NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: BFI Blu-ray (August 2024): BFI have transferred Daniel Haller's Die, Monster, Die! to Blu-ray. We compared the 2005 MGM DVD of to the 2014 (now OOP) Shout! Factory Blu-ray HERE, and below. The 2024 BFI transfer, on a dual-layered disc with a higher bitrate is the better image. Colors are more balanced, detail ticks up, It simply looks superior overall. I could visibly see the improvement on my system but we expect as much being a decade since the last 1080P. There is some softness in the panning shots and distortion in the side edges of the anamorphic ratio which is probably inherent. Still, a resounding improvement especially over the lackluster SD treatment and the bare-bones Shout! Factory HD presentation.

NOTE: We have added 58 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, BFI use a linear PCM mono track (24-bit) in the original English language. Die, Monster, Die! has a few aggressive moments that come through with modest depth and a score by Hammer-regular Don Banks (Captain Clegg, Rasputin the Mad Monk, The Evil of Frankenstein, The Reptile, The Mummy's Shroud, The Brigand of Kandahar, Nightmare, Torture Garden) sounding clean with consistent dialogue in the uncompressed transfer. BFI offer optional English (SDH) subtitles on their Region 'B' Blu-ray.

The BFI Blu-ray is stacked offering many extras including a new commentary by Vic Pratt and William Fowler (authors of The Bodies Beneath The Flipside of British Film & Television.) They discuss the interesting title sequence (optical and color filters), AIP wanting a Hammer-style, the film as a pivotal old-style and new horror image, H.P. Lovecraft, the cast 'King' Karloff, Nick Adams, Freda Jackson, Suzan Farmer... American film and television director, production designer, Daniel Haller (The Dunwich Horror, designing sets for Corman's House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum), the film's overall look with many tangential references. It's excellent. A Karloff Konversation spends shy of 10-minutes with Stephen Jacobs (Boris Karloff: More Than a Monster) and Vic Pratt. 'Scenes From ‘Let Me Die a Monster’ is new and runs 1/4 hour and offers sequences from Ken Hollings and David McGillivray’s unmade biopic of Die, Monster, Die! co-star Nick Adams (The Killers , A Strange Adventure, Invasion of Astro-Monster,) performed in a read-through staged and shot exclusively for this release. Nick Adams and Die, Monster, Die! is also new and spends 8-minutes with Ken Hollings and David McGillivray recalling the career of Nick Adams and how they became fascinated with his film work. There is also a new dozen-minute interview with Tony Tweedale, the publicist for Die, Monster, Die! The Peaches runs a 1/4 hour from 1964 and is a family greenhouse that yields strange fruit in this stylish Swinging Sixties short film. Lastly are an image gallery - an extensive array of promotional stills from Die, Monster, Die! - and a theatrical trailer with optional commentary plus the package has a fully illustrated booklet with new writing on the film by Stephen Jacobs (author of The Karloff Compendium), an essay on H.P Lovecraft by Xavier Aldana Reyes (Gothic Cinema) and writing about Let Me Die a Monster by Ken Hollings (Inferno: The Trash Project: 1) and David McGillivray (Doing Rude Things: The History of the British Sex Film) and full film credits.

Daniel Haller's Die, Monster, Die! played on a double bill with Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires. It vacillates between Corman-esque (American International Pictures) and a Hammer offering a delightfully Gothic mansion, uncooperative locals, H.P. Lovecraft  excess, wheelchair-bound Karloff at his most mysterious and gruffly ominous, and with Nick Adams offering lines like "Genetic mutations... probably caused by radiation". No doubt. I loved it after seeing it many years hence. The BFI Blu-ray is top shelf - new, expert, commentary, 1.5 hours of video pieces and booklet for this superior, creepy, old chiller. A keeper for moi.

Gary Tooze