Tempted to subscribe again (I did the halfway one last year) but IDK. There were quite a few last time I did like and anything I didn't, I sold on ebay, so I could recoup a small amount of the $850 cost for the full year deal.

I’ve always found it worth revisiting despite its flaws. That was one of countless Olive Films blu-rays that deserved more than the barebones treatment it got from them, so hopefully VS will do it right.

Also, I noted earlier that it would’ve been nice if VS did a Shaw horror (or other non-MA genre) box set, rather than doling them out piecemeal with 4K discs they arguably don’t need, but I overlooked the unnamed “horror box set” they have listed for November, so maybe there’s something there. Can’t think of too many ‘franchise’ series that haven’t already been done to death on physical media, but who knows!

I find the longer you hold off listing them, the better the return once they go OOP, which is inevitable. For those of us with mountains of unwatched discs on the backburner, that’s an easy task sometimes. I don’t subscribe as there’s just too many that don’t hold interest, but the temptation is always there, briefly.

I finally saw Southern Comfort for the first time a couple of weeks ago, when it aired on the HDNet Movies channel. As a Walter Hill fan, I've been wanting to see it for a while. In a lot of ways, it's The Warriors on the Bayou. Could be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it. I might get it in November when it finally goes to 50% off.

Sorry. So I guess Southern Comfort was the thriller.

Ordered Southern Comfort and Air Doll (for $15 from today's daily sale). I would have gone for Iceman Cometh but already own it.

Flesh for Frankenstein is on the current deals page for $30. That's a pretty good deal and probably the cheapest the movie has ever been since the MSRP is $79.99. Very nice box set if anyone here hasn't bought it yet.

Plus it includes the 3D version. I checked my orders and see that I paid $52.99 for it in the Black Friday 2021 sale, so $30 has me tempted to get one for resale since it’s always pretty pricey on Amazon Marketplace up here.

Also tempted by the Camille Keaton set at that price, but my interest in those films is so low it’s tough to pull the trigger.

- - - - -

Weird to see Bleeding Skull with their own label, but I suppose the partnership with AGFA for their previous releases was bound to require two separate lines eventually, because boutiques!

I've watched 2/3 of the set: Tragic Ceremony (good) and Sex of the Witch (meh). But I'll openly admit I bought it because I found Keaton so beautiful in I Spit on Your Grave, and I wanted to see her do nude scenes where she wasn't being raped.

Decided to subscribe as this is something I'm almost positive I won't be able to do this time next year and I've been purging my collection and making decent coin on a few things to at least partially cover the cost.

Sell to buy! 😉

I do that too.

lol

But I have Blu-rays and DVDs I don't need to own, though out of that there's only a 100 or so that are worth selling. The others I'm donating. Goodwill will love me once I give the 500+ movies

FINALLY, a Hong Kong release where they include all the movies! Well, ok, it’s just two movies, but VS’s new release of BLACK CAT I + II makes up for 88 Films’ greedy move of releasing only the first one a few years ago. This set, not surprisingly has an alternate mix of extras (single commentary by someone who’s not really a Hong Kong expert, new Jade Leung and Benz Kong interviews, other stuff), so I guess as always I need to keep both. Still, great to see anything HK-related that qualifies as a complete set.

Now I’ve just got to remond myself that I don’t really need to order it right now, even though using up points for it it so tempting.

https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collecti.../black-cat-1-2

Was just coming here to post about that. I've only seen the first one, and on laserdisc, but it's a fave. And yes, it IS a Hong Kong version of La Femme Nikita, no matter how much they're trying to say it's "different". But hey, it's a good story and they do a good job with it. I'm considering the pre-order too, B.

All in all, it’s a pretty solid remake of NIKITA. The second one isn’t quite in the same league, but it’s still a really decent action picture that deserves to be paired with the original. It expands the scope considerably, and was filmed largely in English on a much larger budget as I recall. As it was made with international distribution in mind, it plays out on a larger geopolitical canvas (the actual title is BLACK CAT II: THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT YELTSIN; imagine a HK film trying that today with Xi’s buddy Putin!), which kinda put it in good company with Ringo Lam’s UNDECLARED WAR around the same time. Its climactic action sequence is lifted wholesale from James Glickenhaus’s awesome SHAKEDOWN, which is fine by me. It also had an ‘introducing’ credit for Robin Shou, even though he’d been around a few years already in Hong Kong pictures. I suspect that might have got him noticed for MORTAL KOMBAT a couple years later.

