chuckd21

You know the ones... 50 movies on 12 discs or so. Usually themed together like 50 Drive-In Movies or 50 Sci-Fi movies. Who has 'em, who's watched 'em, and which ones are any good?

I ask because I just picked up this one because I wanted TNT Jackson and Black Hooker...

manicsounds

Nope, never. Quality over Quantity for me

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

I bought them because I enjoy some of the movies. That's what quality is for me when it comes to movies. I'm in love with movies, format comes second. I'm not going to deprive myself of watching an enjoyable movie simply because the best quality currently out there isn't 1080p with uncompressed audio.

Also, not all the prints are bad. On some horror film I can't remember the name of, Last House on something, they used the some really nice remastered print. They all aren't crappy.

Ash Ketchum

Not me. You're supporting the worst of the bootleggers when you buy those sets.

chuckd21

Am I? They're usually public domain titles, not bootlegged ones.

moviezzz

A lot of the films in the Mill Creek sets are very good quality. Some of the transfers are better than others, but they are usually all watchable.

Mill Creek also works with studios (like NBC/Universal for the Howdy Doody sets) so they shouldn't be compared to bootleggers.

marty888

I have a few of them. I try to stick with ones that are predominately pre-1953 titles, so OAR is not a concern.

The three I have purchased are:

CLASSIC MUSICALS -

MYSTERy CLASSICS

CRIME CLASSICS

Each of these has some genuine gems that were previously unknown to me. I'd say overall about 1/3 are terrible, another 1/3 are ok but nothing special, and the final 1/3 make the purchases worth it.

In general, most of the prints have been decent, though each set seems to have a handful that are at best barely watchable.

All in all, satisfied with the sets.

statcat

yep I have the horror classics and chilling classics sets and can't complain about either. From around $10 a piece you really can't go wrong with these sets if you want to see some harder to find horror movies. The quality isn't as bad as some people make it out to be either. I guess everyone forgot the days of public domain EP recorded VHS stuff. I think a few of their sets (not all) have a watermark which is definitely the only negative I can put on them.

Quatermass

I bought the "Cult Classics" 20-movie set at BigLots for $6 just because I wanted to see some of the films I hadn't seen. They were all Public Domain stuff and pretty crappy prints, but most of them are sold by Alpha for $5 a pop, so I figure I came out ahead $94.

Brian T

I have 6 of these in total, all horror/sci-fi/drive-in sets. If you're looking to buy more than just the one, wait until Deep Discount inevitably has another buy-one-get-one-free sale on Mill Creek sets, which drops the price-per-movie considerably.

As has been pointed out, they are NOT garden-variety bootleggers (contrary to the poorly-researched comments above), and have in fact removed titles from certain sets over the years because they unwittingly included them under the impression they were public domain. The vast majority of the titles in these sets are indeed in the public domain; the few that aren't, if they exist at all, are more likely a case of mistaken identity rather than some willful intent to rob a licence-holder of the profits generated by an "official" special edition (if you could even find one in these sets that would justify or deserve the cost of remastering, replication and special features so late in the game).

And for those holding out for quality over quantity in relation to the titles included in these boxes, good luck! You'll die of old age before you get to enjoy even 10% of what's in these boxes in any kind of "quality" presentation. Guaranteed. As DVD continues its downward spiral, you'll be lucky to see ANY of these titles given respectable single-disc or special edition DVD or Blu-Ray releases ever; there's just no money to be made from it anymore on a title like BLACK HOOKER.

There's good stuff in all these sets, right alongside the bad, that more than justifies the ridiculously low prices you can usually pay for them.

Brian Shannon

Never heard of or seen until this thread.

And no, I would never buy whatever that is or supposed to be

DirkUSA

No, not for me. I don't care for those sets.

statcat

It's true that they have removed titles out of their sets. I got the chilling classics set and I expected to get a few certain movies (memorial valley massacre, deadtime stories, milpitas monster) and they were nowhere to be found. They were replaced by other titles. One of the sets I have is in paper and one is in a plastic holder, which I don't like so much because it clamps down on the discs inside.

Gizmo

No, hell no. My future in-laws however love these things. When we go over they watch the 4:3 movies in an 80" projector stretched for widescreen...

Ash Ketchum

Fixed.

(That's what I meant.)

statcat

public domain movies don't have rights, kind of sad but that's just the way it is.

Brian T

It made more sense the first time around, even though it was wrong.

