Top Five Best
DVD/Blu-ray Finds
I’ve been collecting
DVDs and Blu-rays for about a decade, and in all that time, have built up quite
a sizeable library of films. Sometimes, I come across a particularly noteworthy
movie or collection of movies (maybe on purpose, often by accident) that could
be noteworthy for a variety of reasons—perhaps it’s rare, or something I’ve
been seeking for a very long time—but these five instances are among the best
DVD/Blu-ray finds I’ve made.
5. Devious Dinosaurs
(2008, 2009, 2017)

In 2008, I was looking through Amazon.com, which was still
relatively new to me at that time, and somehow came across The Valley of Gwangi. Not only did I find that, but I found another
movie, One Million Years B.C, which
had stop-motion dinosaur effects by the same guy (the legendary Ray
Harryhausen) who did Gwangi. Finally,
I would be able to see the clips I had seen so many times in the context of
their rightful films.

By 2017 you’d think I would have seen all of the films that
had been featured in the documentaries of my youth, right? Wrong. I nailed down
the sources of all the borrowed footage, and one of them, When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth, proved impossible to obtain. Not
only was I unable to find a pirated version anywhere online or any clips on
YouTube, the DVD was out of print and considered a collector’s item. For years,
I awaited a re-release. They had to re-release it eventually, didn’t they?
Every passing year, my hopes dwindled. Then, just this year, a miracle
occurred. When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth
received a Blu-ray release. I bought it instantly (along with the re-released One Million Years B.C, also on blu ray,
with the international cut sporting additional footage I had never seen
before), and though the movie didn’t fully live up to the expectations I had
built up for years and years, it was still very satisfying to have finally seen
it.
The search for the elusive dinosaur movies that played a
significant part in my childhood is nearly complete. All that’s left is to get
a Blu-ray re-release of Dinosaurus!
(a flick from 1960 combining shoddy puppets and stop-motion, clips of which
were also often used in Paleo World), then I can rest easily.
4. Childhood Cartoons
on DVD (various)
Like most kids, cartoons were a big part of my childhood,
but even as I got older, they never really stopped being fun or entertaining.
We had basic cable when I grew up, which meant standard Canadian cartoon
channels—Teletoon, Teletoon Retro, and YTV. It was awesome, except for one
problem: every year the line-up of shows was altered, and often a
favourite of mine would get the axe, disappearing from the schedule entirely.
Three examples of this are Ed, Edd
n Eddy, Tales from the Cryptkeeper,
and Super Friends.
Ed, Edd n Eddy
originally premiered on Cartoon Network, a channel that no one (that I knew of)
had in Canada, but I first discovered it when we went to the U.S. in 2000, when
the show was still relatively new. I laughed my ass off watching it, and then a
few years later, Teletoon started showing re-runs of it on weekend mornings. I
watched it every weekend, and it never got old. Then of course, it got axed,
and for years, I never saw Ed, Edd n Eddy
again. I checked the internet but couldn’t find any episodes online.


