What DVD in your collection is of such poor quality or having such lame extras that you just want to break it?
My personal non-favorite is the R2 Dutchworks 2-disc edition of Dawn Of The Dead. I picked this up a year ago, as it was being promoted out the wazoo (“Don’t wait for Anchor Bay’s box set, the Ultimate Dawn DVD is available now!”) and I figured it would tide me over until the AB edition came out this year. I already had AB’s “Theatrical Cut” disc, but it’s so-so in quality, short on extras, and has various glaring errors in the print (one reel of the extended version was evidently substituted in the print, making for a awful jump cut that makes no sense)
In terms of quantity, it’s ambitious. 2 disks with 2 different versions of the film (The extended Cannes version and the Dario Argento version) along with trailers, biographies, slide shows, TV spots, radio spots, and a 60-minute version of Roy Frumkes’s excellent “Document Of The Dead”, a behind-the-scenes look at the filming of Dawn with many candid observations from Romero about the independent film industry.
Well, it sure sounded good. But the disc itself is a disaster. Almost everything on it is pulled right off of a VHS tape, apparently. The director’s cut version even has video drop-outs and tracking lines in it. The Argento version fares only slightly better, but is hideously greenish in color, blurry, and overall just plain ugly looking. The highly touted extras fare just as badly, all of them ripped from either a VHS tape or from Elite’s Special Edition laserdisc from years ago. And “Document Of The Dead” is mastered so poorly that the framerate skips, giving one the feeling of watching a very slow Quicktime download. The entire set gives the feeling of something thrown together in someone’s basement.
Anyone else have a DVD that was so utterly disappointing in quality or content?
Meet the Feebles … it looks like it was copied from a worn-down VHS copy. Surely they had to have a better master that wasn’t full of tracking and warping, and they could have brightened the picture a bit so that I don’t have to adjust my tv everytime I watch it. Virtually no special features, aside from trailers for OTHER movies…and they didn’t even put chapter stops into the movie! They did have the gaul to put “from the director of Lord of the Rings” on the cover of the box though. Eh, at least it wasn’t a snapper case.
A second for Meet The Feebles. Such a shame. To add to what was said above, the menu design is absolutely horrible; moving from one option to the next inovkes a two-second delay.
Yeah, I KNEW it would suck. It only cost $8. The transfer is horrible (as have been nearly every transfer since it became available on video many moons ago). Go to the “movie art” option and you get a tiny version of the oroginal poster. There’s a cast info section, but it’s of Brigette Helm only. There’s also a trivia quiz. If you get the answer wrong, you get an annoying buzzer sound and the word WRONG appears. If you get it right, you see the scene from the movie the question references. That’s the only interesting part.
Why did I buy? I’m a sucker and took a chance knowing damned well it would suck.
I am (im)patiently waiting the new restored (mostly) version.
Well, none of this can beat bargain bin DVD’s sold at discount stores. Produced, probably, in Korea, with pixelated cover images and home-movie quality text intros, they scrape of bottom of ridiculous desperation. My favorite was “the magical world of wizards like Harry Potter” which featured Harry Potter prominantly on the box… but on closer inspection included basically a bunch of grainy stock footage of wizards and magic in old old films (the most contemporary of which was the Wizard of Oz). I couldn’t bring myself to buy it, but it looked hilarious. I imagine it featured some old man in a blue bedsheet painted with yellow stars introducing the clips.
Many scenes were cut, and the transfer was obviously done from a VHS tape, which has those old videotape lines running through the picture occasionally. Looked like it was transferred through a wet sock.
Mr. Blue Sky, you’ll be happy to know that the restored Metropolis has already been released earlier this month. By all accounts, the transfer is stunning and it is the most complete version ever likely to be compiled. Here’s an excellent review by DVD Savant.
My own nomination is a really crummy release of Night of the Living Dead. I think it might also have been released by Madacy. Crummy menus and a lousy transfer of the movie. That’s it. You get what you pay for, I guess.
