I use media player classic for ll my video-related material but for what it does not open - yea, vlc works.
i do exactly the same thing 
Does anyone know how the 2008 German release[/url] of the “Last Days of Pompeii” compares with the 2007 [url=http://www.dvdfr.com/dvd/f32932-derniers-jours-de-pompei.html]French re-release[url]DVD-Forum.at - Das Entertainment Magazin?
Yesterday i watched the peplum GOLIATH AGAINST THE GIANTS in which Fernando Sancho has a small early part, didn´t recognise him at first without his hat and moustaches…!
Does anyone know some noteworthy peplum films that are worth watching?
Probably all which were directed by Vittorio Cottafavi.
I liked Corbucci’s Duel of the Titans
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My Son The Hero or whatever title you find it under with Giuliano Gemmas has some style. As does Hercules In The Haunted World.
The first Hercules with Steve Reeves is probably worth a watch too.
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I thought the Troy movie and its sequel (both with Steve Reeves) were both pretty good. Also Leone’s Colossus of Rhodes and the Steve Reeves pompeii movie and Son of Spartacus with Reeves again and getting his revenge against Crassus (depicted as a Blofeld-like villain with a piranha infested pond to dispose of victims). Benito Stefanelli is in most of these films.
I’d love to see the likes of Arrow or Indicator do a box of swashbucklers and/or pirate movies. Totally forgotten genres in comparison to westerns. They are always hard to see in good quality in English.
At the moment Prime has a quality print of Tte Magnificent Adventurer "about” Cellini and staring Brett Halsey. It’s only so so but moves along fast and tries to be an epic despite a very low budget.
Totally agree on that.
It’s a crying shame that the unofficial sequel to Disney’s “Treasure Island”, “Return to Treasure Island” (also with Robert Newton, like the original) is only to be found in horrific quality online. Newton was the man who invented the movie pirate (who’s been copied by every actor playing a pirate ever since), and “Return to Treasure Island” was the first big Hollywood film shot in Australia.
They also made a TV series with Newton playing his movie character, Long John Silver. Watching Newton play a pirate is a true pleasure, you can tell he’s having the time of his life playing these roles. These films are also great as family entertainment, and can instil a love of old movies in children (as these films are exciting but not too violent for kids to watch).
That Treasure Island sequel was on TV many times when I was a wee nipper. Although all I can remember is a blind Israel Hands, played by Rod Taylor, stalking Jim Hawkins around a ship and then falling to his death. It was titled Long John Silver in the UK.
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It’s really strange that it has been almost completely lost. You can find a DVD print at the very best, I think this is because the producer went bankrupt during filming, so I think the film & TV show have become “ophan films” with murky copyright situations. Would love to see one of the boutique labels track down a master copy and re-release it in 4K.
I know the film was very popular in the UK, and it’s said to be an absolute cult film in Australia (they even had the filming locations renamed in the film’s honour as it was such an important film for the country).
And Robert Newton’s home town in Devonshire actually has a statue of him in the town square.
I could watch Robert Newton playing pirates all day long, if it wasn’t for the bad quality of the copies circulating online nowadays (SD would be a massive upgrade, most of them are like 300x200 or something like that - unwatchable on modern screens). I guess they’re massively compressed copies of VHS tapes, run through ancient encoding systems that further degraded the quality.
Everyone I know who’s seen it absolutely adored the film. The characters, the costumes, the writing, the acting, the story - everything’s brilliant.
You can find it on YouTube, but the quality is appallingly poor (both the sound and the image quality). I watched it anyway because the film was just so good.