DVD releases we want to see

[J.R.]

Revenge Of The Nerds- One of the seminal '80s teen comedies. Why oh why don't most people concede that "Hair pie," is one of the all-time great lines?

The Indiana Jones and Star Wars trilogies- Perhaps someday the mad King George will throw us mortals a pittance and allow us the undeserved honor of seeing his films on disc.

MST3K box sets- You know, full seasons like they've done with The X-Files and Buffy. I know getting the rights is next to impossible, but I can dream, baby.

[Squishy]

It is a beautiful dream you have.

[Will]

Revenge of the Nerds is out, packaged with the inferior sequel....

I'd like to see Cemetery Man, The Sect, The Crazies, Street Trash, The Addiction, all on special edition DVD.

[Chris K.]

From what I hear, MGM owns some of the Empire Pictures films and I would love to see them released on "Double Feature" DVD's:

TRANCERS/TROLL
FROM BEYOND/DOLLS
GHOST WARRIOR/ELIMINATORS
ZONE TROOPERS/TERRORVISION
GHOULIES/GHOULIES 2

Also, since MGM owns the American International Pictures film vault it would be nice if they could also release the Godzilla and other Japanese sci-fi films on "Double Feature" DVD:

GODZILLA VS. THE THING/GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER
DESTROY ALL MONSTERS/YOG-THE MONSTER FROM SPACE
FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD/ATRAGON

MGM, are you listening?

[Chadzilla]

Chris K. wrote:
>
> GODZILLA VS. THE THING

and

> DESTROY ALL MONSTERS

ARE available on DVD, sadly the widescreen edition of GvTT seems to be gone

Although AIP did own the rights to many Toho films, the studio has been retaining international rights so their approved versions are released as opposed to many of the re-edits and alternate dubs we have grown used to.  Hopefully all the stuff will work out and get released someday.

[Chadzilla]

Kingdom of the Spiders
The Boogens
Crash!
Blood Beach
Island of Terror
Island of the Burning Doomed
Beyond the Poseidon Adventure
When Time Ran Out
The Concorde - Airport '79
The Dark
It Came...Without Warning
Beyond the Door
Great White (ake The Last Shark)
Jaws 3-D
The Children
Dolls
From Beyond
TerrorVision
Twins of Evil
The Vampire Lovers
Chosen Survivors
The Chosen
Grizzly (widescreen)
Day of the Animals (widescreen)
The Manitou (widescreen)
There's Always Vanilla (aka The Affair)
Silent Scream
Dead & Buried
Eyes of a Stranger
Nightmare
A Stranger is Watching
Night of the Creeps
The Monster Squad
Amityville II: The Possession
Amityville 3-D
The Mangler
GMK
Ring (Japanese version)
Starcrash
The Werewolf
The Black Scorpion
Tarantula
The Deady Manits
The Giant Claw
It Came from Beneath the Sea


and many, many more

[Vermin Boy]

I love MGM's Midnite Movies line, but they're sitting on some golden oppurtunities. For example, last I heard, they owned the rights to Night of the Lepus, which has never been released on video. Don't they realize that even casual b-movie fans would kill to get that disc? Also, I'm not sure why they haven't released Tod Browning's Freaks on DVD yet; Does anyone know if the infamous "castration" ending exists anywhere?

I wouldn't mind seeing some of Russ Meyer's stuff on DVD; He's one of those guys I've been meaning to check out for a while, but I can't find any of his stuff anywhere (except for a TV edit of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls on AMC).

Ray Dennis Steckler movies with commentary would be priceless.

[Flangepart]

"Show me da movie about the rabbits , George, show me the one about the rabbits..."
....OOoh, yeah. Lepus, Giant Claw, Deadly Mantis, GMK, Atragon...So much goodness, locked away...all alone in the dark film vaults....weeping in their solitude....

