Wild in the Streets/Gas-s-s-s

"MGM Home Entertainment have been doing a great job bringing the American International Pictures library to DVD with their Midnight Movies series, and this release is one of their more inspired double bills, pairing up two classic youth culture flicks on one two-sided disc. Wild in the Streets has been given a letterboxed transfer in the widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1, which has also been enhanced for anamorphic play on 16 x 9 monitors; the image is bold and colorful, and the widescreen image is far roomier than on the washed-out VHS edition. The audio has been mastered in Dolby Digital Mono and sounds fine, if not remarkable. The dialogue is in English, with optional subtitles in English, French, and Spanish. Gas-s-s-s has been mastered in the same ratio and format, and while the film has never been available on home video before, this transfer looks a lot cleaner and more colorful than the print that popped up on pay cable in the '90s. The audio is also in Dolby Digital Mono, and viewers can choose between the original English track and a dubbed version in Spanish, while optional English, French, and Spanish subtitles are on board. The only bonus item included for either title is each film's original trailer, which seems a bit of a lost opportunity - it would have been especially nice to have director Roger Corman talk about AIP's pre-release editing of Gas-s-s-s on a commentary track, which made a loosely plotted film seem all the more disjointed, and there has to be some great stories left to be told about the making of Wild in the Streets. But this DVD makes these movies available at a bargain price while looking better than they have since their original release, and any devotee of oddball cinema should put this disc on their shopping list."