Well, upon reading the previous posts it appears that I’m not as bad off as I thought I was, but here it goes:
Independence Day
On sale at Target, but I specifically searched out and found the widescreen version. Touted on the back of box:
“Includes both the Special Edition with 9 minutes of restored footage, PLUS the original theatrical version.
Anamorphic Widescreen for both versions.”
When I pop it in, what do I find? A Pan-and-Scan version with NO special features. The back of the box has a picture of the menu screen, and I actually held the box up next to the TV to make sure that I wasn’t imagining things. Nope, there it is: a different menu on the box that what I’m seeing.
At least it was only $9, and I’ve probably gotten $9 worth of entertainment value by griping to everyone I know about it!
Don’t know if it’s been released in a different version, but in first release, it (and most, IIRC, of Woody Allen’s prime catalog) was released with nothing extra, MAYBE with a trailer. The worst part was in the scene between Woody and Diane Keaton on the rooftop, where there are subtitles revealing what they really think as they’re talking about photography. On the videotape and in the theatrical version, the subtitles are in an attractive font that fits the movie. On the DVD, the subtitles are generated by the DVD player, and are NOT present in the on-screen image itself. They’re in ALL CAPS, in an ugly, ugly font, at least on my DVD player…
My worst is CNN Millennium 2000. It has all the various celebrations from around the world. Since I missed it live since I was doing something interesting, I thought it would be worth the $20.
I was wrong. The video quality sucks. It looks worse than my cable. You’d think they could do something nice, considering they have the masters, but it looks like they taped it off the broadcast on a VHS tape. Plus the coverage sucks. Too much talking and cutting away during the good bits.
Another DVD label to avoid is Brentwood Entertainment. You’ve probably seen their massive 10-movie 5-disc sets at Best Buy, usually horror or kung fu themed. The movies themselves are pretty rare and obscure, which makes one tempted to purchase. Here’s the line-up on one box set:
Deep Red Christmas Evil Web Of The Spider Circus Of Fear House On The Edge Of The Park Messiah Of Evil Die Sister Die Lady Frankenstein Werewolf And The Vampire Woman Sisters Of Death
All for 17.99. Sounds pretty good, until you see the discs, which are mostly ripped from what looks like 4th generation VHS bootlegs with the occasional rip from a laserdisc thrown in for halfway decent measure.
GoodFellas. A frickin flipper, straight from the LaserDisc, with no extras. This movie deserves WAY better.
Con Air. Complete bare bones. I can’t believe there wasn’t even a “Making of” thingy from somewhere that they could have thrown on to this. It’s a pretty dumb movie even for a Jerry Bruckheimer flick, but there had to be some neat stuff to all the effect shots.
And I realize that its release likely predates its rise to popularity, but I would kill for a special edition of Office Space that at least had the Milton shorts on it.
ElwoodCuse , thanks for the heads-up on Goodfellas . I own it on laserdisc but have been slowly buying the older movies as they come out on DVD. I would think that the studio would give Goodfellas the whole special DVD treatment - they could make a ton of money. Instead they opt for the cheap-o route and lose my business and everyone else who I talk to.
Well, yes, I knew that already. That’s why I was buying it for $9 at Target. I figured $9 was enough to pay for a few decent effects scenes (not to mention the fastest sobering-up EVER of a movie character).
Apart from the various “barebones” lables that they have here, which apart from the fact that they sometimes have bad transfers, are perfect for movies that you like well enough that you would have taped them if they were on the tv, but not enough that you ever bought the vhs, I think the most stunningly bare dvd I have seen (but refused to buy) was Terminator 2. Released on a proper label and all, it only had the trailer. That’s it.
Under exras it said, theatrical trailer and scene selection…
That is like advertising a video as being fast-forward and rewind compatible, sheesh…
Yeah I wish they didn’t get my business. I should have looked at what I was buying more but just saw GF, said YAY and bought it. Same with Seven. Nothing on it other than a trailer. The next week I see the version with all the extras in the same shop :mad:
