Tags: columbia

Following in the footsteps of the Warner Archive Collection, Columbia/Sony has announced its own burn-on-demand DVD service, Screen Classics on Request. Among the 100 initially available titles are several of interest to horror fans, including the rarely-seen The Soul of a Monster (1944), a brand-new transfer of The Spiritualist (1948, previously available in cheap movie multi-packs as The Amazing Mr. X), and Arthur Hiller's killer bat movie Nightwing (1979). All titles are available for purchase (typically at around $19.94 a pop) at the Columbia Classics website.  A full list of horror-related titles appears after the jump.(read more...)

The following is our contribution to Frankensteinia's Boris Karloff Blogathon.

Starting with The Man They Could Not Hang, Columbia released four mad scientist films starring Boris Karloff in an eighteen-month period between 1939 and 1941. The other films in the series were The Man with Nine Lives, Before I Hang, and The Devil Commands. As a tribute, I created a short video to illustrate the general shared tone of the films and their similarities in structure, casting, theme, and direction.

(read more...)