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

Horror Islands is reviewed on Eureka's Blu-ray boxset HERE

Man Made Monster from Eureka's 'Three Monster Tales of Sci-Fi Terror' is compared to this Blu-ray HERE

ADDITION: Shout! Factory Blu-ray (December 2019): Shout! Factory have transferred four more Universal vintage horror films to Blu-ray in their Volume 3 package; Tower of London (1939), The Black Cat (1941), Horror Island (1941) and Man Made Monster (1941).

Volume One Blu-ray (Reviewed HERE) had The Black Cat (1934), The Raven (1935), The Invisible Ray (1936) and Black Friday (1940) while Volume Two Blu-ray (Reviewed HERE) offered Murders in the Zoo (1933), The Mad Doctor of Market Street (1942), The Strange Case of Doctor Rx (1942) and The Mad Ghoul (1943).

The oldest film in Volume 3, The Tower of London, is described as being from a "New 2K Scan Of A Fine Grain Print" but I would say that it looked the weakest with some contrast inconsistencies. But overall the image quality in 1080P for all four films is acceptable. They are housed on their own separate Blu-ray discs each with max'ed out bitrates for the relatively shorter films (totaling only 4 3/4 hours worth of features.) Frankly, I am not crazy about the flat-line bitrate graphs which can be an indication of digitization, but here the HD presentations have well-layered contrast, are rich with texture and export relatively clean (see frame-specific damage examples at the bottom.)  I expect this is solely due to the excellent condition of the sources with Tower of London being the, more modest, outlier and Man Made Monster looking the best of the four.

On their Blu-rays, Shout! Factory use a DTS-HD Master 2.0 channel (24-bit) audio transfer tracks. Scores are by the likes of Frank Skinner (The Appaloosa, Madame X, Magnificent Obsession, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, All That Heaven Allows, Thunder Bay), on Tower of London, teaming with Hans J. Salter (Man in the Shadow, Man Without a Star, The Killer that Stalked New York, The Strange Door, Cover Up, Man Without a Star, Scarlet Street, The Land Unknown, The War Lord, The Mole People, The Strange Case of Doctor Rx) on 1941's The Black Cat. Salter takes full reins on Man Made Monster. The audio transfers are, likewise, adept exporting flat sound but carrying modest depth. Three of the films have humor infused and the score  support that with lighter tones as well as ominous depth is more suspenseful sequences. Shout! Factory offer optional English subtitles on their Region 'A' Blu-ray.

Shout! Factory Blu-rays include a new commentary for each film with Steve Haberman (author of Silent Screams: The History of the Silent Horror Film) on Tower of London, Tom Weaver tag-teaming with Constantine Nasr on Man Made Monster, Gary D. Rhodes (author of The Birth of the American Horror Film) on 1941's The Black Cat and Ted Newsom on Horror Island. I enjoyed all four but Nasr and fun Weaver (who asks the quiz of what was the only film that Lon Chaney Jr. was credited as such - you guessed it - and an extensive poll on his best films) the most but appreciated the historical references that Haberman gave on Tower of London includes bones and DNA! There are also sills galleries, and trailers as well as a liner notes booklet. 

The dated-ness of these films is part of their appeal - a much more innocent time period of horror films. I wouldn't say that these four are the best of the 12 found in the first three Universal Horror Collection Blu-rays that we have reviewed so far, but they still have immense appeal to fans. Shout! could have fit two films per dual-layered Blu-ray but the commentaries are an excellent addition and encourage a purchase.  

Gary Tooze