SciFi Movie Marathon (America 3000, Arena, Eliminators & The Time Guardians)

This is an overall decent collection of four mid 1980's sci-fi flicks that I thoroughly enjoyed watching back then. I eagerly waited for this release when first heard about it. Shout! Factory are noted for the quality of their releases, so I'm going to comment on some DVD attributes I look for that are important to me, and I'm sure, others out there.

Be aware that only one, The Time Guardian, is anamorphic widescreen at 2.35:1. The others are Full Frame (4:3). For those with quality home theater audio systems for surround sound take note, none of the movies are encoded for Dolby Digital 5.1, though all were originally encoded with stereo sound tracks. Arena, America 3000, and The Time Guardian have true stereo Dolby Digital 2.0 tracks. They sound decent and enveloping with the Dolby Pro Logic II settings on an AV receiver.

Audio quality is just as important to me as the video experience. The big disappointment for me was the mono soundtrack on the Eliminators, the flick I most eagerly waited for out of the four . The mono soundtrack was so dull and lifeless, despite the action scenes, I stopped watching this about half way through. Believe it or not (and some readers may scoff at this), I dug out my old VHS copy of Eliminators with the VHS HI-FI Dolby Surround audio tracks and watched that instead with 1080p up scaling to compare to the DVD. I enjoyed and preferred my old VHS copy more than I did the brand new DVD copy. The DVD version had the edge on video quality, but the analog audio HI-FI Stereo quality of the VHS version totally blew away the DVD mono version in an A & B audio comparison. Normally, DVD releases will blow away their VHS counterpart in terms of overall quality but I had to note this exception in this review, at least my opinion. The fact the video was Full Frame also deepened my disappointment, especially after waiting 13 years for a DVD release of this film ever since DVDs started becoming popular back in 1999.

Shout! Factory is to be commended for releasing these flicks, among others and making them available. I also believe Shout! Factory can only release these films on DVD based on source material given to them, and hence the quality (or lack of) when licensed from the original studios. With the exception of the Eliminators, I thoroughly enjoyed viewing this collection. With the cheap price point of owning plus the quality release of The Time Guardian, I give this 4 stars.