Classics Get Colorized
Here I thought this whole colorization thing had more or less died out in the Eighties. Guess not. I’m with most people in thinking that if a movie was made in black & white, then it ought to be viewed in black & white. Besides, something about the colorization process has just never looked right to me. Don’t tell that to Legend Films; restoring and colorizing black & white movies is their bread & butter.
On October 21st Legend Films will be releasing several newly colorized old horror films onto DVD that most probably never thought would warrant the colorization treatment. Those films are 1964’s The Last Man on Earth, a loose adaptation of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend starring the legendary Vincent Price; Roger Corman’s 1961 monster-comedy Creature from the Haunted Sea, and given how utterly silly-looking the title monster appears I can only imagine it’ll look a thousand times sillier in color; and two features starring Bela Lugosi: The Devil Bat, an underrated 1940 chiller casting Lugosi as a mad scientist who breeds a big, bloodsucking bat that he uses as his instrument of vengeance, and Edward D. Wood Jr.’s notorious 1955 stinker Bride of the Monster, also starring Lugosi as another mad scientist up to no good, but this time with the assistance of mutant Tor Johnson and an atomic octopus.
And though they’re more science fiction than horror, the 1954 invisible alien invader flick Phantom from Space and 1961’s Phantom Planet, about an astronaut who lands on a mysterious planet populated by miniature humanoids that shrink him down to their size, also get the colorization treatment that day.
Now for those of you ready to scream blasphemy at the thought of colorization, Legend Films has got your back too. Each DVD will include a newly restored black & white copy of the film in addition to the new colorized version. Can’t complain too much about that or the $10-15 suggested retail price tag for each DVD. Not too shabby for both colorized and cleaned-up copies of these films.
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