My name is Ken B., and I am a DVD addict…

Updated on August 30, 2006 By Ken Begg 12 Comments

I’m so broke, and yet I keep buying DVDs. It doesn’t help when DeepdiscountDVDs had a recent sale. At least one of these titles (And the Screaming Starts) I bought only because Netflix doesn’t carry it. I’ve never seen that particular movie, so I bought it, although I’ll probably re-sell the DVD on Half.com after giving it a look.

Even so, you can’t complain about the amount of bang for your buck…which is both a blessing and a curse, budget-wise. Here’s what I got in this order:

And the Screaming Starts ($11): Amicus Brit horror with Peter Cushing. Two commentary tracks, one with the director and the female lead, the other from male lead Ian Ogilvy.

Creation of the Humanoid / War of the Planets Double Bill ($11) Two movies, drive-in intermission ads, trailers.

Day the World Ended / The She-Creature double bill ($8.50) Two movies, Day in letterbox format. (She-Creature, sadly, is full screen.)

Prince of Space / Invasion of the Neptune Men ($11) Two movies, drive-in programming, trailers.

Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare ($14): Jabootu classic with newly remastered (!), high-def transfer from original 35mm negative. Commentary with director John Fasano and star Jon Mikl-Thor. Documentaries and ‘music’ videos, and intro and afterword from Mikl-Thor.

Roger Corman Puerto Rico Trilogy ($12) Three movies restored from 35mm elements, Last Woman on Earth, Creature from the Haunted Sea and Battle of Blood Island. Films “hosted” by Roger Corman. Letterbox transfers. Trailer, additional footage shot for TV versions. Commentaries for each film (none featuring Corman, oddly enough.)

Viking Women and the Sea Serpent / Teenage Caveman double bill ($8.50). Two movies, sadly with ‘standard’ full-frame presentations. Teenage Caveman apparently suffers badly due to this. Lionsgate is going to have to do better than that, even for such a bargain price.

With free shipping and no tax, that was about $75 for a zillion hours of content and a huge array of oddities. Not bad.

Things aren’t going to let up anytime soon. I already have on order the third season of Arrested Development, the already fabled two-disc Godzilla/Gojira DVD, Brainiac, the 11 hour documentary series 100 Years of Horror, and the Best Buy exclusive, five movie Universal Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection.

Add to that the upcoming Legends of Horror Collection and the two Boris Karloff box sets, the next two Classic Media Godzilla movies due out in early November, and things look to remain expensive for another couple of months.

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  • John Bohlke

    What I want to know is where you find the time to watch all those dvds. I still have a pile from the last time I ordered from deepdiscountdvd.com . And that was only about 25 hours worth of video.

  • Er…watch them?

  • KurtVon

    Don’t be too hard on She-Creature. I’m pretty sure, like most films of that time, it was shot in 4:3 and then cropped at the theater. In other words, if you want the widescreen version just buy some black construction paper and tape it to your TV screen.

  • From what I’ve read, She-Creature indeed doesn’t look that bad. Teenage Caveman, though, is supposed to be a mess:

    http://www.dvddrive-in.com/reviews/t-z/vikingwomenteenagecavemn5758.htm

  • KurtVon

    I understand. And sometimes studios do something incredibly stupid like pan-and-scanning the cropped version of a film originally recorded in 4:3. But with the other film letterboxed I’d be surprised if the producers missed that.

  • John Bohlke

    Just to be evil, deepdiscountdvd.com also has a sale on certain box-sets, buy one get one free. Apparently they have decided that I have too much free money sitting around and they must have it.

  • Those sales are awesome. Luckily, I bought the ones I wanted last year.

    By the way, they apparently use these sales to clear our their overstock. The sets I bought last year (Green Acres, etc) aren’t being offered this year. So if you see anything you like, grab while the getting’s good.

  • Kim Newman had some bitchy things to say about the Beacham/Baker commentrak on “And Now the Screaming Starts” when he reviewed it for Video Watchdog a while back. IIRC he mostly got annoyed about them devoting too much space to Pathetic!But-Nice!Widower!Cushing on it, especially back to back with some other Amicus commentraks that did the same.

  • I got nothing bad to say about Kim Newman. He has a terrific (if now inevitably dated) book on horror films called something like Nightmare Cinema. It’s pretty good.

    After you’ve listened to a number of commentary tracks, I think you develope an ear for them, and can usually tell after five minutes whether they’ll be worth listening to or not.

  • Isn’t the title “And Now The Screaming Starts”?

  • man I’m an addict too as you know, having seen my collection. This week I ordered Biohazardous, Bunshinsaba, Devil Species, G.I. Samurai (with Sonny Chiba!), Garuda (Thai kaiju), Paradise Villa, Primer, Samurai Commando Mission 1549, Samurai Resurrection, the Dimension Travelers, The Holy Virgin vs. The Evil Dead, and The War in Space.

  • twitterpate

    “I’m so broke, and yet I keep buying DVDs….”

    In this once sentence, Ken has summarized my life.