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DVD Bargains & Newspaper Freebies

Shop dealing in 'remaindered' books, cd's, dvd's stationary etc. etc. If you're willing to wait a few months you can get todays best-sellers at £4.99 or cheaper. I got an armful of Rudolph Valentino DVD's there the other day....I'm not that old just have a silent movie fixation :)
 
Yeah, they usually have a load of cheap artists materials in the window of our local one, so if that's a national thing you may not have realised they sell books and dvds and things. Usually worth a quick rootle on your way past though.
 
some of my friends got the old valentino films, well worth it at 50p each!
 
Calling all b-movie buffs! Roy's of Wroxham (Norfolk) are selling "3 films on 1 DVD" titles at £1.99 including old horror movies with Bela Lugosi (The Devil Bat) and Vincent Price (Shock!).
Keep an eye out for Creature from the Haunted Sea - advertised on the cover as similar to The Creature from the Black Lagoon, it's similarity is that of Plan 9 is like The Day the Earth Stood Still. I will say, though, it was hilarious and well worth watching late at night after a good session at the pub.
 
Yeah, but Creature from the Haunted Sea is supposed to be funny, Plan 9 isn't!
 
Get drunk - the difference is minimal.

The scene with Castro-istas piled into a VW beatle chasing with carbines blazing at a fleeing Chevvy containing a muck-load of gold, six government troopers, a general, a colonel, a retard and an unsuccessful crook is always worth a leetle bit of a giggle.

That and the gangsters moll singing ...

Anyhow, in those days, spend money on a movie and you're serious. I looked at CFTHS as a sixties "Naked Gun". I look at "Plan 9" as a very low budget sci-fi movie in an age when sci-fi didn't bring in the money. At least it's still talked about ...
 
Left it rather late to post this but today's Times comes with a free DVD of Hitchcock's Spellbound. A complete and good print from official sources. Yours for £1.10. This offer, unlke some other free DVDs is nationwide.

:D
 
I'll have to hide The Times inside a porn mag. I don't want to give anyone the wrong impression.
 
I recently bought a 99p triple bill featuring the odd combination of The Star Packer (an early John Wayne western), Our Town (a sentimental drama) and Rocket Ship XM. Obviously I was only interested in seeing Rocket Ship XM - a no-budget 1950 sci-fi flick starring Lloyd Bridges.

Bridges is the captain of the titular rocket ship on its maiden voyage. It's mankinds very first trip into space, and we're not messing about - we're going straight to the Moon. (The XM stands for eXpedition Moon!). In the opening scene of the film, the project leader - the oddly named Dr Eggstrom (perhaps the writers thought it sounded a little like "Egghead"?) - helpfully draws a picture of the Moon and the Earth on a blackboard for the benefit of the worlds press (presumably to avoid any possible confusion over the whereabouts of the Moon). Joining Dr Eggstrom and Lloyd Bridges in the rocket ship are a glacial female scientist, a comedy Texan (who looks uncannily like a young George Bush Jnr and serves no discernable purpose) and an astronomer who is in charge of navigation (Obviously, being an astronomer he'll know which way the Moon is!). As no-one seems to have invented space suits, the crew wear their old WW2 flying jackets, although Dr Eggstrom prefers to dress more formally in a shirt and tie.

Shortly after take off, the engines malfunction and the rocket ship goes off course. Having no on-board computer, Dr Eggstrom and the glacial female scientist feverishly scribble equations on scraps of paper and gabble incomprehensively at each other. Lloyd Bridges passes the time by trying to chat up the lady, while George Bush Jnr mopes about aimlessly (presumably wondering what exactly his job is and when he's going to start doing it). Then some meteorites whizz past the ship and everyone suddenly falls unconscious for no particular reason (or perhaps because the cabin gets too stuffy - this part of the film was rather confusing). When they wake up, they find that they are orbiting around Mars!

Landing on Mars, they discover the remains of a once-mighty civilisation (a couple of dilapidated dome-like buildings and a weird looking mask). Dr Eggstrom quickly deduces that the Martians destroyed themselves in an Atomic war, and launches into a very predictable lecture about how therein lies a lesson for us all - but wait - there are survivors! Horrible Radioactive Martian Mutants! Namely, half a dozen cavemen and a scantily clad chick. The cavemen start throwing stones at our heroes. "From Atom Age to Stone Age," pronounces Dr Eggstrom, but thankfully a well-aimed Martian rock kills him before he can start sermonising again. The Martians also manage to dispatch George Bush Jnr, but the remaining three crew members make it back to the rocket and head for home.


