Anybody else always browse the upright spinning stands full of DVDs at the local dollar store? The movies that have apparently fallen into the public domain and are being packaged like Bulgarian bootlegs and sold for $1 to $5.
Here’s what I’ve collected so far:
*Judge Priest *
One of John Ford’s early masterpieces; the VHS was going for over $30 last time I looked, then I find it as part of a triple feature on a single dollar disc.
*The Stork Club *
Sometimes I’m a little bit scared by how much I love Betty Hutton. This is no Miracle of Morgan’s Creek , but it has a couple of her best musical numbers: “I’m a Square in the Social Circle” and “Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief”)
Shark!
Burt Reynolds in an underrated Sam Fuller piece. Not Fuller’s masterpiece, but certainly worthwhile for Fuller fans.
The Naked Kiss
Another Fuller oddity. To quote this paper’s Don Druker, “What can I tell you about a film that begins with a bald prostitute beating a man unconscious with her handbag? Except that it’s undoubtedly Sam Fuller’s vilest, sleaziest masterpiece (1964).” I gotta own it, however, because of its pride of place in the *Showgirls *canon. Now if I could only happen upon White Dog and The Big Red One, my Fuller library will be just about complete.
*Nothing Sacred *
Carole Lombard and Fredric March in a William Wellman screwball comedy? A comedy about death and media excess? Why isn’t this movie better known?
The Deadly Companions
Early Peckinpah, before he was really Peckinpah yet. The Deadly Companions is very much *faux *Ford; Brian Keith lumbers through it as a poor man’s John Wayne (Maureen O’Hara musta been crackin up through the whole production). But for Peckinpah fans, it’s interesting to see his incipient themes and imagery evolve from under Ford’s shadow.
Other acquisitions from the dollar store include: Carnival of Souls
White Zombie
Wasp Woman
A Bucket of Blood
Angel and the Badman
One Eyed Jacks
Night of the Living Dead
Charade
The Last Time I Saw Paris
The House on Haunted Hill
Captain Kidd
and most of Hitchcock’s early works.
I picked up McClintock!, one of my favorite John Wayne movies, this way. I was surprised, because I was considering buying the legit edition for like $15.
[everyone else backs away, hiding the sharp objects, going, “oh no you DIH-unt!”]
By “Showgirls canon” I mean the films I show in my *Showgirls *seminar; the films that served as antecedants for Paul Verhoeven’s masterpiece, Showgirls. (And yes, I’m serious. And no, I’m not alone.)
Charade is a truly great flick, but the bargain-bin versions are full-screen and often clip the ending. I paid extra for the wide-screen version.
I’ve got
The Ape with Boris Karloff and The Ape Man with Bela Lugosi. Two poverty-row thriller/horror movies both based on the idea of using serum from gorillas to cure polio, and the awfl things that happen to the mad scientists who get involved.
The Last Man on Earth --Vincent Price in the low-budget adaptation of Richard Matheson’s I am Legend. a helluva lot more faithful than Charlton Heston’s later The Omega Man.
Two episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Sow and a few of You Bet Your Life! with Groucho Marx.
Flash Gordon --the old black and white TV version. (I have the 1980 Sam Jones movie from a more upscale bargain bin)
I don’t buy videos, but I’ve been tempted a few times.
Recently saw the orginal “Little Shop of Horrors” for like $2. Tempting, especially since I remember watching it on Friday Night Horror Movies waaay back before it got (in)famous.
There was also a “Jayne Mansfield” movie in the bin. But on closer examination, it appeared to be a Lucille Ball movie that had Jayne in a bit part. I hadn’t heard of it, and I couldn’t find it on IMDb. Weird.
White Zombie
Murder (Hitchcock)
Sabotage (also Hitchcock)
Four episodes of the 50s series The Adventures of Dr. Fu Manchu
Plus a ton of the Fleisher Superman cartoons and a bunch of Felix the Cats dating back to the 20s.
I need to get back to the dollar store to see about new Halloween movies.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame w/Lon Chaney
Phantom of the Opera w/Lon Chaney
The Brain that Wouldn’t Die
A bunch of Felix the Cat and Molly Moo-Cow cartoons
I usually check the bargain bins for cheese like From Justin to Kelly (five bucks at Best Buy and hilarious for all the wrong reasons) or the occasional odd gem (John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow for $5.99 at K-Mart), but I did get some dollar DVDs at the dollar store last weekend:
Moon of the Wolf on one disc with Dr. Jekyll vs. The Werewolf (a Paul Naschy werewolf flick!!)
Fangs of the Dead (starring the sublime Anita Eckberg and directed by Amando de Ossorio, director of Tombs of the Blind Dead/The Ghost Galleon/Return of the Evil Dead/Night of the Seagulls) on one disc with Romero’s original Night of the Living Dead
Circus of Fear with Carnival of Souls
I kinda like the cheapass packaging on them. It reminds me of the artwork on those old oversized VHS boxes that labels like Wizard Video used back in the eighties. I was really hoping to find Night of the Bloody Apes there because it’s just the kind of movie to release for a buck. That and maybe some Santo flicks.
You can pick up Phantom of the Opera on cheap DVd, but it’s really worthwhile to get a good copy. I picked up the two-disc restored version, and it blew me away. The cuts and scratches are almost all gone, the technicolor looks superb, and there’s a another color segment I never even knew about.
You can go with the cheap version for old, bad films. But for really good stuff it’s worth getting the restorations that have only recently become available.
Wow, when did you find that, recently? That is amazing! I’m going to K-Mart after work!
Last year around the holidays, Target put out a bunch of $1 DVDs in the front of the store, in their “Everything’s $1” section. I found two collections of the 1940s Fleischer Studios Superman cartoons – 16 out of the 17 existing cartoons (8 per DVD) for $1 each. That’s a colossal bargain, since the animation was so stunning and the visuals perfect that “retro-futuristic” style that still influences sci-fi today. I also got a collection of 8 Gumby cartoons on one of those $1 DVDs, but haven’t watched it yet.
Good find on the Fleishcer Superman stuff – those cartoons are all over the place on cheap DVD, but the transfers are mostly horrid.
I got a copy of His Girl Friday for $2 once, and it’s actually a nice transfer. Also Hitchcock’s original Man Who Knew Too Much, which I haven’t ever watched yet.
Mine actually look decent, and I’ve seen several other cheap-looking sets of the Superman cartoons at different stores. For some reason, I get the impression that Target would require higher-quality merchandise than the dollar stores, even if they are just cheap public-domain DVDs.
I am not at home so I am going on memory, but some that I picked up:
House On Haunted Hill with Vincent Price
Several Charlie Chan’s with Peter Lore
The Lone Ranger television show (four episodes).
Burns & Allen (8 episodes, two discs)
Great Expectations with Laurence Olivier
Sherlock Holmes (old tv series, 4 episodes on one disc)
Here is an interesting New York Times article on the $1 DVD’s.