TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection: Sci-Fi Adventures (Them! / The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms / World Without End / Satellite in the Sky)

I bought this for my brother because he always complained about watching these movies on tv. Well here they are bro all 4 in one. Nice collection for a great price. You get "Them" with James Whitmore and James Arness a great monster film that I am surprised that they haven't remade yet and don't say It's Empire of the Ants because no way this is a classic and so is Ray harryhausen's THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMs a great monster movie with special effects from the master of stop motion. Story is also written by one of his best friends Ray Bradbury,it was a short story that had to be lengthened to make a movie out of it. DVD also contains small British Science fiction movie Satellite In The Sky about a manned spaceship sent up to orbit earth but has a neutron bomb attached to it and if it goes off can send radiation all over the earth and last movie on the 4 film dvd is World Without End a group of space explorers accidently go ahead in time a couple thousand years and fine the earth is a little different now. Hey get this set like I did for my brother,great price and I got it from Amazon.com What A surprise.

TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection : Sci-Fi Adventures 4 Classic 1950's Sci-Fi films for $18.99, prior to this collection's release you would have had to pay a lot more in purchasing these movies separately. Here are the movies listed , in order by my favorite to least liked. THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953): Another creature being awakened by atomic bomb testing, this time it's a gigantic dinosaur "Rhedosaurus" Excellent stop-motion effects by the master "Ray Harryhausen". Of course of all places the creature heads to , it has to be New York City. Here we get to see a lot of massive destruction + a lot of stock footage of military personnel and aircraft in attack mode. Features the classic Coney Island Roller Coaster / Dinosaur scene that was years ahead of its time. Again another black and white classic that has been transferred to DVD that is exceptional in clarity. THEM (1954) One of the more classic "BIG BUG" movies of all time. Again mankind has upset mother nature with atomic radiation. Great production values and great sets, shot in glorious black and white. One of the most "chilling" sounds is hearing the strange high-pitched chatter coming from "THEM". Giant-Sized atomic bred ants, who attack mostly in their search for sugar. Stars James Arness (Matt Dillon of Gunsmoke fame) Great transfer to DVD. I can still remember seeing this movie for the 1st time when I was young. WORLD WITHOUT END (1956) Never have seen this film before, it was quite a surprise. 4 astronauts are returning from earth's 1st mission to Mars, when they enter a mysterious time warp and are thrown into a nuclear ravaged earth some 552 years into the future.( Planet of the Apes ? ) One of the better sci-fi space films that I have seen from this period. High production values, good looking sets. The special effects are the general fare for this era, except for the incredibly hokey looking giant spiders. Great story line with some beautiful actresses. Filmed in Cinemascope color. SATELLITE IN THE SKY (1956) Also Filmed in Cinemascope color, and looks very sharp on DVD. Stars a very young and beautiful Lois Maxwell ( Miss Moneypenny from the James Bond films) 1st rocket of its kind, blasts into outerspace,but secretly deploys a highly experimental t-bomb (strongest atomic bomb ever created). The bomb is to be exploded in the safety of outer space, but of course the crew runs into unexpected problems. Excellent special effects , especially exploiting the massive scale of the ship. Not too special elsewhere ( smoke coming from the ship looked like someone blowing cigarette smoke, a lot of scenes looked like minatures) You can't go wrong purchasing this nice collection. Excellent value for the money.

I grew up on these old sci-fi monster movies. I remember waiting on Saturday nights (with a big bowl of popcorn on my lap) for my local "Ghost Host" to introduce the weekly radiated monster to begin destroying mid-western or desert towns. Turner Classic Movies has packaged together four titles from those drive-in days of the late 1950's early 1960's in one cool little package. If you are a fan of these sci-fi B-movies, you should definately grab this set: "Them" (1954)- A genuine classic starring Marshall Dillon (James Arness) himself as "something" begins attacking a small desert town in New Mexico. Odd footprints are found around each scene of destruction. A pot-bellied scientist and his daughter are brought in to help solve the mystery (gotta love the old wise scientists/professors in these films). Also starring James Whitmore as the state trooper who stumbles onto the first attack by "Them!". Outstanding special effects, and a fun story make this a movie you will re-visit often. "Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" (1953) - Almost a decade before "Godzilla" stormed ashore in Tokyo, "Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" unleashes a huge lizard (actually a dinosaur called Rhedosaurus) on New York City. After being thawed from it's deep sleep in the Arctic Circle by a nuclear bomb test, the creature begins it's reign of destruction down the cost of Canada and onto New York City where it decides to visit Coney Island. The real draw here is the stop motion creature F/X by Ray Harryhausen which still look amazing today. "World Without End" (1956) - This is a nifty, but kind of depressing time travel tale. Returning from a trip to Mars, four astronauts find themselves flung a couple centuries into Earth's future. They find Earth is now a nuclear wasteland and that it's inhabitents now live underground. The rulers of this new civilization don't want the astronauts to interfere with their world and look to get rid of them. A bit talky, and somewhat slow, but still a decent little flick. "Satellite in the Sky" (1956) - This one is kind of a dud. Maybe toss it on as background noise, or on a sleepy rainy afternoon where you can doze off and on while it spools out. Britain wants to test out a new bomb in space, and launch a rocket with a full crew to conduct the test. They activate the bomb, but the ship can't get away. The crew has must try to defuse the bomb before it explodes. Lots of talk and cheezy 1950's space scenes, but pretty boring overall, and the reason this set doesn't get 5 stars. Still with the one dud, this set is well worth picking up for fans of the genre.