I'm starting to lean in the more-likely-than-not with the Black Cat pre-order. It's listing at $50, but $32.99 with the pre. It'll probably never go for less than $25, and not until November at the earliest. Do I want to wait that long just to save another 8 bucks??

Stop tempting me, dammit! I’ve also got $10 in points from today’s order (which likewise used up $10 in points from yesterday’s order, and so on), so that would bring it down to $22.99. I know I’ll cave . . .

I love that VS is getting more into Kung Fu movies. I did a blind buy on Undefeatable and that was a blast from start to finish.

I've often said that my two favorite eras of film are the "grittiest" in cinema history: Movies set and filmed in NYC in the early-to-mid 70s, and Hong Kong films from the early 90s.

Likewise, but I also love films set in L.A./California in the same era. You can just smell the piss on the streets from those days.

Popped down to the Vinegar Syndrome store here today, my fourth visit since they opened. I was in there for a good couple of hours, touching everything aa usual, and noticed they’ve still got a steady stream of people coming in and making purchases, which is a really good sign for physical media. A lot of noobs came in too — it’s in a trendy neighbourhood — and at latest two different people asked “so, like, what are you guys?” after being overwhelmed by all the weird shit on the shelves. The owner and the other guy do a pretty good rundown for the uninitiated.

Normally I just browse quietly, and figure I’ll leave just as quietly, but then this is the kind of place where mentioning anything movie-related to the owner or staff instantly gets a decent conversation going. I said I’d been stocking up all week at the site sale, and so only really needed three used discs that I laid on the counter: the VS edition of DEAR DEAD DELILAH for $15, the Shameless yellow-case UK edition of FOUR FLIES ON BLACK VELVET for $20, and a TerrorVision double-feature set of SOV crap called VIDEO VIOLENCE for only $5.

So what’s he do? He pushes VIDEO VIOLENCE back, winces a bit (which I totally understood) and says “I’ll give you that one for free.” Then he marks down DELILAH to six bucks, and charges me sticker for FOUR FLIES. Very cool.

So we kept chatting and I’m asking a bunch of behind-the-scenes questions about VS, and the subject turns to the ANGEL movies perched on a shelf nearby. I bitched about missing out on the box set back in the day, thinking it would last until a sale and losing out when it didn’t. So he says he’s got some “misprinted” empty boxes in the storeroom, and kindly gives me one for free! The misprint is just a slight misalignment on the Angel title — on one side only — when you close the box. Now I just gotta wait for a sale on the single editions to fill it.

This place just gets cooler every time.





Hamilton Book has some recent Vinegar Syndrome releases for cheaper than VinSyn themselves.

eXistenZ (UHD) is $29.95 ($5 less than direct) and DARYL is $27.95 ($17 less than direct, though presumably in different packaging). Fatal Games and Redneck Zombies are $21.95 ($3 less than direct). I'm sure there are others, but I haven't dug in too deeply.

Those are going to be standard versions. They'll probably be even cheaper on Amazon if you're patient enough.

Definitely standard editions, as per the imagery, and the VS store guy here showed me the EXISTENZ version during a discussion of the fancy-box edition (among others) selling out. He noted the DARYL box still has a ways to go, but the standard is ready on that as well. I’d also say both might be cheaper from VS themselves in a future 50% sale, however I see that the VS listing says there are around 650 in stock. I presume they make additional copies for other retailers?

I ordered eXistenZ from Hamilton Book. Much thanks to Adam for the tip. I like the movie, but not enough to shell out extra for the deluxe edition, especially since the slipcover art of Jude Law's hairy belly skeeves me out. (I get how that's the intent, but I don't care for it.) I would've liked the booklet, but I'll live without it.

Maybe I could've gotten the disc cheaper from a future sale on the VS site, but I didn't want to risk the possibility of it selling out before that. I also find the VS site frustrating, with its periodic outages where they shut down to sell unrelated merchandise, or only sell to subscribers or whatever.