Sadly, they reach the Earth only to realise that they don't have enough fuel left to make a controlled landing. As they hurtle towards destruction, Lloyd Bridges and the formerly glacial female scientist get busy snogging. Then they crash and die. The End.
 
And people rave about The Matrix and Independence Day - this is marvellous stuff!
 
I can now print - for what it's worth a full listing of the Classic Entertainment series of triple film bills or quadruple telly shows:

CE 001: 3 John Wayne Westerns, vol. I: Blue Steel; Winds of the Wastelands; The Trail Beyond.
CE 002: 3 John Wayne Westerns, vol. II: Paradise Canyon; The Dawn Rider; The Desert Trail.
CE 003: 3 Tough Guys of the Silver Screen, vol. I: Call it Murder; Great Guy; The Lucky Texan.
CE 004: 3 Tough Guys of the Silver Screen, vol. II: Vengeance Valley; The Big Trees; The Man from Utah.
CE 005: 3 Leading Ladies of the Silver Screen, vol. I: Father's Little Dividend; Nothing Sacred; Ghosts on the Loose.
CE 006: 3 Leading Ladies of the Silver Screen, vol. II: Of Human Bondage; Behave Yourself; Home Town Story.
CE 007: 3 Classics of the Silver Screen, vol. I: His Private Secretary; His Girl Friday; The Amazing Adventure.
CE 008: 3 Classics of the Silver Screen, vol. II: My Favorite Brunette; The Road to Hollywood; Suddenly.
CE 009: 3 Classics of the Silver Screen, vol. III: The Woman in Green; Young & Innocent; The Man who Knew too Much.
CE 010: 3 Classics of the Silver Screen, vol. IV: A Farewell to Arms; The Groom Wore Spurs; Indiscretion of an American Wife.
CE 011: 3 Classics of the Silver Screen, vol. V: Blood on the Sun; Lawless Frontier; Lawless Range.
CE 012: 3 Classics of the Silver Screen, vol. VI: Pot o' Gold; Something to Sing About; Riders of Destiny.
CE 013: 3 Classics of the Silver Screen, vol. VII: Our Town; The Star Packer; Rocket Ship XM.
CE 014: 3 Classics of the Silver Screen, vol. VIII: Gung Ho! West of the Divide; 'Neath Arizona Skies.
CE 015: 3 Classic Comedies of the Silver Screen: The Flying Deuces; Africa Screams; The Abbott & Costello Show.
CE 016: 3 Classic Horrors of the Silver Screen, vol. I: Horror Hotel; The Terror; The Corpse Vanishes.
CE 017: 3 Classic Horrors of the Silver Screen, vol. II: A Bucket of Blood; The House on Haunted Hill; The Ghoul.
CE 018: 3 Classic Horrors of the Silver Screen, vol. III: Little Shop of Horrors; The Bat; Bride of the Monster.
CE 019: 3 Classic Horrors of the Silver Screen, vol. IV: Carnival of Souls; The Ape Man; Mesa of Lost Women.
CE 020: 3 Classic Westerns of the Silver Screen, vol. I: Fighting Caravans; Randy Rides Alone; Man of the Frontier.
CE 021: 3 Classic Westerns of the Silver Screen, vol. II: The Painted Desert; Texas Terror; Hell Town.
CE 022: 3 Classic Bela Lugosi Films of the Silver Screen: The Invisible Ghost; Scared to Death; White Zombie.
CE 023: 3 Classic Sherlock Holmes Films of the Silver Screen: SH & The Secret Weapon; Terror By Night; Dressed to Kill.
CE 024: 3 Classic Dick Tracy Films of the Silver Screen: DT's Dilemma; DT Meets Gruesome; DT vs. Cueball.
CE 025: 3 Classic Bulldog Drummond Films of the Silver Screen: BD's Bride; BD Comes Back; BD Escapes.
CE 026: 4 Classic Episodes of the Beverly Hillbillies, vol. I: Home for Christmas; No Place Like Home; Jed Rescues Pearl; Back to Californay.
CE 027: Krazy Kartoons: 16 classic cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig etc.
CE 028: Popeye 75th Anniversary: 2 hours of classic cartoons.
CE 029: 3 Classic Westerns of the Silver Screen, vol. III: Mclintock! Robin Hood of the Pecos; Public Cowboy No.1.
CE 030: 3 Classic Westerns of the Silver Screen, vol. IV: Angel & The Badman; The Cowboy & The Señorita; The Old Corral.
CE 031: 3 Classic Westerns of the Silver Screen, vol. V: Hurricane Express; Rage at Dawn; Young Bill Hickok.
CE 032: 3 Classic Westerns of the Silver Screen, vol. VI: Santa Fe Trail; Sagebrush Trail; Billy the Kid Returns.
CE 033: 3 Classic Westerns of the Silver Screen, vol. VII: Apache Rifles; Days of Jesse James; Riders of the Whistling Pines.
CE 034: 3 Classic Westerns of the Silver Screen, vol. VIII: Abilene Town; Kansas Pacific; Colorado.