[yaddo42]

INFRAMAN

[ErikJ]

A little known gem called Whoops Apocalypse. It had Michael Richards, Loretta Swit, and the real star Peter Cook. I wish they would realese this on DVD

[Greywizard, The Unknown Movies]

MGM no longer has the rights to "Night Of The Lepus" and "Freaks" - or any of the movies they made up to 1986. That year they were desperate for cash, so they sold off their movies to the Turner company, though they still had the video rights for a few years after that. Not so anymore. It's now Warner Brothers (who bought Turner) that has the rights to the MGM catalog up to 1986. Unfortunately, Warner Brothers is *terrible* at releasing older movies on DVD, whether they actually made the movies themselves, or if they are MGM or RKO movies.

On the other hand, MGM currently owns several libraries itself, such as United Artists, American-International, Orion, Trans World Entertainment, and a few others.

By the way, while MGM still had the video rights to MGM movies, I did write to them about "Night Of The Lepus", and they wrote back and said they were thinking seriously of releasing it on video. Needless to say, they didn't.

[Chadzilla]

All those Golan/Globus Productions thought lost to bankruptcy may still prove available...

[Chris K.]

After the fans kept on bugging MGM about releasing RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD on DVD, it's well on their way. By this time, MGM should finally realize they have some films in their vaults that the fans will want to see. And for selling these cult classics on DVD at prices of $9.95 to $14.95, from what I hear the sales are doing pretty damn good. But MGM still has a few other features that they need to release.

How about the AIP valut? The vault contains such classics as EARTH VS. THE SPIDER (1958), THE SHE CREATURE (1957), PHANTOM FROM 10,000 LEAGUES (1956), THE BEAST WITH A MILLION EYES (1956). Hell, they have Roger Corman's THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED (1956) in it's original 2.35:1 SuperScope for God's sake! I speak for us all when I say we are sick and tired of reling on second rate bootleg copies of these rare features.

And hey, MGM also owns some of the Empire Pictures films. I am tired of looking at my worn out, crappy copy-of-a-copy TERRORVISION and THE ALCHEMIST video. Damn it MGM, open the vaults and start releasing! They don't seem to understand that these titles are worth it. Christ, they are releasing CRAWLSPACE! I know some fans out there want a Double Feature DVD of Stuart Gordon's FROM BEYOND/DOLLS. But MGM owns those titles because they were released by Empire! Imagine the fully uncut version of FROM BEYOND, and MGM has the film in the palm of their hands! Unbelievable!

As for the Godzilla films, I just saw the International dub of DESTROY ALL MONSTERS on DVD from ADV Films and it SUCKED! Sorry, the AIP dub is VASTLY superior than the original International dub. And I also was able to view the old DVD release of GODZILLA VS. THE THING and even that's not worth it. Sure it's in widescreen, but the transfer is grainy and fuzzy (from a print as well). I do imagine that MGM owns the original AIP dubbed version (maybe the original U.S. negative in beautiful shape). Of course, Toho has been cracking down and getting the U.S. cuts out of circulation so I guess we will never see any version available on DVD here in the U.S.

Sorry for the rant, but MGM is really starting to bug me. They have the films, they can release them. So why don't they? I guess it will be a while before we see these classics on DVD.

[mogwai]

Thrashin', Biloxi Blues and the other six Police Academy movies (just kidding).

[Chadzilla]

Chris K. wrote:
>
>  
> Sorry for the rant, but MGM is really starting to bug me.
> They have the films, they can release them. So why don't
> they? I guess it will be a while before we see these classics
> on DVD.

There was a thread about this over at scifilm and the answer put forth by one individual is Time and Money.  Making DVDs takes both and if MGM just dumped its entire library on the market all at once there would be more DVDs than the market could safely handle, the saturation would simply kill 'em faster than holding them out (i.e. the money coming in would be miniscule to the money going out).  What bugs me is that, like Escape from New York and The Howling, MGM is releasing RotLD on DVD to see how it sells to see if a Special Edition disc is marketable.  I'm sure there lots of other factors that have come into play.

As far as Godzilla goes, I would prefer the original Japanese language versions, looks like I'll be springing for some Japanese DVDs sometime in the future (good thing they're NTSC Regioned as well) as Toho doesn't want to spread them around internationally (if you think the dubbing of DaM is bad, check out Godzilla versus Hedorah, ick).