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Festival of Fright 3
Synergy Entertainment // Unrated // September 25, 2008
List Price: $12.99 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
The Trailers:
The Monster Club and Synery Entertainment have teamed up once again for Festival of Fright 3, another fun collection of horror, science fiction, and mystery films. Like the first two volumes (read my reviews: Festival of Fright 1, Festival of Fright 2) this hour-long disc presents 38 trailers from (mostly) B-movies that are often more fun to watch than the features themselves. The good news about this volume is that the image is not marred by a watermark like the second volume.
Highlights from this volume include some trailers to really great movies. While volume two had a slew of Hammer horror film trailers, this one digs back a bit further and features trailers to many of the classic Universal horror films of the 30's and 40's. It's great to have trailers for Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein Meets Wolfman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and many others together in one place. The only complaint I have is that they're spread across the disc, and not necessarily in chronological order. It's a small complaint though.
Other notable pieces on this disc include the trailer to the film Bela Lugosi did right after Dracula, White Zombie, the first Zombie film ever made, and a couple of trailers to Val Lewton films including I Walked with a Zombie and Cat People. There are some promotional films to A-grade features too such as King Kong, Mighty Joe Young, and Phantom of the Opera.
I have to admit that I've enjoyed this collection the most out of the three that have been released. Being a fan of Universal horror films since I was very young and would watch them on the Saturday Afternoon Creature Feature show, I had a lot of fun reliving the films in nice one to two minute bursts. Well worth the price of admission.
The trailers included in this collection are:
Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
Abbott and Costello Meet The Killer
Black Friday
Bride of Frankenstein
Dracula
Dracula's Daughter
Frankenstein
Frankenstein Meets Wolfman
The Ghost of Frankenstein
Hangover Square
House of Dracula
House of Frankenstein
I Walked with a Zombie
King Kong
Arsenic and Old Lace
Mighty Joe Young
Phantom of the Opera
Scared to Death
Son of Dracula
Son of Frankenstein
The Beast with Five Fingers
The Body Snatcher
The Climax
Curse of the Cat People
Invisible Ray
The Leopard Man
The Mummy
The Wolf Man
The Chanterville Ghost
Cat People
Ghosts on the Loose
Hold that Ghost
The Return of Dr. X
Man of a Thousand Faces
Mark of the Vampire
White Zombie
Island of Lost Souls
The DVD:
Unlike the other two entries in this series, Festival of Fright 3 comes on a DVD-R.
Audio:
The two channel mono soundtrack is fine. There's some background noise present in some of the trailers but the dialog is usually clear and easy to understand. Nothing to write home about, but not bad either.
Video:
These trailers are presented with a 1.33: 1 aspect ratio. That's the original ratio for a lion's share of the trailers, though a few are pan and scan jobs while others preserve the OAR but are non-anamorphic and letterboxed. Everything presented on this disc is in the public domain and none of it has been restored. The quality varies but is generally acceptable. Most, if not all, of these suffer from spots and scratches, sometimes excessively. The images are generally soft, the contrast is sometimes poor, the colors are usually faded, and the level of detail isn't spectacular. Some heavy handed edge enhancement is present in some scenes too. Even with that, these are all watchable and some of them look quite nice. While this disc won't win any awards the trailers are all watchable and the vast majority is much better than that.
Extras:
Like the first volume, this one also has an optional "scary music" audio track. Selecting this option plays somewhat eerie synthesizer music over the trailers instead of the original audio. That would make it nice to play it this way during a Halloween party.
This volume also features an interview with Bela Lugosi that was conducted in 1955 the day before he left a state-run sanitarium. It's one of the last interviews he conducted, and unfortunately the reporter does a pretty mediocre job, trying to tie everything back to Dracula and talking mostly about his drug addiction. Even so, it's a nice bonus item.
Final Thoughts:
This third collection gets a strong Recommendation. I'll be the first to admit that some of the Universal monster movies drag in parts (especially the later ones) but you don't have time to get board while watching a trailer. They put most of the best parts all together in a two-minute mini-movie. What could be better than that?
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