The Cosmic Man [DVD] [1959]

00014381870220

This DVD is probably the most respectful treatment that Herbert Greene's The Cosmic Man has ever or will ever receive. An ultra-low budget rip-off of Robert Wise's The Day The Earth Stood Still, the movie has just a couple of scenes that are memorable in their own right, principally those sequences in which the title character (John Carradine), in a nearly transparent, wraith-like form, wanders around the scene of the action. The source print for this disc was from the UK, as revealed by the British Board of Censors approval certificate in the opening -- it is entirely possible (and even probable) that no surviving American print looks as good, the movie having bounced from one low-budget distributor to another over the years without much concern about preservation. The DVD offers a reasonably crisp, sharp focus and decent audio transfer. It's all broken into nine chapters, which is more than adequate for this 73-minute movie -- the disc opens automatically onto the menu, which is built on the movie's main-title sequence (one of the better parts of the film); the only bonus is the trailer, which assembles excerpts from most of the eerier scenes from the movie.