Most of these movies have been floating around as public domain releases (from shady and legitimate companies) since the days of videotape. Mill Creek takes it to it's logical conclusion in the age of physical media--i.e. bundling it in cheap multi-disc sets--and that qualifies them as ripoff artists? By that rationale, every single company that has released these films in the past 30 years is a ripoff artist, even though their activities are within the law. I can't even count the number of title in my 6 sets that are widely available online at places like YouTube. All perfectly legal, too. We have to face facts: this is the fate of the vast majority of titles in these sets. They'll never get any better treatment, no matter how much we might hope.

I assume this isn't about artists not getting their due or anything like that. Public domain may suck if you were one of the many whose work ended up falling under it, but it most cases, it was a fate that could have been avoided if anyone involved truly cared back in the day (or had any kind of foresight about home viewing).

Regulus

I remember when most of these Movies were aired on Television, usually between the hours of 11:30 PM and 6:00 AM, before those cursed Infomercials took over! I also have all three of their TV Westerns Collections along with the TV Detectives Collection and the Sci-Fi TV Collection. There's some neat stuff in them as well. I look on them as good, cheap entertainment!

sracer

Same here. So many wonderful forgotten "classics" in these sets. And for those titles that I've never heard of, then these are worthy blind buys at pennies a piece.

Obviously these sets aren't for DVD collectors but for film collectors and explorers.

izatright

I haven't wanted any of the titles, but I imagine if a film i loved was ONLY released in one of those sets I'd fork over a few bucks for it. I bought some cheapie Bob Hope (Road to Bali / Road to Rio) films from low-quality dvd manufacturers (i.e. BCI) for that reason.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

I have the set with those movies. Never realized they took them out.

Isn't Milpitas Monster the one that some city made?

inri222

Yup, such a trajedy. As a kid, in the 70's & 80's I used to stay up late on the weekends just to catch Chiller Theater and Fright Night.

Doctor Zoidberg

I own several of them including the Drive In set you mentioned. So far I am happy. These sets certainly aren't for the videophile or audiophile, but if you used to watch Saturday night movies or are interested in some lesser known movies that likely won't get a better DVD treatment, these sets are for you.

The transfer quality is pretty obvious by the fact that these sets include 50 movies spread across 12 dual sided discs with 2 movies on each side. You won't be getting the best quality possible, but saying that all of the transfers are horrible is a blanket statement. The worst video quality I've seen so far isn't much different from what you may have watched on late night/early morning TV. As far as aspect ratios go a lot of these movies are presented in their original aspect ratios since many were made before widescreen became a standard. Others are presented open matte. Sadly there are those that are cropped. I think the set that suffers the most from that is the Warriors pack. I don't have it but I image most of those were in scope format. Also, not every single movie is uncut, but Mill Creek isn't always to fault with this since uncut prints for some of these movies weren't always available at the time of manufacturing. I believe it was only this year that Nightmare Castle got an uncut DVD release and yet another longer cut of Metropolis is being put together. You won't find those on these sets, but that's because they didn't "exist" then.

The worst thing about these sets for me is some of them have a Mill Creek logo that pop up every now and then. Not all of them have this, but the ones that do make me a little miffed. The variable quality is to be expected when they cram many movies on a few discs and the film prints aren't always pristine, but Mill Creek had to go the extra mile to have their logo pop up a few times throughout the movie. That wasn't originally on the film print and in my opinion shouldn't be there at all, but on some sets it is. It's no more distracting than a TV network's logo or advertisements that are sometimes run on the bottom of the screen on TV, but this was just unnecessary.

Like I said before, if you want the best audio and video, these aren't for you. If however you want a big collection of movies for a lot less including some that wouldn't get a release otherwise, and if you don't mind variable quality which can sometimes be compared to that of late night/early morning movies, then go with these. Just a word of warning though: there can be overlap between the sets. Before you buy one I'd compare their contents by going to Mill Creek's official website.

http://www.millcreekent.com/

Also note that many of the 100 packs are two of the 50 packs put together. You might be able to save some money this way.

sracer

I don't think that it is unnecessary. Given the digital nature of DVDs, an unscrupulous producer could take MC's disc, remaster it and sell it. If MC needed to purchase the original film elements, I can see why they would want to protect their investment... particularly on hard-to-find films.

Without that id bug it would be virtually impossible to detect if someone used MC's copy as their own. This issue is unique to public domain titles since it isn't the film that needs protection but the digital reproduction. In contrast there is no need to put an id bug on "Titanic" because there is a single copyright holder and if that film is released on disc by a company other than the copyright holder (or authorized producer) then the violation is crystal clear.

statcat

Yeah Milpitas monster is the movie the town of Milpitas, CA made

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vCu4C1szCk

If your box is made of cardboard, it's probably the older version which has this movie and the others I mentioned. If it's plastic, it's probably like mine I'm guessing. I was disappointed it wasn't included.