Recent Blu-Ray Haul Vol. 24

Here are again, ladies and gents.  More physical media goodness.  Yesterday, I made post on how physical media isn’t dying, it’s just going back to being a niche market the way it used to be in the 70s and 80s.  While most youngsters are fine with online streaming, collectors like me aren’t.  WE MUST HAVE PHYSICAL MEDIA!  PHYSICAL MEDIA IS LIFE!  In all seriousness, and I keep saying this, collecting physical media isn’t just about having the movie in case the internet goes out, it’s a matter of film preservation, because most streaming services just aren’t going to be keeping stuff on their services if nobody’s watching.  It’s an even worse situation for older movies from the early 20th century.  A lot of these movies just haven’t been moved over to the digital realm because the studios don’t see the monetary value in doing so.  But people like me see otherwise.  There’s value in those older movies.  Not monetary, but culturally.  The way we make movies today is vastly different from how they made them back then.  Those older films are a window into an era that no longer exists.  But it’s always important to keep an eye on the past while looking to the future.  That said, I got a bunch of crap this month, so let’s take a look.

Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey – Scream Factory

A Florida fourth grade teach was accused of showing their students Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey.  Parents were outraged.  Why?  Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey is a horror movie.  That’s right.  It’s a gory slasher movie.  Ignoring the hilariousness of the situation in that news report, Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey was made only because the characters of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet were in the public domain, which means anybody could do anything they want with the characters as long as it didn’t infringe on previous copyrighted material.  So…the film-makers opted for a slasher movie.  Christopher Robin grew up and left Pooh and Piglet behind to become a doctor.  The animals of 100 Acres didn’t like that and reverted to their animalistic ways and became blood-thirsty killers.  Is this a good movie?  No.  But it’s absolutely my kind of bad.  Look, I don’t have the emotional connection to these characters the way a lot of people do.  So, it didn’t offend me when Pooh turned into a murdering psychopath.  The use of CGI blood is questionable, but the movie was made for less than 50,000 GBP(British Pounds), but it made more than 5 million dollars.  It’s a success.  So, of course they’re going to make a sequel with a larger budget.  I’m strangely looking forward to it.

The Abomination – Visual Vengeance

Speaking of gory, we also have a micro-budget shot on video horror movie called The Abomination from 1986.  Yes, shot on video.  Which means the picture is of VHS quality.  On one hand, it’s kind of ugly, but at the same time there’s something charming about that kind of visual.  There were a lot of these kinds of movies that were shot on video back in the day.  The film-makers simply couldn’t afford the kind of equipment that you need to make the movie look professional.  So, it IS guerilla-style film-making.  The Abomination is a hoot and a holler.  It’s about a guy who discovers that his mother had a tumor that grows and requires human flesh to survive.  It’s gory.  The acting’s awful, and again, the picture quality is terrible, but that’s part of the experience.  What doesn’t suck are the effects.  It’s all done practically.  Also, look at the special features and what the disc comes with.  This is one of the best disc releases I’ve seen this year, and it’s for a movie that 90 percent of the audience hasn’t even heard of.  It comes with a comic-book adaptation of itself.

The Exorcist – Warner Bros.

It’s The Exorcist.  What more do I need to say?  It’s one of the greatest horror movies of all time.  If you’re a horror fanatic, you should already own this.

The Exorcist III – Scream Factory

Of all the Exorcist sequels, this one is what many consider to be the best, and it wasn’t even originally supposed to be a sequel.  WB wanted an actual sequel that wasn’t The Heretic, so the movie that William Peter Blatty tried to make had to go through some reshoots and ended up being cut to make more of a connection to the original film.  This set from Scream Factory includes two versions of the film: The theatrical cut and Legion, the original version that Blatty wanted to put on screen.  It’s a vastly different kind of movie than what WB wanted.  Legion is a far more character-oriented version of the film that focuses more on the relationship between George C. Scott’s character and Brad Dourif’s Gemini Killer.  It’s a solid entry regardless of which version you watch.

Halloween Ends – Universal Pictures

I know that in my review of this movie, that I wasn’t as impressed with it as I was with the first two movies in David Gordon Green’s trilogy.  That said, I’m the kind of guy that’s willing to give movies a second chance, and I’m glad I did, because NOW I get what DGG was trying to go for with this one.  I don’t necessarily think he succeeded completely, but the idea of a traumatic event that can cause people to do things that they would normally never do.  The film’s opening is still a bit of a shocker, but the overall movie is better than I initially gave it credit for.

The Conjuring Universe 7-Film Collection – Warner Bros.

Of all the movies that were inspired by The Exorcist, I consider The Conjuring to be one of them.  Now, I bought the collection because I hadn’t seen any of them before, so I started with the original movie.  Outstanding.  I’ve yet to watch the others, but I’m sure I’ll get a kick out of them.  This set has no special features, and has two movies per disc, but the picture quality for the standard DVD isn’t bad.

Prey – 20th Century Studios

This is the 5th film in the Predator in the series, and it’s the best one since the original.  It’s a prequel that takes place in the early 18th century, so it gets to take things in a different direction, and Dan Trachtenberg does a phenomenal job.  Amber Midthunder is a revelation in this film, as the film focuses on the Comanche people.  It works incredibly well, and the creature itself is still an intimidating presence.  What makes this home video release interesting, is that Prey went straight to Hulu, a streaming service instead of theaters.  Understandable, considering how lame the previous film was.  Most of us had no reason to expect Disney to release this movie on physical media.  They had it on Hulu, so why the physical release?  Streaming isn’t as profitable as Disney had hoped, and people really wanted a physical copy.  What’s great, is that this disc also includes the Comanche dub for the film, which gives the film more authenticity. It’s fantastic.

The Maltese Falcon – Warner Bros.

The Maltese Falcon is one of the great noir films of the 40s.  It is an absolute classic with Humphrey Bogard, Mary Astor,  and Peter Lorre.  The McGuffin of the film is this golden bird that everybody seems to be interested in, but the actual story involves private investigator Sam Spade as he investigates the murder of his partner, and gets wrapped up in this wild goose chase.  The dialogue, the performances, and the ending are pure gold.  There’s a reason why I love movies from these era and The Maltese Falcon is a perfect example.  It’s THE noir film that really made the genre popular.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

I’ll be completely forthcoming: I love the Michael Bay Transformers movies.  Except for Revenge of the Fallen.  That one can go die in a fire.  But the rest of them are a lot of fun.  I got a real kick out of The Last Knight, despite it not making a lick of sense.  But that opening battle in medieval times was EPIC.  The movie was absolutely silly and it was clear that Anthony Hopkins was having fun with it.  But the film was the first movie in the franchise to actually flop.  So, Paramount went back to the drawing board and we ended up with Bumblebee which was a wild movie featuring everybody’s favorite Autobot.  Now we have Rise of the Beasts which finally brings Unicron into the picture in all his enormous glory.  The movie includes two different eras of Transformers: The Gen 1 Autobots and the Maximals from the Beast Wars cartoon.  It’s also under 2 hours long, so it feels more stream-lined.  It’s actually one of my favorites of the franchise, and its set in the 90s.  It’s a ton of fun, and it made enough money at the box office to get at least one more movie.  It needs one more movie because the whole Unicron angle needs to be explored.

And those were the movies that I bought since the last time I did this.  So, yeah, I picked up some interesting stuff.  Next week’s going to see the release of Barbie and The Last Voyage of the Demeter, so you can bet your ass I’ll be getting those.  There’s also some other surprising stuff coming out that I’m interested, so I’ll let y’all know when I get that stuff.  So…until next time!