CE 035: 3 Classic Crime Films of the Silver Screen: The Speckled Band; Silver Blaze; Blake of Scotland Yard.
CE 036: 3 Classic Comedies of the Silver Screen, vol. II: Jack & The Beanstalk; Utopia; Spooks Run Wild.
CE 037: 3 Classic Horrors of the Silver Screen, vol. V: Creature from the Haunted Sea; The Devil Bat; Vampire Bat.
CE 038: 3 Classic Horrors of the Silver Screen, vol. VI: Dementia 13; Shock; Black Dragons.
CE 039: 3 Classic Horrors of the Silver Screen, vol. VII: Attack of the Giant Leeches; Tha Amazing Transparent Man; Revolt of the Zombies.
CE 040: 3 Classic Sci-Fi Films of the Silver Screen: Missile to the Moon; Earth vs. Flying Saucers; Planet Outlaws.
CE 041: 3 Classics of the Silver Screen, vol. IX: Gangster Story; Beat the Devil; British Intelligence.
CE 042: 3 Classics of the Silver Screen, vol. X: Road to Bali; Basin Street Revue; Forbidden Music.
CE 043: 3 Classics of the Silver Screen, vol. XI: Duel of the Champions; Trapped; The Big Chance.
CE 044: 3 Leading Ladies of the Silver Screen, vol. III: Bigamist; Hell's House; High Voltage.
CE 045: 3 Leading Ladies of the Silver Screen, vol. IV: Rain; The Racketeer; Shriek in the Night.
CE 046: 3 Classic Boris Karloff Films of the Silver Screen: The Ape; The Fatal Hour; Doomed to Die.
CE 047: 3 Mickey Rooney Films of the Silver Screen: Quicksand; My Outlaw Brother; Mickey the Great.
CE 048: 3 Classic Racing Films of the Silver Screen: The Wild Ride; The Fast & The Furious; The Big Wheel.
CE 049: 3 Classic Musicals of the Silver Screen, vol. I: Second Chorus; The Duke is Tops; Private Buckaroo.
CE 050: 3 Classic Musicals of the Silver Screen, vol. II: Royal Wedding; The Fabulous Dorseys; Black & Tan.
CE 051: 3 Classic Tarzan films of the Silver Screen: Tarzan and the Trappers; The New Adventures of Tarzan; Tarzan the Fearless.
CE 052: 4 Classic Episodes of the Beverly Hillbillies, vol. II: The Clampetts Strike Oil; Getting Settled; Meanwhile Back at the Cabin; The Servants.
CE 053: 4 Classic Episodes of the Beverly Hillbillies, vol. III: Jed's Dilemma; Jed Saves Drysdale's Marriage; Elly's Animals; Jed Plays Solomon.
CE 054: 4 Classic Episodes of Sherlock Holmes vol.I: Night Train Riddle; Lady Beryl; Mother Hubbard; Greystone Inscriptiion.
CE 055: 4 Classic Episodes of Sherlock Holmes vol.II: The Jolly Hangman; Christmas Pudding; Unlucky Gambler; Harry Crocker.
CE 056: 4 Classic Episodes of Bonanza, vol. I: The Gunman; The Spanish Grant; Blood on the Land; The Stranger.
CE 057: 4 Classic Episodes of Bonanza, vol. II: Desert Justice; Escape to the Ponderosa; The Avenger; San Francisco.
CE 058: 4 Classic Episodes of Bonanza, vol. III: Feet of Clay; Bitter Water; Dark Star; Silent Thunder.
CE 059: 4 Classic Episodes of The Lucy Show, vol. I: Lucy and Paul Winchell; Lucy and the Ring a Ding Ding; Lucy Gets a Roommate; Lucy and Carol in Palm Springs.
CE 060: 4 Classic Episodes of The Lucy Show, vol. II: Lucy and Pat Collins; Lucy and the Monkey; Lucy and Phil Silvers; Lucy, the Baby Sitter.
CE 061: 4 Classic Episodes of The Lucy Show, vol. III: Lucy Flies to London; Lucy Gets Trapped; Lucy gets Jack Benny's Account; Little Old Lady.
CE 062: 4 Classic Episodes of The Lone Ranger, vol. I: Enter the Lone Ranger; The Lone Ranger Fights On; The Lone Ranger's Triumph; War Horse.
CE 063: 4 Classic Episodes of The Lone Ranger, vol. II: Pete and Pedro; The Renegades; High Heels; Six Guns Legacy.
CE 064: 4 Classic Episodes of The Lone Ranger, vol. III: Finders Keepers; Rustlers’ Hideout; Old Joe’s Sister; Cannonball McKay.
CE 065: 4 Classic Episodes of Flash Gordon: The Claim Jumpers; Akim the Terrible; The Breath of Death; Deadline at Noon.
CE 066: 4 Classic Episodes of Dragnet, vol. I: Big Porn; Big Shoplift; Car Thieves; Doctor Slugged in Waiting Room.
CE 067: 4 Classic Episodes of Dragnet, vol. II: Drug Pushing Teenager; Assault and Robbery; Big Betty; Big Number.
CE 068: 4 Classic Episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show: Never Name a Duck; Bank Book 6565696; Hustling the Hustler; The Night the Roof Fell In.
CE 069: 4 Classic Episodes of The Cisco Kid, vol. I: Confession for Money; Freight Line Feud; Buried Treasure; Lost Identity.
CE 070: 4 Classic Episodes of The Cisco Kid, vol. II??

