#Jack the giant killer dvd release movie#
Burned into the memories of those who saw the movie as kids are the sequences where Jack battles the monstrous Cormoran at the flour mill and the attack by eerie, screaming optically-enhanced witches on Jack's ship as it sails to France - still a dementedly creepy scene all these years later. Jack the Giant Killer, even fifty years on, is terrific fun, a proper good old-fashioned romantic fantasy where Jack and Elaine fall in love instantly as the evil Pendragon (who may remind some newcomers of Anthony Ainley's 1980s portrayal of The Master in Doctor Who) uses Technicolor wizardry and magic to keep them apart. But Pendragon has other tricks up his sleeve and before long Elaine is in his clutches and Jack must set off to rescue her with only a small boy, a Viking and an imp in a bottle to help him. King Mark gratefully makes Jack the Princess's protector and decides that, for her own safety, she should be sent to France to live in a convent.
Jack the Giant Killer is a tale of swash-buckling derring-do and fanciful beasts in a mythical historical mash-up where farmer Jack (Matthews) rescues Princess Elaine (Meredith) from the clutches of the fearsome giant Cormoron who has been sent by the malevolent exiled sorcerer Pendragon (Thatcher) who plots to overthrow King Mark (Dayton Lummis) and become King of. Jack, released in 1962 and only ever a moderate Box office hit (and not even released in the UK until 1967 when it was fairly heavily cut), is arguably the best and undoubtedly the most colourful and richly-imaginative of this particular sub-genre of movies. Based on the old Cornish folklore legends of a plucky young farm boy who slays giants and monsters, Jack The Giant Killer is usually overlooked amongst more familiar late 1950s /early 1960s rip-roaring fantasy fare such as The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts with their ground-breaking and hugely-memorable Ray Harryhausen stop-motion monster effects. They just don’t make ‘em like this anymore.
DVD Review: Jack the Giant Killer - 50 th Anniversary Edition / Cert: PG / Director: Nathan Juran / Screenplay: Orville H Hampton, Nathan Juran / Starring: Kerwin Matthews, Judi Meredith, Torin Thatcher, Don Beddoe / Release Date: July 2nd