BY JOHN LEMAY
As
of this summer, all of Amicus Production’s Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations are
now on Blu-ray from Kino-Lorber: The Land
That Time Forgot (1974); At the
Earth’s Core (1976) and The People That Time Forgot (1977). All
three have excellent transfers and each release features special features to
boot. Overall all three films’ Blu-ray releases are some of the more
extravagant ones from the company. The
Land That Time Forgot and At the
Earth’s Core even come with reversible covers with different poster art on
each side (though The People That Time
Forgot curiously does not).
The
disc for At the Earth’s Core features
an on camera interview with the director of all three films, Kevin Connor, who
discusses these films along with his other genre output. It also features a
great on camera interview with Caroline Munro, who played Dia in the film,
which even covers her role in The Spy Who
Loved Me (1977). The film’s vintage making-of feature, A Special Art: Monsters, is also included along with the original trailer
and an audio commentary by Connor. The
Land That Time Forgot has the vintage Master
of Adventure making-of featurette of the film, along with the release
trailer and another commentary by Connor, this time moderated by Brian
Trenchard-Smith, director of such films as Leprechaun
3 (1995). The People That Time Forgot
features the film’s trailer along with another Connor/Smith commentary. Naturally,
Connor can’t pack every minute of the commentaries with juicy behind-the-scenes
anecdotes as the movies were made forty years ago, but there are still
interesting nuggets of info to be found that make them worth listening to. One
of the more interesting bits of trivia that Connor drops is that the reason they
never made film adaptations of Out of
Time’s Abyss (the third book in Burroughs Land That Time Forgot trilogy), Pellucidar
(the sequel to At the Earth’s Core)
and the John Carter of Mars series was that the Burroughs Estate began upping
their licensing fees after The People
That Time Forgot. So instead the production team decided to concoct an
original adventure story for their next picture, the result being Warlords of Atlantis (1978). The most
informative pieces on People’s disc are
actually the interviews conducted with female stars Dana Gillespie and Sarah
Douglas. Among the interesting information related is the fact that Gillespie also
auditioned for the role of Ursa for Superman
II, the role her co-star Douglas got. Although relatively short (a little
less than 20 minutes each) they are nearly as informative as the commentary
track in some respects.
So
in summary, if you already own the films on DVD, the improved picture and
features make the Blu-rays worth the update. And, for more information on the
films’ histories, see Paul Thomson’s article Monsters, Inc. in Cinema Retro #27.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER "THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT" FROM AMAZON
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John LeMay is the author of The Big Book of Japanese Giant Monster Movies Vol. 1: 1954-1980. (Click here to order from Amazon)
