Thursday, December 01, 2005

It’s a great time to be a cult movie fan

I picked up the brand-new 2-pack of King Kong vs. Godzilla and King Kong Escapes today. I’ve seen KK vs. G several times, but I’ve only seen KKE once, over 20 years ago, probably on WFLD-32 or WGN some Saturday afternoon. When I got home I found my recent order from Deep Discount DVD’s 20%-off sale, Warner’s Horror Classics Collection – six Hammer DVDs, including the first three Hammer horror films.

When I bought my first DVD player six or seven years ago, I made up a list of my “most wanted” films on DVD, and that list was rendered obsolete quicker than I ever expected.

Look at Criterion’s series of Kurosawa films, samurai and yakuza movies. MGM’s Midnite Movies line. Tons of releases from obscure directors like Mario Bava and Jess Franco. Almost all of the best Hammer films have been released on DVD (although quite a few of those are already OOP). In the past year alone, Sony put out many of the Godzilla movies, while Media Blasters has released more Toho filmsMatango, The Mysterians, Dogora – with Godzilla: Final Wars and Atragon out this month and Yog next month (How about Latitude Zero, please?), with more on the way. And all of the complete TV series sets that are available… incredible!

1 comment:

Dawg said...

I remember lusting after 400 Blows in the Criterion collection, then having it go OOP before I bought it. Then it was going for $400 or so on Ebay. Now it's available again as part of a Antoine Doinel box set, but I'm pretty sure it's not the original Criterion release.

Movie lust. Movie lust. RAH RAH RAH