Camp Out With These Campy Classics

If you like a little cheese with your cinema, then Warner Home Video has the perfect four-course serving for you with Tuesday's release of "Cult Camp Classics," four themed sets of B-movies guaranteed to bring a touch of the drive-in to your home theater.

Each set features three remastered movies. The themes are "Terrorized Travelers," "Historical Epics," "Sci-Fi Thrillers" and "Women in Peril." Each volume is priced at $29.98, or you can pick and choose individual movies at $14.97 each.

The sets are loaded with fodder for trivia buffs and over-the-top scenes for fans of the so-bad-they're-good oeuvre.

The "Terrorized Travelers" set contains 1957's "Zero Hour!" based on an Arthur Hailey story; the film later inspired the wacky spoof "Airplane!" Dana Andrews plays a passenger who must overcome the trauma of his wartime experiences to fly a passenger plane after the pilot (played by pro football great Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch!) and co-pilot are stricken with food poisoning. Also in the set are 1966's "Hot Rods to Hell," with Andrews and Jeanne Crain as a couple whose family road trip is terrorized by a pack of kids who "have nowhere to go, and they want to get there at 150 miles an hour," and 1972's "Skyjacked," with Charlton Heston as a pilot whose airliner gets, what else, skyjacked.

The "Historical Epics" collection features the 1961 spectacle "The Colossus of Rhodes" from none other than Sergio Leone -- later of spaghetti-western fame -- getting his first director's credit. It includes a commentary by film historian Christopher Frayling. There is also 1955's "Land of the Pharaohs," directed by Howard Hawks and starring thousands of extras (9,787 in just one scene), complex sets and Joan Collins in full vampy queen mode. The film also comes with commentary by filmmaker-historian Peter Bogdanovich and old interview excerpts from Hawks. Rounding out the set is 1955's "The Prodigal" starring Lana Turner as a pagan sect's high priestess who lures a Hebrew farmer from his faith. It has a commentary by film historian Drew Casper.

The kitschy star of the "Sci-Fi Thrillers" set has to be 1958's "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman." Nancy Archer (Allison Hayes) has just returned from a mental institution to find that her no-good hubby (William Hudson) has been making time with Honey Parker (Yvette Vickers, Playboy's Miss July 1959). Nancy has an alien encounter that sends her metabolism into high gear, and soon she's on a rampage. There is a commentary by Vickers and film historian Tom Weaver.

Actually, 1958's "Queen of Outer Space" may just out-camp that. It does have Zsa Zsa Gabor as a scientist, after all, in this story of a male space crew landing on a planet where men are outlawed. Extras include commentary by actress Laurie Mitchell and film historian Weaver.

The third film in this set is "The Giant Behemoth," also from 1958. Radiation run amok leads to a giant beast rampaging through London. It comes with commentary by veteran special effects creators Dennis Muren and Phil Tippett (they worked on "Jurassic Park," among other films).

The "Women in Peril" collection consists of 1968's "The Big Cube" (Lana Turner gets dosed with LSD by her stepdaughter in an attempt to drive her crazy!), 1950's "Caged," (a stereotype-filled women-in-prison flick that is probably the highest-quality piece of filmmaking in the four volumes) and 1969's "Trog" (Joan Crawford in her final film plays -- with earnestness -- an anthropologist who discovers a wild half-man/half-ape with anger management issues).