Has a determination been made on stacking shipping yet? Today's sale item is one I want, and it saves me from ordering it at BF next month if I get it now.

ETA: Answering my own question here. They are NOT stacking shipping. Because my copy of Singapore Sling is already on its way. So take any item in this "sale" and add six bucks to it, cuz that's gonna be what you pay. Highly unlikely I'll buy anything else. I'll just wait till BF and bundle em.

Hmmmm

I have seen guesses online it might be Congo.

From the newsletter that came out today:
I’m not sure if Congo fits the description of the VSU release, but the third bullet point sounds like one of the titles might be the rumored release of Michael Mann’s The Keep; the commissioned artwork for that was accidentally leaked early by the artist a little while ago.

I, uhh, keep hearing about THE KEEP as being in the pipeline, to the degree that I just bought the ViaVision all-region DVD at a ‘Video Store Day’ sale here just over a week ago and finally watched it for the first time. I had only seen bits of it on an OTA television broadcast in the 80s and found it dull enough to change the channel. On the Australian DVD the movie is still kind of a slog to these eyes, but the widescreen transfer looks spectacular. Regardless, it’s the kind of movie that a boutique label could really go wild with in terms of restoring the preview cut, examining the history behind its failure, interviewing cast and crew, etc. I’ve read that even if they could rebuild it, though, it still wouldn’t be a ‘finished’ movie because of stuff that wasn’t shot back in the day (including effects?), but whatever they could construct might be fascinating to watch in comparison to what’s available now.

I watched it on the Criterion Channel when they had a decent looking version available either last October or the previous year. I think the VistaVision DVD may be from the same source as that. I also came across a very unrestored 35mm scan online, but the Criterion stream was significantly more watchable.

As far as any alternate cuts, I guess we’ll find out soon enough, but I’m not expecting any real surprises on that front. Maybe some deleted scenes, animatics, etc.

No idea how much stock to put in that, or if “recent” might be too recent for a Black Friday title.

Interesting. Even if it’s too early for BF, that post does seem to suggest that it’s on the way. As I said, it’s a movie that could anchor a phenomenal special edition, especially if a longer version can be prepared with a new audio mix where you can actually understand what the characters are saying. I’d imagine a bunch of supplement-makers are simply keeping mum at the moment. I suppose VS (or whomever gets it) could still announce it for BF but then not ship it until the new year or whenever it’s ready.

Well, looks like the VSU title was indeed Congo.
No sign of The Keep just yet, but there are two secret titles to be revealed later.

AGFA is releasing "Santa Claus conquers the Martin's and other Holiday Oddities". This looks wild!!

Anything's possible, especially with existenz being one of the reveals last year, but the secret titles are usually kinda underwhelming.

I'm hoping there is a decent BF sale so I can pick up Invasion USA. I normally don't shop at this label. The last and only one I picked up was Death Wish 2 before it went out of print.

Black Friday is 50% off. But I do not think Invasion USA would be included in the sale at that price since it came out in July. You’d have to wait until the May sale.

If you just want the standard 4K of that, the best deal is on eBay through Pop Market with their buy 2 items get 20% off. That would be cheaper than buying from VS directly, especially since they’d charge you shipping during the sale.

I don’t really get CONGO, frankly. I mean, it’s certainly an ok movie – just ok by pretty much all critical measure then and since – but it has literally been a Blu/DVD dump bin filler for decades. The original discs were barebones save for trailers, as I recall – which tells you something – and they couldn’t secure the participation of a single principal from the production (director, producer, actors, writer [ [i]not Crichton, but Shanley, of course]) for this edition, only some FX and makeup guys. Those features would be interesting to see because the effects in the film were quite good for the time, but still. Would’ve been nice to maybe see a featurette about Jerry Goldsmith as the movie does have one of his better latter-day scores, but alas. I wonder if the Paramount acquisitions are reasonably priced but come with stipulations, like “release a spiffy edition of one of our tired-out titles like CONGO and maybe we’ll see what we can do about THE KEEP.”

Definitely keen on the AGFA Christmas disc. Guess I’ll keep an eye on the quantities. So far it doesn’t seem to be selling out as quick as their INTERMISSION TIME collection, but that had about fourteen hours of content compared to this edition’s five, so maybe that was a factor.

I watched Congo recently and I can definitely see the eventual cult following for that movie. It has a great cast, some terrible acting from said cast, some bizarre story choices and a gorilla that using sign language with a robotic voice speaking for her. What's not to love?

But seriously, I wouldn't own it but it is worth a rental.

You need to move on the X-mas disc if you want it though. It is down close to 250 copies left and will probably see out today. I saw the Martian movie many moons ago and it is indeed awful. One of those that is more fun to watch the trailer than the entire movie. I am more interested in the weird Xmas shorts that is included though. Pull the trigger. You will always be able to get your money back on eBay if you have the slipcover version should you decide you don't want it after watching it.