The bad news is that Poundland has replaced the range with much less interesting fodder. If you can find a branch of the Play chain - most of the titles here are available at 99p. :)
 
ive bourght a dvd copy of earth v the flying saucers for a 1£

(havent watched it yet, i might even go back this week to see if theres any more good films :D )
 
It is always worth looking in these pound stores. Most of their stock is straight-to-video fare. Just occasionally, you can pick up something curious and interesting.

Rochdale disdains Pound stores and - as befits the pioneer co-operative town - they have 88p stores! Wow!

In one such joint I found a couple of unexpected slices of Hollywood history.

Abraham Lincoln, was the penultimate movie of D. W. Griffith. This tinted and extensively-restored version from a firm called 23rd Century is purloined from the Eureka issue, which retails at around £16. The soundtrack suffers from a noise-gate, which is set too high. Even so, this 1930 movie is well worth your £1 - or 88p if your tastes tend to the historical.

Frank Capra's Meet John Doe is also available - a two hour feature from 1941, this stars Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwick, no less. Darker than your average Capra. By the look of it, the transfer isn't great but if there's nothing on telly again . . .

added 24th July: I watched the Capra movie last night. It's a soft transfer with a line of dots at the top, suggesting a telly source. The actual quality isn't bad at all for a sixty-four year old film. Capra was hardly the person to go for a gloves-off assault on populism and it would be idle to pretend that every one of the 123 minutes are absorbing. Still, it is very well played and admirers of Stanwyck and/or Cooper should find it tasty. I see that lots of folks on the imdb give it 10 out of 10.

Stanwyck turns up again in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, another noir thriller that turns up in the bargain bins. A youthful Kirk Douglas gets an untypical early rôle as Stanwyck's wimpish and alcoholic husband. The ending of this one is truly jaw-dropping even by noir standards.

Now I have just seen that the bbfc has recently had Wilder's Double Indemnity submitted for DVD distribution. Glory be! I doubt if that one will be cheap though. Still, if it means a clean print! :D
 
Just picked up the Boris Karloff movie The Ghoul in the one buck bin.

