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New (old) stuff…

I purchased 2 DVDs and 1 Blu-ray from Spain. 2 very good purchases. One meh.

 

Chelo Alonso and Mark Forest in SON OF SAMSON

The SON OF SAMSON (1960) Blu-ray is excellent and has the English audio. Grainier and slightly darker than the KINO LORBER US Blu-ray release.

Steve Reeves in THE GIANT OF MARATHON

THE GIANT OF MARATHON (1959) DVD is disappointing. It’s in widescreen but 4:3 format, which means those black bars above and below the dark and murky widescreen image. Spanish audio only.

The biggest surprise was the HERO OF BABYLON (1963) DVD, titled as EL SACRIFICIO DE LAS ESCLAVAS. The quality is excellent. Best copy of this movie anywhere and I have a lot of versions of this title. Italian and Spanish audios only.

Geneviève Grad (above) and Gordon Scott (below) in HERO OF BABYLON (1963)

New batch of German DVDs…

I know, DVDs are passé but there are so few PEPLUM movies on Blu-ray that DVDs are, for the most part, still a thing. And I got a good batch here. When I mean New I don’t mean they are new releases but new to my collection.

COLOSSUS OF ROME (aka Hero of Rome); THE TROJAN HORSE and THE CENTURION (aka Conqueror of Corinth). This is a DVD pack. Good news: all DVDs have English audio! Bad new: the image quality of CENTURION and TROJAN HORSE are not really good. I bought this pack for TROJAN HORSE and CENTURION. The image quality of COLOSSUS OF ROME is excellent but I already had this DVD.

Amazon.de

GOLIATH AND THE SINS OF BABYLON – German audio; HERCULES THE INVINCIBLE – German and Italian audios; TWO GLADIATORS – German audio.

The image quality of these three DVDs are excellent with TWO GLADIATORS being my favourite.

Richard Harrison and Giuliano Gemma in TWO GLADIATORS.

And last but not least:

THE LAST ROMAN and THE LAST ROMAN Part 2 DVD set. German audio only. It’s great to have both films together.

A new HERCULES UNCHAINED Blu-ray…

Someone told me about a new Blu-ray of HERCULES UNCHAINED available in Spain (it’s actually not new…it was released one year ago but never heard of it). And yes it is available. It’s not a hoax. I haven’t heard anything about it and my expectations are pretty low (I expect it to be the same as the Japanese BD) but I bought it anyways. I will have a review of it once I get my hands on it.

AMAZON Spain

Update on the HERCULES / HERCULES UNCHAINED Artus Films Blu-rays…

It seems that Artus Films got a hold of better prints than the first time they tried to get HERCULES (1958) and HERCULES UNCHAINED (1959) released a couple of years ago. These prints are from the UK. So a French distributor will release Blu-rays of these films in French and not English from prints from the British Film Institute?

Here’s a screenshot of the information at a movies forum.