Vintage terror in new bottle this Halloween

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Halloween-minded viewers in the mood for first-rate old-school chills need look no further than effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen's 1953 classic The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, one of three vintage terror titles making their DVD debuts via Warner Home Video ($19.98 each). It's among our ...

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In "The Beast," an atomic bomb detonated in the Arctic Circle stirs an outsized dinosaur from centuries of slumber. While scientists Paul Christian, Paula Raymond and Cecil Kellaway try to convince authorities of the behemoth's existence, the Beast makes its lumbering way to its original home -- New York City.

Even in our computer-imagery age, Mr. Harryhausen's stop-motion work remains a marvel, as the dinosaur stomps through Wall Street (pausing to lunch on an unlucky policeman) and Coney Island's famed amusement park.

In addition to the pulse-racing film, which served as the inspiration for Japan's long-running "Godzilla" series begun the following year, the DVD includes two fun featurettes, a "making-of" segment and a filmed 2003 reunion between Mr. Harryhausen and his longtime friend, science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury, upon whose "Saturday Evening Post" short story "The Beast" was based.

The thrills continue with 1957's The Black Scorpion, where, after a slow start, terror fans are treated to a giant-scorpion invasion of Mexico. Eerie effects chores are handled by Mr. Harryhausen's mentor (and original "King Kong" designer) Willis O'Brien.

The disc also contains the short Stop-Motion Masters, animated dinosaur sequences from Irwin Allen's 1956 The Animal World, and previously unseen footage from the unrealized genre projects The Las Vegas Monster and Beetlemen.

Mr. Harryhausen returns with the 1969 Technicolor adventure The Valley of Gwangi, an exotic cowboys-and-dinosaurs tale featuring further exciting stop-motion monster mayhem, along with a Harryhausen-hosted, behind-the-scenes documentary and a giant-monsters trailer gallery.

The 83-year-old, longtime London resident says Hollywood's current CGI wizardry tends to draw too much attention to itself. "Today, they call special effects the stars, which they shouldn't be," he says during a recent interview. "We only used them to put on the screen things you couldn't possibly photograph normally."