According to IMDB.com's trivia: This was the first British horror film of the sound era.

1933? Slackers.
 
*** Spoiler Alert ***









Also the first film that I've seen where the lantern-jawed hero gets flatlined before the monster.

Magic!
 
Ah this frugal old thread has resurfaced. Time for a bit of an update.

I had hoped that the Classic Entertainment range of Triple bills would be expanded this Autumn - they first appeared in the Pound Stores about September 2004. Sadly they seem to have stalled at around 70 issues. Some later issues are re-grouplings of previous issues, notably the John Wayne films, so that boxed sets could be issued.

I have found all of these discs with the exception of CE 052 (?) Beverly Hillbillies, Volume II. Anyone investing £70 will obtain some 144 feature films, over 70 television shows and about 30 cartoons. The quality varies considerably and none of it is exactly Demonstration material. The discs are nearly all dual-layer with running times of three to three and a half hours. There are a lot of B pictures here as well as a few Z pictures. When you have the time, it is tempting to recreate the full programmes that cinema-goers once took for granted: cartoons, suppporting-feature and main film.

CE 032: Santa Fe Trail is a soft transfer, which sould be just acceptable, were it not for the horrid state of the soundtrack. I think Franz Waxman's score must still be in copyright, so some attempt has been made here to overlay it with stock music. The result is a horric cacophony at the key music cues. The film was originally issued in an early experimental spacial sound process but I doubt if that alone is responsible fot the mess on this print. The others on this disc are routine Roy Rogers and John Wayne B-Westerns, unaffected by this problem.

CE 052: It took three attempts to sit through Tarzan & The Trappers. This feature was cobbled together from three half-hour television pilots. It relies a great deal on stock footage. The all-American Jane and Boy add a surreal touch to proceedings. The others on this disc date from the thirties and one was financed by Rice-Burroughs himself. The New Adventures of Tarzan is a seventy minute feature adapted from a twelve-part serial. The plot, such as it is, comes in short parcels of action strung out between long sequences of wildlife footage. A case could be made for it as a true journey into the Heart of Darkness which is the movie - but it would be stretching the point to make it sound mildly interesting. The sound is poor and the titles apologise for it - the script, acting and direction are sorry too.

A tranche of ancient cartoons turned up in Tesco, Southport. These Digiview discs are to be found on the WWW and elsewhere for about £5 each. however these were priced at just £1 each. The brightly-coloured packages were nearly overlooked as they suggested later material, however a glance at the contents revealed these were original 1930s material, featuring Betty Boop, Bosco and many desirable titles from the Fleischers and Van Beuren Studios. I found ten of these discs, each with a running time of around an hour or so. Quality was variable but mainly fair - only one disc disappointed with a selection of Looney Toons given in black and white prints - presumably from 16mm - where Technicolor is announced and indeed survives elsewhere.

In lieu of Triple Bills, I have picked up a fair number of bargains on the bootleg 23rd Century label. These have garish packaging and come in slimline cases. If you can adjust the geometry of your screen, you could get a surprisingly good picture from A Star is Born. This is the 1954 Cukor musical with Judy Garland. The sleeve promised only 90 minutes, so I expected this to be a mutilated panned & scanned print. Far from it! The print runs 168 minutes and is letter-boxed with stereo soundtrack, suggesting a source post-1983, when the film was restored to nearly its original length. However the aspect ratio is wrong, displaying distorted and skinny figures at 16:9. Adjusting the screen geometry of the computer, however, took care of this and the picture looked pretty good when squished down to 2.5:1 or thereabouts. I doubt if either the movie or many of the songs are actually in the Public Domain, so this seems a dodgy issue in many respects. I suspect that some twerp has glimpsed the title on a list of PD movies without realising that it was the Janet Gaynor version from the 1930s which was meant!

At the same time, I acquired Danny Kaye in the Inspector General, Audie Murphie in A Time for Dying and a very dubious 1987 slasher called Berserker. From another label - unnamed on the pack but Elstree Entertainment on the splash screen - came Beneath the 12 Mile Reef. I did not expect much from this as inferior prints have circulated for some time. In fact, this version proved to be a widescreen and stereo version of this 1954 Cinemascope epic. The nine harps called for by Bernard Herrmann's score can be heard loud and clear - pretty good going for a poundstore purchase!

