You have to go back to the store, supermike!

I apologize if I'm not reading this correctly. Happy Birthday to Me just started appearing about 2 weeks ago. It's actual release date was 10/13. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think everyone is seeing it as part of WM's horror display by now.

I picked up a copy of "The Old Man and the Sea" with Spencer Tracy for $5. Probably the only Tracy movie from 1935 to the end of his career that I've not seen.

Found Reds at the Keeaumoku St. (Honolulu) location tonight, and also picked up Urban Action Cinema, which is 15 lower-tier Blaxploitation movies, none of which I've ever seen.

There's a lot of Happy Bday to Me at my local Wal-Mart. Is it a good movie?

I like it but you have to sort of appreciate slasher movies. Its plot is a little more complex than the typical one.

My Walmart's $5 bin is now a $4 bin. Lots of newer stuff added to it, including the 4-movie Ringu collection.

Hmmm... Ours is still $5.00 or it still was as of yesterday.

I found the Ringu collection in the $5 bin also, but it rang up at $4.

These are finally popping up around here. I guess we weren't good enough for $3 DVD's. Anyway, I picked up the following $4 titles:

Roman Holiday
American Gigolo
Stalag 17
Beverly Hills Cop
Beverly Hills Cop 2

As well as the April Fool's Day/My Bloody Valentine double feature and X-Men 3 for $5. The X-Men was a floater, but it was the only one left and the only one I've seen for $5, so I grabbed it.

Was this the old version or the new one?

Yes it's great....

OK - so it wasn't in the bargain bin but the 2-disc Transformers 2 BR release today for $13 was a pretty smokin' deal for me.

I honestly have no idea. How do I tell?

New version



Old version

stalag 17 is the new version

Finally found Ringu Anthology at my Wal-Mart.

Looked last week, and they didn't have it, but I picked up Babel and Jackass I and II for $3 each. They had about twenty copies of Babel.

Earlier tonight, I stopped in to pick up a few things and the Paramount display was now $4, and looked like it had some new stuff added. And, behold, there was a single copy of Ringu Anthology of Terror waiting there for me. (Though not a single copy of Babel that I could see. I can't see them selling out of twenty copies of that movie...)

Stopped by for some other items and found some new stock, I picked up:
Ringu
Roman Holiday
Sunset Blvd
The Odd Couple

They have raised the prices from $3 to $4 but at $4 these are a steal.

Saw a bunch of Babel and Zodiac (non DC) in my bin, along with a lot of those "80's" movies like Some Kind of Wonderful, Beverly Hills Cop I, II, and a few others. I wish I could remember more, but I was not paying that close of attention.

Found a bunch of Terms of Endearment

The four WMs on my circuit have none of this good stuff. Same old same old, plus $5 bins have vanished from two of them. Haven't bought anything at WM in three months.

<Begin rant about my local Walmart>
It's even worse at my local (nearest) Walmart. Last year they had 3 $5 bins (1 was only Spanish titles) and lots of $7.50, $9.00, $13.xx, etc. displays in the aisle in front of electronics. They then took away all of those displays in the aisles and left only 1 $5 bin in the front, and they've taken away some of the existing DVD shelf space where there are lots of empty spots. They told me they didn't even get the $3/$4 display people are talking about here. Short of new releases and a small handful of other older titles, mine has next to nothing. So I haven't bought any DVDs/BRs at my local Walmart for so long I can't remember.

Now I did buy 2 $4 titles (Ringu and all of the Centennial Collection DVDs I wanted were gone of course) at a different Walmart that hasn't destroyed their DVD section like mine, but that's a rarity. My Walmart has all but said with its actions that it no longer wants to be in the DVD business except for new releases which I generally don't buy.

I also read somewhere (could've been here) that Walmart has been having disappointing DVD sales and plan to cut their DVD sections further. I don't know if that's all stores or just some, but mine has already been cut so bad there's not much left to cut. Mine has maybe 40 BR titles total.

I know when Black Friday comes, even if my Walmart pricematches again I can forget about PM'ing the Best Buy or Target door busters because my Walmart won't carry them. I seriously only use Walmart for food nowadays, the exact opposite of how it was a couple years ago.

<End of rant about my local Walmart>

For months, I've been trying to find a copy of House Season 1 in anamorphic widescreen at a decent price to replace my non-anamorphic copy. Last night, I saw that Wal-Mart is carrying the first 4 seasons at $24.95 each and decided to check the Season 1 copy that was on the shelf. Sure enough, it was the anamorphic version. Usually $20 is my price limit on most TV seasons, but I made an exception in this case since I got the first non-anamorphic one as a gift.

Anchor Bay chose the right method of moving units of this turkey: bulk sales to Wal-Mart for the Halloween racks. To some, they no doubt hope, more copies on the shelf might suggest the film must have something going for it.

So, just for balance, it's an awful movie. Five dollars is the bare maximum you should ever pay for it. This was one of the few "slashers" of the period that I never got to see first run, yet never felt compelled to seek out in all the intervening years until I saw it on the $5 rack at a U.S. Wal-Mart. But man, what a dud! I love the key scene early where a car falls from a drawbridge: three different camera angles show the car landing on it's roof in the water, the fourth and final shot shows it landing on it's wheels! (because that's what the plot actually required). Or how about that great shot of the blue Trans Am jumping the same bridge, decimating it's entire front end upon landing (with debris flying every which way) but actually restoring itself to pristine condition in the next two to three successive shots! The film is rated R, presumably for language, because there's NO nudity and surprisingly little gore. J. Lee Thompson was clearly too conservative a director for the genre, and too old (he was around 66 when he made this). Rewind some of those kills and see just how little they actually show you, and it's not a case of "less being more" (not in a film as quick to cash in on the "event-related" horror craze as this one was), it's just tight editing disguising poor filmmaking. And what of the legendary Glenn Ford as Dr. Faraday? He deserved all the flak he took for appearing in this, but at least he got a paid trip to Quebec, the land of his birth, out of the deal. Most horror movies require red herrings, but the ones in this stupid film could stock a Great Lake. Everyone is required to exhibit beyond-strange behaviour just to keep us guessing (even the benevolent Ford: "I'll never let anyone hurt you", he says, rather obsessively), but it gets so ridiculous after a while that you end up waiting, exasperated, for the inevitable Scooby Doo reveal.

So, if you can get it for $5, go for it to be a completist. Any more is a waste. Thankfully, I flipped mine on the Canadian Amazon marketplace for twice that, so I'm almost tempted to pick up a couple more!

I'll have to re-watch this and see if your review is fair in my eyes. I have always remembered this as a slasher classic, and I watched it over and over back in the day. Your observations about continuity I am sure are spot on, but I'll have to give it another view to see if it doesn't hold up. I have the 1st Dvd release and was planning to pick up the new one for the restoration of music.

In fairness, continuity errors and other flaws turn up in many mainstream slasher efforts of the period, but they're so plentiful--and so galling--in HAPPY BIRTHDAY that I'm rather stunned by all the praise I've read since I watched it (tried to avoid most of it before that). This was a film made by people who seem to have (in addition to visions of easy money dancing in their heads) some amount of contempt for the audience for these kinds of films, presumably assuming them undiscriminating enough not to care about glaring flaws. (Thompson wasn't exactly known for horror anyways; CAPE FEAR doesn't really count). I won't spoil the ending, other than to reiterate the arbitrary, Scooby Doo feel of it: such reveals raise more questions than answers.