I Just Bought … (Non-SW Shopping Diary)

I’ve gone for the reverse cover which has the film under that name. The primary cover looks like this:

The reverse covers don’t utilise different aliases for the movies all that often, but it does happen sometimes. City of the Living Dead’s reverse cover utilises its Gates of Hell alias for instance. :+1:

That’s nice from Arrow to do reversible covers with alternate title.

from wikipedia apparently Nightmare City was labeled City of the Walking Dead when it came out on vhs in 1983.

Just come out:

image

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New blu-rays:

Just ordered:

New blu-ray:

A few ideas from FC

How does Arrow’s Blu-ray of The Beyond look? I heard some negative reviews. I’d love to upgrade from my Danish DVD but I’ll stick with it if the Blu-ray is as bad as they say.

Grindhouse’s version blows it out of the water.

Looks perfectly fine to me, but I should add that I fell asleep half-an-hour into the film, I’ve never seen The Beyond before and subsequently I’ve never seen another source for comparative purposes.

Grinhouse, no question.

^^^^^^ I would say that the first image there - the Grindhouse Releasing version - is clearly superior but I’m not really that fussy unless it’s one of my very favourite movies. The Arrow picture is honestly nice and sharp. Quite a few artifacts, especially early on, but it’s The Beyond; I don’t especially want it to be completely pristine. Horses for courses, though. I really like the yellowed-out MGM blu of TG,tB&tU for instance, I think it suits the movie fantastically well.

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The Grindhouse blu is excellent, unfortunately the film is only worth watching for the final scene…

I know its very hipsterish to have this opinion, but I’m more and more starting to enjoy watching VHS copies instead of current HD transfers. It has a certain character all its own when it comes to certain genres of movies which seems to be somewhat lost when viewing in HD. Something about watching “trash” in HD just doesn’t have the same character.

Don’t get me wrong, viewing an old film in glorious HD can be like viewing the film with fresh eyes again, but VHS is creeping back into movie culture and younger kids are starting to seek them out for a reason which I think has some validity aside from the hipster fad.

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I see that Blue Underground is starting to release some of their catalogue in new 4K transfer blu rays… no way in hell I am re-buying any blu rays for 4k… I don’t care what it is… shit is getting ridiculous

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well not if properly scanned and mastered. if the movie was shot in 35mm, speaking in terms of physics, not even 4K is quite there yet. Plus, if you have a screen larger than 12 inches or so, anything less than HD will just likely look like a blurry piece of horse’s ass :slight_smile: Even upscaled DVDs look usually terrible. You can talk about character and nostalgia and all these things, but either your eyes are bad or I dont know :slight_smile: Not every 4k remastered flick is a great job by the company with a great source material, but as a cineast I think you want to enjoy the product of the artist as close to the original version as possible. The original version is film, so why wouldn’t you want to see it almost like film. The only realistic thing on the market close to it is 4K, unless you find a print somewhere and have a reel projector… :slight_smile:
Sorry for the rant, hehe

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I watch my films on a modern 42" HD screen, believe me I can tell the difference, and as I said I appreciate the difference.

But I also can very much tolerate and enjoy DVD and VHS quality material on the same screen. The difference in my Maniac blu ray from Blue Underground versus the new 4k version just simply wouldn’t be worth a re-purchase, to me. I’d rather companies spend their resources on releasing new material that needs good releases, rather than milking the collectors every few years.

I understand your point about getting close to the source as possible and its a valid point, however my point is that movies are a visual medium and anything that alters the appearance has an effect on how it is experienced by you, since its a visual medium. If I’m watching some very low budgect action flic from the 80s, then of course it has a different character and therefor experience if I watch it on a VHS versus a modern HD transfer. If you don’t experience this difference, maybe your brain is bad or I don’t know :grinning:

I’m just totally over the side of collecting that is nothing but endless buying… so at this point I’m starting to be ok with even keeping DVDs versus buying newer blus…

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I get that, but putting film on VHS was the original altercation, with 4K we’re only slowly “undoing” the decades long torturing of visual art that had to be bannished to crappy technology :slight_smile:

Sure, but like I said, I was specifically referencing the kinds of movies that are considered trash, and these directors weren’t exactly Orson Welles… needing to appreciate the fine cinematic art of this stuff is kinda a moot point, with some exceptions.

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hm not so sure, maybe they’re trash because we’ve never seen them on a fresh 35mm print :wink: We’re getting off track.

Here’s something I bought recently

https://amzn.to/2PY41YJ

Two really cool cult flix

Haven’t seen these gialli before. Anyone got any opinions on them?




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Lizard in Womans Skin is the best one out of these. Not sure if I’ve seen Eyeball though.

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