I've lusted after it for years, and I finally found it at the local store for $5 on Black Friday. (Yes, I'm aware this set would USUALLY be $5 at Wal Mart or something, but since I live about 40 minutes from the closest one, I like the fact that I could buy this for $2 less than the usual price of $7 locally.)
I've already watched Child Bride, The Marijuana Menace (originally titled Assassin Of Youth), and Marihuana and I must say, this may turn out to be one of my best Mill Creek purchases to date.
Also, am I the only one who's gotten a Mill Creek set with logos during the movies that isn't really bothered by them? The only show up a few times, never for more than maybe three seconds, and are rarely, if ever, very intrusive. Crap, I see more intrusive logos and such on TV anymore, especially with this new trend of "Now you're watching [insert title here]. Up next, [insert title here]."
In case any of you folks haven't had your fill of black-and-white public domain horror movies ("Little Shop of Horrors," "The Brain That Wouldn't Die," "Lady Frankenstein," etc. et al.), then dorky mail order catalog Harriet Carter has such a deal for you!
They are selling the 4-DVD "50 Horror Classics" for only $9.99 plus shipping. This is the package that used to have its own TV commercial and sold for $20.00, so you're getting quite a deal here. I'm sure these are lousy full-frame prints with scratches galore, but you're only spending about 20 cents per movie on a real pressed DVD. Okay, I'm sure they are on a low bitrate because they need to squeeze 50 movies on to 8 sides of 4 flipper discs, (they might even be single-sided, who knows, but they look like flipper discs in the picture) and I'm sure the movies look VHS quality. But you can't beat this price without shoplifting.
A good bet for somebody just starting out in their movie collection, maybe a good Xmas gift for a teenager who likes horror movies.
Harriet Carter is also selling "50 Fright Classics" for $12.98. Not sure about the titles on that one, but I'm sure it is similar. They are also selling some cheap World War II documentary box sets to service their base audience of rapidly dwindling Depression survivors.
I found the following at Big!Lots for $3 or less. I was surprised at the quality which included many Oscar winners and genuine classics. Of course they also had stuff like Hudson Hawk and Gigli.
King Kong (1933) Dames Golddiggers of 1933 Mighty Joe Young The Band Wagon Pride of the Yankees The Petrified Forest Gigi Network Adaptation Bowling For Colombine Kung-Fu Hustle Moulin Rogue Fahrenheit 911 Alexander (director's cut) North Country Capote
I haven't posted here in awhile (looks like nobody has), but I felt I had to share a deal I came across in my local Wal-Mart a couple days ago.
Next to the "Iron Man" display they had a bunch of two-disc, four-movie sets for $9.99. I picked up all four Christopher Reeve "Superman" movies in widescreen, including the DVD extras like cut scenes and commentary.
They also had all the "Matrix" movies, all the "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies (eight of those, in two sets), four Clint Eastwood comedies, and one, for some reason, of all horse movies ("National Velvet," "International Velvet," "The Story of Seabiscuit" and "Black Beauty").
Just a heads-up. Wal-mart usually ditches these after Christmas.
Just like a few months ago, my local Big Lots! location (downtown Los Angeles in the basement of a 100 year old former department store...yeah, it is pretty cool) got in a huge shipment of DVDs from Sony/Tri-Star, which they are selling for 3 bucks each.
Like the last load, there was a large number of garbage titles, but a few real treats that were well worth 3 measly bucks once you dug through the stacks for a few minutes.
Here's what I picked up: Johnny Mnemonic - Superbit Edition Gattaca - Superbit Edition XXX - Superbit Edition The Dark Crystal - Special Collector's Edition Labyrinth - Special Collector's Edition The Cavern - (looks like a rip-off of "The Cave.")
There was a bunch of heinous junk too: the final episode of Dawson's Creek, Married With Children "Best of" discs, The New Guy, Edison Force, plenty of Jean-Claude Van Damme, some movie with Paris Hilton and a ton of other chaff. But a few notable items to make it worth looking.
Several of Mill Creek's smaller combinations have been showing up at Big Lots (Best of Jack Benny, Best of Cisco Kid) for $6 and WalMart (Robin Hood Season one -- Richard Greene) for $5.