Over at The Works, the "publishers' remainder store" their £2.99 line are on offer at 5 for £5. I snapped up Olivier's Richard III - the 150' minute print, albeit panned and scanned not - alas - the original VistaVision ratio. I am a Camera, the 1955 adaptation of Isherwood's Berlin tales, which were to become Cabaret. The Music of Chance, a somewhat existential tale from 1983. Stuck to find anything else that looked decent, I settled for Tobe Hooper's Spontaneous Combustion and an obscure thriller called I Shot a Man in Vegas to fill out my set of five.

Not quite at a pound, Music Zone have been selling titles such as The Third Man, Hitchcock's Notorious and - a great favourite - Brighton Rock for about three quid. Overstocks of Ealing Comedies seem to be everywhere at around the same price.
 
Last week I picked up a double bill in Poundland which featured the all-time classic video nsaty Driller Killer , (cant remember the name of the other film though) . Not bad at all for a quid.
 
Last night I watched Driller Killer , which has aged remarkably well . The other disc on the film was Demon House . Think I'll go to Poundland tomorrow and pick up some more movies for a quid.
 
Sorry to sound like a salesman here , but if you're into low-budget movies check this page on Amazon . This is a fantastic deal at £10.41 , and the set includes many of the films included on the Poundshop discs . They also do Sc-Fi , Western , Cult Horror , Action and Mystery box sets . They are Region 1 , so if you have a multiregional player it presents excellent value (works out at around 21p per film).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0001HAGTM/

:D :D

[Emp edit: Shortening link]
 
Re above note - the price has gone up a tad . It was once the day that they were £10.41 (just last week) , but they are now £11.91 (still excellent value at 24p per film). :D :D
 
Not really a poundshop movie, but I picked up a 2nd hand copy of 'Hoera voor Betty Boop', in a junk shop, for €1.00. It turned out to be a subtitled version of 'Hooray For Betty Boop' (1976). A chopped up compilation of colorized Betty Boop cartoons given a new (crappy) soundtrack and a plot about Betty wanting to become President.

It's a mild, trippy, post-Watergate satire. :shock:

They've kept some of the Cab Calloway numbers, more, or less, complete. :)

Can't find too much about it on the net. But it may actually be: Betty Boop For President: The Movie (1980).
 
Update January 2006

Given the irregular distribution of bargain-bin fodder, the punter becomes exactly that - one who takes a risk. Grab up what's on offer while it's there or risk it passing out of reach. While there are many hardy perennials in the PD trough, others turn up briefly and mysteriously not to be seen again.

The GMVS label is the UK incarnation of Waterfall, whose US titles are thought unlovely. They usually retail at around £6 in HMV but the PoundWorld chain sells them for a quid each, which seems fairer value. A good range of material exists on this label, though it is often dumped on stores willy-nilly so that a hundred copies of a single title make the racks a boring browse.

I concentrate on the old Hollywood titles so these seem of some interest:

My Man Godfrey is a highly regarded Carole Lombard screwball comedy. She is teamed with William Powell as a deadpan butler. Both are as excellent as ever but I didn't laugh a lot - it is very weird and very thirties.

Made for Each Other, Lombard again, teamed with Jimmy Stewart in a luxury soap opera with Selznick production values. Print soft but watchable. If you like babies, you may even manage to enjoy the film.

Till the Clouds Roll By, lavish 1946 MGM musical purports to be the Jerome Kern story. Big cast, Technicolor, 135 minutes long. The musical numbers are fine, if that sort of thing floats your Showboat, though Robert Walker looks uncomfortable in the lead. The story has to be the least dramatic ever told - anodyne stuff, entirely invented in the wake of the composer's death.

The Outlaw was Howard Hughes' astonishingly gay Western, misleadingly sold on the size of Jane Russell's tits. It provokes admiration and scorn in about equal measure. I'm inclined to think the lovely Jack Beutel was way ahead of his time, with an insolent-innocent persona way before James Dean or Brando were around. Warning this is the same print as used by 23rd Century. The picture is affected by curious wavering pixellation. It is less obvious if you watch the movie on a computer and limit the size of the window - this is like viewing a movie from the back of a small cinema. If anyone knows of a decent DVD version of this movie, let me know.

