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Rating:  - More good stuff from MCE
This is another good collection of public domain flicks from Mill Creek entertainment. It has everything from horror, blacksploitation, and kung fu to monster movie classics, car chase pictures, comedies and a western or two. Not all are great, but enough are if you like B-Movies, to make the set worth the price. You've got directors rangin from Roger Corman to Dario Argento here. A good companion to this one would be Chilling Classics.
Rating: - Some Good Shiznat!!!
I just wanted to throw in my two cents, and give this product a five star rating. I expected nothing but the worst from this product. And I have to agree with most of the reviews, good and bad.
The quality of these movies is not the best. And the biggest problem I have is the audio. Still it is not all that terrible, considering the age of most of these films.
For $13.00 I can say, "this compilation is great". I have watched 8 movies so far, and they are exactly what I expected. Total trash!!! Hehe. I expected more shock value (i.e. grinhouse, exploitation) types of movies. But for the price I can't complain.
Some of the movies on this collection are for sale at $15.00 a piece. And the ability to actually watch these movies (although edited?!!) is worth every penny. If they turn out to be somewhat decent, I might actually buy the remastered editions.
Bottom Line: Think of the movies you would find on 'up all night' with Rhonda Sheer, or 'Kung Fu Theatre'... or the legendary Elvira. That is what you're in for.
Rating:  - Drive in Movie Classics
I've found only a few of the movies that I actually liked. Some of the movies are of poor quality and really bad plots--I wouldn't recommend it.
Rating:  - The Best Deal Imaginable On A Cost Per Minute Of Running Time Basis!
In this set, Mill Creek Entertainment brings you 4399 minutes of pure entertainment for $12.99. How can you beat that? Oh sure, you might say that the movies they chose were the cheapest (i.e. public domain) available. You might say that most of the movies were horrible. You might think you will never manage to get all the way through the set, but just think how cheaply you are being entertained, and for how long. Of course after watching the movies you may still feel profoundly ripped off, but that's the fun of this set.
The 50 films vary from modestly good to absolutely wretched. Most of the films have been adequately reviewed separately, but some of these are not to be found anywhere else. Because I don't have the energy to write a critique of all fifty films, I'll mention a few of the obscurities that are difficult or impossible to find elsewhere.
"Treasure of Tayopa" is a movie about a group of explorers setting off across the Mexican badlands in search of gold under the leadership of a woman with a snake obsession. It is jaw-droppingly bad, and may be the most amateurish film of the entire bunch. I love campy grade-Z movies, but this was almost too much for me to bear. It actually makes "Manos, the Hands of Fate" look well crafted and subtle by comparison.
"The Devil With Seven Faces" is an Italian crime drama full of odd missteps, double crosses, a super lawyer who is actually quite fallible, and cops wearing baking mitts on their hands for no good reason. It is style over substance and despite lots of dramatic set ups, it turns out exactly as you will predict.
"Breakout From Oppression" requires close attention. It is dubbed from the original Mandarin, but the dubbing job is awful and it's often difficult to tell what's going on. The picture is also awful: it has the worst overscanning I have ever seen; you can't even read the credits, and anything happening in the periphery of the frame is a mystery to the viewer. In essence it's a woman-versus-woman vendetta piece about a woman who was just released from prison, and the strange things that happen around her (and her boss) after she gets a job at a prominent newspaper. One of the main plotpoints involves Wanda's spring rolls, and if I was looking for a four word synopsis of the film I would have to go with "spring roll love triangle." This one grew on me as time went by, although it is still difficult to comprehend in its entirety due mostly to the language barrier and bad scan.
Perhaps the most annoying movie in the set is the execrable "I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now?" which is a comedy with no humor. This film features such things as a man wearing a chicken suit to a dress ball, the worst Bela Lugosi and Humphrey Bogart impressions in recorded history, an endlessly subcontracted contract killing on the protagonist's wife (beware especially the subplot involving the Indian musician, Captain Bobo and $4000 worth of lip gloss), and an undercover insurance physical performed at the dinner table. I can't even stand to think of this movie. It is absolutely repellant.
"Country Blue" is bears a striking resemblance to "Smokey and the Bandit", except no one in this film can act. It's basically an excuse for rednecks to act like lunatics. The one part of the film that amused me more than any was the presence of Dub Taylor as "J. J. 'Jumpy' Belk," an old coot who was constantly dressed (mostly at racing events) in a ratty Ex-Lax t-shirt, which I am sure must have been from his personal wardrobe.
Perhaps the most amusing film in the set for pure camp value is a little Bill Rebane nightmare called "Twister's Revenge." Twister is a truck with a super-sophisticated computer brain worth $200,000. The bulk of the film is Twister versus Dutch, Kelly, and Bear, three idiots who are intent on stealing Twister's brain. The film features a really bad faux-Kenny Loggins theme song, a tank chase, and a girl who shows more emotion for Twister ("Twister needs me!") than for her fiance. At least it ends with a honeymoon in a van. Now there's class. This is a movie so cheesy (it would have been an all-time great episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000") that it actually made me laugh out loud.
There are a lot of great camp films here (e.g. "Invasion of the Bee Girls"), and a couple of genuinely good movies (e.g. "Absolution"), but most are, honestly, just plain bad with different degrees of entertainment value. Most of the films have poor transfers and muddy sound, but this is clearly a buying-in-bulk value proposition. Some of these films I would never, ever watch again for any reason (e.g. "Voodoo Black Exorcist"), while some I will probably crack open for an evening of camp at some point in the future (e.g. "Prisoner of the Lost Universe").
My biggest complaint was that my set was missing disc number five. Even though 46 of these films were more than enough for a while, being the dedicated completeist that I am, I emailed Mill Creek. They were exceptionally prompt in responding with a replacement disc; I definitely endorse their customer service. I recommend this set for people who enjoy unconventional cinema, laughably bad movies, B-movies in general, or (in most instances) horror fans. Be prepared for middling quality, but the price is definitely right.
Rating: - When Bad Movies Happen
This is a collection of mostly questionable movies, the primary question being--who thought they were worth making? Are there huge tax breaks for people who put up money for bad movies? There has to be an explanation.
Many of these movies aren't just bad, they are brazenly bad, as if spiteful filmmakers made them just to insult the audience. Some of them are more like surveillance tapes than professional movies. The few that are worth seeing are undermined by dreadful picture and sound quality. Virtually every film in the collection is a bad print, with breaks, scratches, cue scribbles, or missing footage. When I say footage, I mean sizable chunks are missing from some films, from seconds to minutes. The picture will be grainy, blurry, murky, or washed out. The sound will be garbled or muffled. There is unintended buzzing, crackling, and snapping.
On the other hand, some reviewers say these problems are part of the charm of this collection. You stand warned.
One artfully bad movie with decent picture and sound quality is Night Train to Terror. A few more like this would have made the collection a good buy.
There is an upside:
I gave the collection an extra star because it might be a good buy for some people. If you have someone in your life who is going blind and/or deaf, watching these movies will give you a clue what they are going through. For someone stranded at a desolate outpost with hours to kill and no TV reception, this collection provides hours (and hours and hours) of low-cost content that conceivably beats twiddling your thumbs. One review mentions soldiers in Afghanistan as likely beneficiaries of these tastefully selected craptaculars. Don't they have satellite TV over there?
On a portable DVD player or iPod, picture quality isn't as much of a concern. If you are flying from the United States to the Philippines or Australia, this collection might help ward off boredom on a marathon flight. I can think of better material for such an occasion, but this type of movie does have its admirers.
And yes, as one reviewer noted, the packaging is good.
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