The movie with more space-camp than Space Camp goes 4K.
1980 DVD, BD, 4K UHD, DIGITAL HD Featurettes, TV episodes, Galleries, Booklets, Collectibles
Only 14 hours before Earth ends?! Should give us enough time to make headway with this 40th-anniversary, five-disc Collector’s Edition (smaller packages are also available). Some of the ample extras are holdovers from earlier editions (like the separate Mike Hodges/Brian Blessed commentaries), while 2017 documentary Life After Flash was previously released in its own right (see TF284).
If you didn’t catch it then, now’s the time to find out what became of lead Sam J. Jones, whose life story is interwoven with great making-of yarns from key personnel including Brian May (Queen’s soundtrack gets its own disc).
The movie’s so ingrained in popular consciousness – thanks in part to Ted, and Blessed bellowing “Gordon’s alive!” wherever he goes - that it fascinates all the more to hear about the version that wasn’t. New featurette ‘Lost In Space’ explores original director Nic Roeg’s
vision, from Lion Men to a flagship resembling a “heaving, mucus-covered placenta”. Roeg’s writer Michael Allin (who retained a credit) makes no bones about his disappointment in the final film: “A camp, kitsch joke”. Maybe, but still a wildly funny one, and more visually succulent than ever in the director-approved 4K restoration, with its ripe reds, pinging pinks and glistering golds. The glint in Max von Sydow’s eye, meanwhile, remains just as wicked. Matthew Leyland