As for Super Friends,
this came later in my childhood, toward my teen years. Half-hour installments
of Super Friends were shown on
Teletoon Retro from 2008 to 2010. My friends and I would watch it just to laugh
at the cheesy 70’s animation and one-liners, but mainly it was to see the extremely
ridiculous (and hilarious) Wonder Twins turn into various animals and
water/ice/steam-related forms. A DVD set was released in 2008 that collected
the first season of The All-New Super
Friends Hour, which turned out to be even better than the episodes shown on
Teletoon Retro, because it had more segments, more variety, and more ridiculousness.
A second volume came out the next year, and I bought both. It’s fortunate so
much of Super Friends has been put on
DVD, since Teletoon Retro no longer exists, and there’s nowhere else to see the
show.
Preserving cartoons on home video is, I think, an important
thing to do, and though these are just three of many other shows I’ve
collected, there are numerous others I’d like to see released on home video,
though I doubt a number of them (mainly the Teletoon originals) ever will be.
3. Planet of the Apes 40th
Anniversary blu ray set (2011)
In August of 2011, Rise
of the Planet of the Apes was released and surprised everyone by rebooting
the Apes franchise with innovative
cgi effects and a fresh take on the material. After seeing it, I decided I had
to see the original movies, so went on Amazon and found a blu ray set that had
all of them in a 40th anniversary collection, and it was only 40
dollars (interesting coincidence).
When the set arrived, I was surprised to find it was quite
large, and in addition to the five films, also contained a 250 page book, with
write-ups and full-colour images—a nice additional bonus feature. All of the
films look incredible on blu ray, especially the original. The image transfer
is one of the best I’ve seen. You wouldn’t guess it came out in 1968 if you
didn’t already know, the picture and audio are that clear.
Sometimes, I’ll see a movie I want, but wait to buy it in
hopes that the price drops, and sometimes this can backfire, because certain
films are given a limited home video release, meaning they don’t keep producing
copies after a certain point. This rarely happens with mainstream films, but I’ve
encountered this issue many times, mainly with older, lesser-known films.
Another problem is the edition of the film is sometimes discontinued, which is
what happened here.
2. Dead Alive? I’d buy that for a dollar! (2016)

I was perusing a pawn shop that I frequently went to and as
I scanned the spines of the “D” section of DVD’s, I saw the title Dead Alive in a bright-green font that
reminded me of the Creepshow title
font. I stopped, taken aback, and thought it must’ve been a bootleg, but no. I
pulled it out and found it was the real deal. Not only was it the real deal, it
was in perfect condition. The disc was unscratched, the case didn’t have any
damage. It was like brand new. And the price? One dollar. Pardon the pun, but
it was a no-brainer.
As of writing this, the DVD goes for 40 dollars on Amazon.
This is just one of those really lucky scenarios where someone had something
they didn’t understand the full value of, and the right buyer came along and
snapped up one hell of a deal.
1. Completing the Godzilla collection (2014)

With the announcement of a new American Godzilla movie coming out in 2014, I decided in early 2013 that I
was going to attempt the impossible. I wanted to own and watch every Godzilla movie Toho had ever made
before the release of the new movie. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, especially as
a starving student at the time, but I figured if I bought a few every so often
instead of all at once, it wouldn’t be so bad—after all, I already owned about
half of them. I underestimated the challenge this would pose.

There were three in a row that proved difficult to obtain, Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster, Son of Godzilla, and Destroy All Monsters. Sea Monster and Son had been released on DVD years before, but had since went out
of print, and copies sold on eBay had insanely high prices. So, I searched for
alternatives, and found a foreign seller who claimed to have copies of not only
Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster, but Godzilla 1985, as well, which was an
even bigger deal, because that movie had never officially been released on DVD
in North America (at that time, it’s readily available now). I took a gamble on this sketchy seller and got lucky. Though
both movies were bootlegs, the quality was good and they were affordable (but
not cheap). As for Son of Godzilla
and Destroy All Monsters, I couldn’t
find them online. Thankfully, a friend was able to get me bootlegs of both of
them.
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The majority of my collection, as it looks today. |
Many of the earlier Godzilla
movies are no longer available, but when I bought the majority of them back in
the day, I had no idea that would ever happen. Many of them, like Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, Godzilla vs. Hedorah, and Godzilla vs. Gigan, were part of the 50th
anniversary series, and though some have since been re-released, many have not.
Collecting all the Godzilla
movies is a lot more difficult than you might think. Hopefully one day a
massive Blu-ray box-set is released with all of them together in high
definition, but for now, there are only a scattering of Godzilla titles on Blu-ray (mostly paired up in random
double-features). I’m happy with my collection, even if a couple are bootlegs,
and no matter what happens with home video releases, whether a new format comes
and takes over Blu-ray and DVD, or physical media is no longer produced, I will
still have my Godzilla DVD set: one of the crowning achievements in my overall
DVD/Blu-ray collection.
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