Wow, SF said fuck you Arrow, here's our December slate!

I recall Shout taking flack (and getting mixed reviews) on their previous “complete” WALLACE & GROMIT set because they didn’t include any bonus features (and/or some short films? Can’t recall), so it looks like that new set corrects that (maybe?) but then you’re stuck with a whole bunch of clutter. Definitely can wait for a standard set.

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As I mentioned with the first Golden Harvest set, Shout seems to ‘get it’ in ways the other boutiques perhaps don’t regarding some Hong Kong stuff. Stop intravenous-dripping it to us and just bundle up a bunch of solid if not overly standout pictures into a bundle. Thematically, this second volume is a mess, but even if one paid Shout’s current asking price of $86 – which will surely go down – that’s like $10.75 per movie, which is a far cry from the $18-30+ price range I’ve paid for pretty much all of those via the UK labels.

The only thing that bugs me about the set, as usual, is the unnecessary extra commentary tracks (including some that appear to be by website fanboys, again). Honestly, Shout, one per film is enough! Four on WHEN TAEKWONDO STRIKES is borderline offensive (not to mention a fifth one on the Eureka edition).

Someone here might need to correct me, but one film in that set is new to Blu, I think: 1974’s THE SHAOLIN BOXER. It’s a relatively minor title, almost filler in a box like this, but I don’t recall that on another label prior to this, so now I’m curious just how many more movies Shout may have picked up for this series, and if there are other early GH titles like that in the mix.

I'm on the opposite side of the fence. Whenever Shout has a title I'm interested in, my heart sinks a little. Not that they necessarily do bad work, but I'd put them 4th (at best) in the current HK Blu-ray wave pecking order. And I don't have a problem with box sets in general as a value proposition, but GH v.2 is just a grab bag full of leftover titles that have very little to do with one another. Legacy of Rage and Hitman aren't even Golden Harvest titles, are they?

I think curation and context are important. I understand that if someone is already familiar with these, then the idea getting them all at once and saving shelf space is appealing, but I feel it devalues the individual titles when they're just dumped into a random collection like this.

I’ll stay on my side of the fence but maybe straddle it just a little.

There are already individual releases of nearly all of these for folks who want them, and I did note that, thematically, this set is a mess. But with Hong Kong cinema on Blu-ray as recent years go by, sometimes there’s a thin line between well-intended content/curation and “Let’s just put out whatever we can get as a top-dollar Deluxe Edition” (ergo, VS’s new DIAL D FOR DEMONS, a just-ok title of lesser ‘value’ that no one has ever wondered about or longed for in the 20 years since it came out, and which would be ideally suited to a boxed set of light HK supernatural films of its era) or “Let’s release these highly-valued, semi-related titles more profitably individually instead of in a boxed set that would offer better overall context” (ergo VS’s new CORPSE MANIA, which has me suspicious that the much-coveted Shaw horror titles are going to be doled out to us on an individual basis rather than in a box like most of us have been hoping for from, say, Arrow).

Even though I have the previous Blu-rays (and/or DVDs) of all but one of the films in both of these Shout Sets – including Hong Kong editions alongside the UK/US ones – I’d wager that, based on the list of Shout’s supplements, the amount of curation and contextualization we're getting on each of these is essentially the same as if they’d been released separately by Shout or any other boutique (and, most likely, spread out over several years of waiting).

For me, my personal gauge of successful (or not) contextualization and curation mostly happens when the discs are in the player (or when I read the booklets), less so the increasingly erratic packagings. For $10-ish per movie, I’m just happy to get Region A versions of these films in one handy set that can sit alongside the UK and HK editions that I paid twice to three times as much for (even on sale, no less!) and which at first glance appear to offer an equal amount of useful supplemental material as their counterparts (well, not the HK editions, of course).

Had these been released over several more years in fancy individual editions, I would’ve bought those, too, and admittedly they might’ve looked nicer on the shelf, but ten bucks (per film) is ten bucks and my savings account appreciates a break now and again.

Regarding LEGACY and HITMAN, the latter did kinda jump out at me when I saw it in the list (a China Star film, I think), but now I’m wondering about both! I remember buying LEGACY as part of that Fox Home Video DVD line that came out in the early 00’s or so (along with a bunch of Jackie, Sammo, Michelle stuff, etc.). That was some sort of deal with Fortune Star for what I assumed at the time were all Golden Harvest titles, so I likewise assumed LEGACY was a GH title, too, but looking at the available posters for it, the GH logo never seems to appear. Maybe they just distributed it in their theatre chain back in the day (as they did with many of Sammo’s films that have been turning up on Blu in recent years), or they took ownership of the company that produced it at some point? Perhaps something similar happened to HITMAN? Don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t think they’d include them if wasn’t justified. Hopefully it’s addressed in the extras. Maybe they should’ve called these Fortune Star collections instead of Golden Harvest collections.

Shout just launched a loyalty program: the Physical Forever Club. It's free to join.

I like the fact that its a free program.

I don't like the fact that the intent is to get me to spend more money that I shouldn't spend.

It worked for Vinegar Syndrome and Arrow, according to my bank account.

Their Shocktober sale is kind of "meh"

January announcements are coming November 4th.

I like Shout/Scream Factory releases but feel like I’ve bought less over the past few years or so. In general I’m not buying as much physical media and I feel like a lot of releases now are either upgrades to 4K or stuff that’s too obscure for my taste.

I think they ran out of top-shelf classic stuff a while back, so now it's just 4K upgrades, re-releases, steel books, or that obscure stuff.

I've missed a lot of the older Blu stuff so I might watch for some 4K upgrades, but I haven't bought much from Shout/Scream lately (except Lost in Space).

There are several John Carpenter 4K titles I have been waiting for... Mainly Assault on Precinct 13, Big Trouble in Little China and In the Mouth of Madness. Ghost of Mars would be nice too.

I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for a 4K of Big Trouble in Little China or any of the other titles that SF had licensed from Fox.

I have no idea why Shout is sitting on this as long as they have. Deaf Crocodile's 4K remaster has been done for a good, long while. Hopefully they're not waiting for a 50th anniversary edition!

Why? Disney?

Yeah. The only titles that they have bothered to license out to the boutique labels are the ones that the filmmakers have pushed for, and at this point I don't see John Carpenter doing that.

Figures... damn the Mouse!

I really wish that Scream Factory could acquire the rights to make a box set of the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and give it the same treatment as they have for Friday the 13th and Halloween. Maybe someday..

I think that they have said that they have tried to get the rights to the NoES films but Warner Bros turned them down.

That’s a shame. WB doesn’t seem to care much about the franchise other than the first film which just got re-released. The current Blu-ray box set is fine but could be better.

Did the blu-ray set include all of the special features from the old DVD set? There are rumors of WB doing a 4K set, but I don't know how big of a demand there would be for the some of the later sequels.

I don't think so. Pretty sure it didn't include stuff from the bonus disc in the DVD boxed set.

Surprisingly, I believe everything from the DVD set (including the bonus Encyclopedia disc) is included in the Blu-ray set, with the disappointing exception of the trailer for the first film (every other film in the set has it's trailer). I'm not counting stuff like cast and crew biographies and dvd-rom features

https://dvddoubledip.com/titles/n/ni...elmstreet.html