, trailers for Dolemite, Legend of Dolemite and Shaolin Dolemite, a static bio of Rudy Ray Moore, and lyrics for the two numbers Dolemite performs.

I give Dolemite, the movie, 2 stars.  The character, however, is a 4 star entertainment.

The Lost World (1925)

I became a fan of the television series Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World while I was traveling and doing some teaching for the USPS.  The show was playing early in the morning on TNT along with The Pretender and Charmed.  I would get up and flip on Lost World while I got ready for the day, usually dashing out at the end of the episode to grab some breakfast and returning to catch the end of The Pretender.  I ordered the first season off Amazon and the seller turned out to have the Canadian boxset rather than the American version.  The content was the same but the packaging was different.  I still check eBay every so often in hopes of coming across a copy of the American version cheap. 

The Lost World started as a story written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes.  It has been the basis for numerous movies and television series since then.  The first adaptation for film was the silent version from 1925 directed by Harry Hoyt.  The film was later edited and consequently today there are numerous versions of the film floating around.  The complete version is listed as being 106 minutes with a restored version clocking in at 93 and the 1929 Kodascope version clocking in at 64 minutes.  The version I saw was listed as 52 minutes,

Since a lot of silent films have passed into the public domain, it’s not surprising that these films often show up in dollar stores or in collections of 20 movies on 4 discs for $10.  The copy I watched was packaged in a cardboard box and sold by Family Dollar.  The disc is just loose in the box with no protection, so I enclosed my copy of the disc into a slimline jewel case and returned it to the original box.  This disc also contained The Giant Gila Monster (another apparent public domain title that pops up in lots of science fiction and horror collections) and a Max Fleischer Superman cartoon, The Arctic Giant.

The Lost World is presented in almost a sepia tone look.  Several places the film is very dark, but overall it looks surprisingly good.  I was particularly surprised considering the way the film was packaged.  I feared a very patchy and scratchy print, but the quality was very nice.  There were a few rough spots, but even the Image restoration of Cabinet of Dr. Caligari contained some defects that were impossible to correct.  For a dollar, I can accept a few of these.

The plot, for anyone that is not familiar with it, concerns Professor Challenger leading a rescue party to a plateau where dinosaurs still roam.  Explorer Maple White, had gotten trapped there and Challenger has sworn to White’s daughter that he will rescue him.  Of course Challenger also has the motive of proving such a land actually exists as his colleagues think he is a crackpot.  Edward Malone, a young reporter, brokers a deal with Challenger where the newspaper will fund the expedition in exchange for exclusive rights to the story.  The team sets off with big game hunter, Sir John Roxton, doubting colleague, Professor Summerlee, and White’s daughter, Paula all in tow as well.  The team soon finds the plateau and their first dinosaur, a pterodactyl.  The team appears to get stranded on the plateau in much the same way White had, but part of their group devises a rescue for the trapped explorers.  Challenger captures a Brontosaurus and has it shipped to London where it breaks free and creates havoc in the streets.

Many of these elements were lifted for later works as well.  The monster on the loose scene is replayed in King Kong and Jurassic Park: The Lost World just to name two.  The amazing part of The Lost World is how sophisticated the special effects were for the time.  The stop motion dinosaurs, although somewhat jerky, are amazing when you consider they were done by hand with no computer assisting and only the rudimentary equipment available in 1925.

This is another film I am having a hard time assigning a rating to.  I enjoyed the film and was delighted with the effects they were able to pull off, but since I saw a truncated version of the film, would the longer version be more impressive, or start to drag?  I’m giving the version I saw 3 stars, but now I want to find one of the restored version. 

Fittingly, the Superman cartoon on this disc contains a story of Superman fighting a dinosaur that thaws out in a museum and comes back to life to trample Metropolis.  It’s a lot of fun and features that wonderful Fleischer animation.  Including it was a nice plus.