ADDITION: Arrow Video - Region 'B' - Blu-ray (September 2013): Image and Audio take the HD leap and both are superior to the SD rendering. I suspect it was the same Master used but the higher, 1080P, resolution advances the a/v in the expected areas - detail, contrast and colors tighten. This is a dual-layered transfer with a solid bitrate. There is no noise or artefacts and grain is marginally more prevalent. The Robert Prince score benefits from the linear PCM track in 2.0 channel and there are optional English subtitles. 

Gary Tooze

On the Extras: The commentary with director Jeff Lieberman has been carried over from the 2003 MGM US DVD release. He mentions that a lot of people - including Mystery Science Theater 3000 - failed to realize that SQUIRM was already a spoof ("you can't goof on something that's already a goof"). He points out bits that were snipped from the film for a PG rating (like Patricia Pearcy's nudity) and Rick Baker's effects (which I recall being grisly enough when I first saw the film on television before MGM started restoring and remastering their AIP titles). He also discusses R.A. Dow's "Method" approach to his part, as well as Jean Sullivan's Tennessee Williams-esque reading that he was too inexperienced as a director to tone down at the time. He also reveals that Martin Sheen was originally cast in the lead, that Sylvester Stallone wanted to play the role of Roger (all the while waiting to hear about ROCKY getting greenlighted), and turning down Kim Basinger for Patricia Pearcy's role since he though she looked to glamorous too be "a girl who lived next to a worm farm" (he now regrets those casting decisions). He also frankly discusses all those little heavy-handed "jerk-off" artistic touches which seem charming by overblown contemporary standards.

Jeff Lieberman and actor Don Scardino appear in a 2012 Q&A at a New York Film Archives 35mm screening of the film. They and the audience are in good humor about the film's charms. Lieberman discusses the original plans to set it in the Northeast a la H.P. Lovecraft, the influence of THE BIRDS, and the extras who were all extras. There's some overlap with the commentary, but the venue is different (i.e. this extra wasn't produced for the Blu-ray release to supplement the existing extras), it has input from Scardino (who thought the film was a comedy while he was making it), and there is some interaction with the audience that prompts some additional discussions (the film's sound designer worked with Brian De Palma, and the sound of the worm's screaming came from the sounds he recorded for CARRIE). Of Martin Sheen's being originally cast in Scardino's role, Scardino reveals that Sheen mentioned it to him years later when the actor-turned-TV director was directing an episode of NBC's THE WEST WING). Producer Edgar Lansbury is also revealed to be in the audience.

Critic Kim Newman discusses Lieberman and the film, which he believes was more successful in the UK because the film - and it's UK novelization - came at a time when killer insect and rodent books (like James Herbert's RATS and Shaun Hutson's SLUGS) were popular. He also checks off how the film met the exploitation genre's (particularly Roger Corman's) requirements: violence every five minutes, female nudity, a smidgeon of social significance (eco-horror here). Newman also suggests that Lieberman was more conservative than his contemporaries George Romero and John Carpenter (if only to be a contrarian).

The Arrow set also includes a booklet with a new essay on the film - that places the film not so much in the context of "nature attacks" films but in the company of films about "small towns eating themselves into non-existence" like KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS and ARACHNOPHOBIA - and a text interview with Lieberman that appears to have been conducted a few years ago since it mentions an upcoming release of JUST BEFORE DAWN by Media Blasters (which occurred in 2005, and that film is now actually forthcoming on Blu-ray from Code Red) and Sage Stallone without acknowledging his recent death. The booklet also includes poster art and archival stills.

 - Eric Cotenas