Yesterday, I picked up "The Legend of Rin Tin Tin" at WalMart for $5, expecting it to be 48 episodes from the TV series. A quick look at the back cover told me different. This is 4 movie serials: Included 1. Adventures of Rex and Rinty, The 2. Law of the Wild, The 3. Lightning Warrior, The 4. Lone Defender, The
I probably would have gotten it, even if it were the TV series (I was a big fan once) but I definitely got it when I realized what it was -- I mean, I think these are all available elsewhere for, at best, $9 each. Have not looked at them to assess picture quality yet.
I just got three DVDs from Ebay put out by Digiview that feature Bullwinkle material. Of course, these were taken from the old TV syndication prints that I used to see as a kid in the Seventies. Anyhow, I was googling around for more info, and I discovered a thread on the GAC forum. That's Golden Age cartoons. I dunno if any of you are part of that forum, but since I could not register because they have that graphic you need to copy which my screen reader cannot read, I thought I'd post a quick note here and hopefully one of you can pass it along for what it's worth. A few posters on that thread indicated that when they went to play these Digiview DVDs, there was no audio. I got audio on my DVDs, but my DVD player is part of a combo with a TV and it has stereo speakers. By using headphones, I discovered that for some reason, the cartoon audio has been recorded out-of-phase. So depending on how your DVD player is set up and how you actually hear the audio, if you have, for example, a mono TV, if you mix down out-of-phase audio to mono, it just cancels out, so you get either no sound or very faint sound. I've noticed out-of-phase audio on a few isolated cartoons on other Digiview DVDs, but not throughout the whole DVD. One poster to the forum wrote to Digiview and was told they'd replace his DVDs when he explained the problem to them. I hope this means they ran a new batch with the sound in actual mono and not out of phase. Just for those of you who are curious, I don't know which volume is which, but one volume, which I assume is the first one, involves a storyline concerning a newspaper's publicity stunt for a treasure hunt. You only get three episodes, which contain six Bullwinkle episodes and other elements but do not complete the full storyline. Another DVD contains mostly the other stuff outside of Bullwinkle stories, such as "Aesop and Son," "Fractured Fairy Tales" and a "Dudley Doorite" episode and two or three "Mr. Peabody" episodes. The third DVD seems to be the expanded version of the first one, as you get all the episodes encompassing the newspaper treasure hunt storyline.
I stumbled over this when I was looking at the Suncoast website for a cheap copy of Three Musketeers with Douglas Fairbanks, Senior.
Classic Tales of Adventure is supposed to retail for $10. Suncoast online had it on sale for $6 at the time. Best Buy online had it for $9. Tried to pick it up locally, but finally ordered it from Suncoast online (postage was $3). Took a week to reach me.
It contains (on 3 DVDs) Three Musketeers (Fairbanks) Iron Mask (Fairbanks) Robin Hood (Fairbanks) Thief of Bagdad (Fairbanks) Beloved Rogue (John Barrymore) Son of Monte Christo (Louis Hayward) East of Borneo (appears to be the runt of the litter) Scarlett Pimpernel (few of the reviews even mentioned this was there) -- the box claimed this starred Marius Goring (he was in a TV series) -- It's the Leslie Howard version.
For some reason, my wife found it hilarious that 5 of these movies were silent. "You can watch them while I take a nap!"
Here is a list of movies I picked up in the last 3 months from Big Lots, Walmart , and Dollar Tree All Discs were priced at $1 except 2 which are noted as $2.
Note: Animated Raggedy Ann - Suddenly it's Spring Eps: Suddenly It's Spring The Enchanted Square Freedom River Old Macdonald Had A Farm Naughty But Mice Sport Chumpions Big Man From The North Ups and Down Derby Source: Wal-mart Supplier: digiview ID: CC54E
Note: Animated Hunky & Spunky and friends - You Cant Shoe a Horsefly Eps: You Can't Shoe a Horsefly Land of the Lost Jewels Boy Meets Dog Goal Rush Once Upon a Time Invisible Moustache of Raoul Tender Game Freedom River Source: Wal-mart Supplier: digiview ID: CC54E