The Big Trees. Yes it's that old woody one again! It's Kirk Douglas versus the tree-hugging Quakers. There are said to be decent Scope prints of this in circulation but the GMVS version is that dismal scan and pan again.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Ava Gardner and Gregory Peck in lavish Hemingway adaptation. Highly regarded once upon a time and worth a quid, I guess.

The Man with the Golden Arm. Preminger's drug story was thought ground-breaking in the fifties but is these days watched for the sake of full-blooded performances from Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak. This print looks OK.

Over at The Works, there have appeared pallets full of boxed sets at low low prices. Many are from the Hollywood Entertainment bottom of the barrel - schlocky straight-to-vid. horrors and telly movies for the laydeez. These are actually marketed as Films for Men and Films for Women. Even at fifteen quid for twenty pictures, there is nothing much to detain movie fans.

More interesting are the five-disc sets from a Dutch company with the name Sun. Tranches of PD American telly series, such as The Lone Ranger & I Love lucy, The Beverley Hillbillies (again) and the Ronald Howard Sherlock Holmes series. Going price was £9.99 before Christmas but these are now £6.99. Each disc seems to contain around three episodes.

In the same range, a set of five early Hitchcock movies (39 Steps, Jamaica Inn, MWKTM, The Lady Vanishes & Murder) all in softish prints from NTSC sources? Worth considering as Murder is no worse than the Orbit release - it probably derives from same source and HMV want £16 for that double-bill with The Skin Game. The fly in the ointment here is a flawed disc of The Lady Vanishes - it ends abruptly after about an hour - probably some layer format problem.

Two boxes of Chaplin movies named The Tramp & King of Comedy turn out between them to contain the Essanay and Mutual two-reelers, more or less complete and in decent prints. A selection of the Keystone shorts are used as fillers and are much poorer in quality. Music is from old jazz records but you could find something more appropriate. Two further boxes feature the silents of Laurel and Hardy - I have yet to sample these.

Meanwhile, over in Poundworld - at least in one store - I found a selection of the Delta Chaplin series which features a nearly complete run of the Keystone films in the first four volumes. Some duplication and interesting variants. Not the highest quality but a fascinating window on the past, especially now these silent comedies are neglected on telly.

Conoisseurs of terrible transfers should try to find the 23rd Century edition of Monte Hellman's cult Western, the Shooting. It is utterly dire. The film features a youthful Jack Nicholson but most of the acting honours belong to Warren Oates. This is very curious picture with what are described as existential or even Fortean dimensions but this horrid print has missing sections and holes on the soundtrack so there may be more mysteries than the director intended.

This gore-hound message board has more discussion on the bottom-of-the-barrel 23rd Century label, including a link to their own Website:

Here

Happy hunting! :D [/i]
 
Ooooooo that 23rd Century stuff has got my interest looks like I'll dust the body armour off and venture into Bootle again.
 
Mighty_Emperor said:
Free Dune DVD in this Sunday's Observer.
Click to expand...
I just heard that advertised on the radio. After the panning I gave the books (I'm still struggling through "Chapter House - Dune", 10 pages at a time before I sleep), I'll probably get the Observer so I can revisit Dune without having to read any more of Brian Herbert's turgid prose.
 
I noticed Solaris (vhs) for sale in Poundland the other day. Sadly there was hardly anything else in the section apart from about 2 dozen of these videos.
 
Apart from the aforementioned Dune DVD in the Observer, today's People comes with a copy of Carry On Up the Khyber while sports fans can pick up Greatest Goals In the World, a DVD of World Cup, erm, goals from 1966-86 in the Star :yeay:

Also, the Sunday Express has a CD of Lennon/McCartney covers by the likes of Ike and Tina Turner, Shirley Bassey and Badfinger, the Mail On Sunday has an audio CD of Mein Kampf read by Jim Davidson, and the Sunday Sport comes with a meat pie.
 
WhistlingJack said:
Apart from the aforementioned Dune DVD in the Observer, today's People comes with a copy of Carry On Up the Khyber
Click to expand...

Dune vs Carry on Up The Khyber? No contest really :)

Dune was sadly lacking in double entendres, especially when Sting appeared in a jock strap thingy.
 
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