Product arrived safely and securely and was in superb condition. The prints on the dvd were excellent. What a hoot of a collection. Takes you back. A great and trustworthy Company to deal with and with a dvd that takes you back to your childhood. What else do you want?

C'est l'atome qui caractérise les 4 films de ce DVD. THEM!: Dans le désert du Nouveau-Mexique, des gens affrontent des fourmis géantes qui ont grandi à cause de l'explosion de la bombe atomique d'Alamagordo neuf ans auparavant. THE BEAST FROM 20 000 FATHOMS: Un dinosaure vieux de 100 millions d'années est réveillé par une explosion atomique dans l'Arctique. À remarquer dans ce film les effets spéciaux de Ray Harryhausen. WORLD WITHOUT END: Des astronautes sont projetés dans l'avenir de la Terre où la race humaine a été divisée en deux suite à une guerre atomique: des mutants voraces et sanguinaires et de baux humains qui se laissent littéralement vivre sans rien entreprendre. À remarquer la ressemblance du scénario avec ''The Time Machine de George Pal en 1960. SATELLITE IN THE SKY: La première fusée spatiale contenant les premiers êtres humains allant dans l'espace doit transporter une bombe atomique dans l'espace et l'y faire exploser. Les ennuis ne manqueront pas de s'accumuler pour eux. Bref, ces films, malgré qu'ils aient vieilli, se laissent très bien regarder.

This collection of old movies was a fantastic find! The used condition of the DVD was exactly as promised. A positive experience from the seller and Amazon.

my friend bought this, he highly recommends it,

Well now, I bought this because of one these films -World Without End (1956) - which I'd seen as a kid in the 50's and have never seen since, though I have brief memories of it and just wanted to see it again. Having Them (1954) and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953) in one set was an added bonus. Satellite In The Sky (1956), however was completely new to me and sounded like creaky low-budget crap. Beast was stop-motion animation giant Ray Harryhausen's first full length movie and for a small studio. Made for a couple of hundred thousand dollars, the producer accepted Warner Bros offer of twice the budget for all the rights and went on to tear his hair out when it proceeded to make millions at the box office. Harryhausen was still learning his craft and had to do a lot on a small budget so what we get is brief glimpses of the monster throughout the movie until it attacks New York in the last 15 minutes. Of course it's creaky by today's standards though that is hardly a fair criticism as it couldn't be anything else. What it does have is an honoured place in the history of Science Fiction and monster movies. The opening sequences of Them are quite eerie with its desert scenes, moaning of the wind, and obscuring wind-blown sand. There's the mute, blank-faced, doll-clutching little girl wandering in from the desert and the contorted body of the elderly shop-keeping in the basement remains of his store. All this builds well to the first shot of a giant ant looming above our heroine. The pace keeps up well until the ants nest is destroyed and we get a long period while the two escaped queens are searched for before the final climax in the Los Angeles storm drains which doesn't match up to the first part of the film. Unlike the rhedosaurus of Beast, the ants are (often large) animated models which inevitably means they tend to be rather slow moving and, this being the 50's, never bite anyone in half with their large powerful pincers. According to the jacket there are supposed to be extras about making the movie but I couldn't find any. A shame as I was interested in how the ants were done. Proceed with caution. Spoilers for World without End. As I said, I remember actually going to the cinema to watch this one when I was a kid and remember the following things about it: the spaceship going through a timewarp; landing in the snow; attack of a giant caterpillar in a tunnel; attacked by big hairy men; rescued by underground dwelling civilised humans; a happy end of hairy people and undergrounders getting together to live in peace on the surface. Actually, as it turns out, that's just about pretty much the entire movie. Not bad for something I haven't seen in around 55 years or more, so it obviously made an impression. Now, the differences. It wasn't a caterpillar it was a very fake (rubbery) giant spider thrown at a member of the cast from offscreen by the movie's crew. The hairy men were mutants with only one eye and other facial disfigurements. Our heroes spent a lot of time talking with the undergrounders (a bunch of wimps) and falling for their feisty women. Then they go outside for a fight with the cyclopses, kill their leader and let the nicer non-cyclopses (the majority) learn to become civilised. So basically I remembered the good bits. Still good though. I wasn't going to watch Satellite In The Sky at all until this afternoon, a wet and windy Sunday, when I thought I'd give it a go and was glad I did. Far from the low budget b/w American cheapie I was expecting, I got a widescreen in colour with a decent budget and decent actors British film. Just look at the main cast which is highly recognisable for persons of a certain age: leading man Keiron Moore, vivacious Lois Maxwell (before her Miss Moneypenny days), Brian Forbes (before he started directing), Jimmy Hanley, Donald Wolfit, and several others, like Bernard Breslaw, in smaller roles who I recognised from tv appearances. It's a very English film of the period which is quite fun for those fond of nostalgia. Needless to say, everyone (as in all the others except World without End) smokes like chimneys. The plot is simple, the title misleading. It's the first journey into space. The big secret is that it only got the funding so that a super-duper dangerous bomb could be tested in space without endangering the earth. Needless to say things go wrong and they can't get the bomb away from the spaceship (which has become magnetised to it) because the bomb's propulsion system is faulty. And it's not just the engineering that's a pile of crap. The security is worse as Lois Maxwell, whose cranky anti-space flight journalist, sneaks on board and this is at a supposedly secure installation. But it's all good stiff upper lip British entertainment. Given that, in my time, I considered myself somewhat of an expert on science fiction and science fiction movies, I'm just puzzled as to how I didn't know that this was a British sf film, especially when one of the three scriptwriters was, now long forgotten, British SF writer J T McIntosh. Highly recommended collection of vintage SF and monster movies.