I am still irritated that I missed The Cult Of AGFA Trailer Show slipcase version to go with my first release. But I saw that after several years, you can get the slipcover version of that original release now for the amount of the regular version on eBay. There were 1500 of it but only 1000 done of the recent release.

Precisely.

People temped by the VS edition who haven’t seen the film would probably do well to see the DVD first, which is still easy to find super cheap (or probably at your local library or on streaming). Looks like the Paramount Blu is OOP after having been cheap for years, so now that would cost you as much as the VS edition with bonus material.

Good point. I’ve been watching it throughout the day and it definitely went quicker than I thought it might. I’ve likewise seen the movie – probably too many times considering it is indeed horrible – and own the MST3K standalone ‘Essentials’ DVD from ages ago. The library here has the more recent Kino restoration on DVD, so I borrowed that because it has nearly an hour of vintage Christmas crap on it (mostly less interesting than I suspect the pieces on the VS disc will be).

I’ll just have to hope I can add enough with discounted BF stuff to justify the shipping to a Canada, which is exceptional provided you really fill a box, and I’ve kinda picked them over in the last few sales, so we’ll see.

A few months back here, I mentioned having slips for all the AGFA titles that I’ve purchased (which is far from all of them, and mostly the Something Weird-derived stuff), but it turned out I was mistaken and didn’t have the slip for the original HORROR TRAILER SHOW disc. Just last week, I found a used copy in a bookstore here for $10 with the slip. Figured at that price I could flip it on Amazon for a nice profit, until I dug out my older copy and realized it had no slip. Standard versions still fetch decent money up here, so it’s still a win-win.

I actually skipped the CULT OF AGFA slip version and will get the standard on sale eventually (if it lasts long enough). I probably could’ve made a habit of that moving forward, but technically I still can if I do decide to flip the slip version of the Xmas disc, like you say, and grab the standard later on in a sale.

According to ReelGood, Congo is currently streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime.

I was going to post the exact thing. And that was where I saw it.

The movie is dumb as shit and you sit there wondering why the studio put so much money behind it after reading the script.

I was a manager at a Blockbuster Music at the time it came out and you wouldn't believe all the promo shit and toys they made us push for that particular movie. I remember it than any other movie while I worked there. Strange choice. I think they thought it was going to be huge. We had Amy gorilla dolls on clearance forever and couldn't get rid of them.

If you are an Ernie Hudson fan, it is worth seeing for him. He chews the shit out of the scenery in it.

I recall the studio definitely thinking they had a blockbuster in the making, what with Michael Crichton, Frank Marshall, and Kathleen Kennedy linking this in the public’s minds to Spielberg and Jurassic Park just two years earlier (even on the poster), and the big budget – which they barely recouped half of – is certainly what makes it even remotely tolerable. Personally, I just don’t think it’s VS ‘upfront special edition pricing’ tolerable. VS’s own trailer actually plays up almost nothing but oddball aspects of the picture (including some strange accents), which I suppose is the right approach in trying to manufacture the aforementioned cult audience for it, but it certainly wasn’t intended that way at the time because of its pedigree.


They even produced toys ahead of the release, which went nowhere and haunted dollar stores for ages.


And speaking of Blockbuster:

Anyone know if the Santa Claus conquers the Martians bluray will show up on Amazon? If it's on the VS Website now I'd assume it'll get a wide release of the standard edition blu-ray in December.

I definitely remember the hype of Congo as the makers where hoping to cash in on the success of Jurassic Park and it being from a Michael Crichton novel. That's probably why I was so disappointed expecting a similar movie to Jurassic Park. Maybe I need to watch again before considering a purchase.

I'm sorry, but in no world is Congo worth a $40+ package. I'm fine with my $7 Blu.
With 10,000 units, these will likely be pretty discounted in those fire sale events they've been having.

My kids will tolerate a lot of older movies, but they could not get through Congo. And I admit, when they were out, I was out, too.

It would seem likely based on previous editions like INTERMISSION TIME and the AFGA TRAILER SHOW still being sold there (albeit without slips). I like to think they’ll keep these in circulation longer since most of the Something Weird content is probably public domain or close to it, and the only real ‘exclusive’ on the Christmas disc is the longer cut of the main film.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Incidentally, I can’t recommend checking out Something Weird’s YouTube channel highly enough. I posted a few of these in this thread back in the Summer, but over the past six months or so, they’ve uploaded vastly larger quantities of their classic industrial and social engineering short films straight from their old tape compilations (the latest uploaded just last night), including:

- American Industrial Cartoon Revolution (7 volumes)
- Atomic Scare Films (5 volumes)
- Classroom Scare Films (7 volumes)
- Christian Scare Films (10 volumes)
- Crime Prevention Scare Films (10 volumes)
- Driver’s Ed Scare Films (7 volumes)
- Health and Safety Scare Films (18 volumes)
- Lifestyles USA (58 volumes )
- Teenage Turmoil (13 volumes)
- Campy Classroom Classics (6 volumes, so far)

I knew about many of these from their old catalog days, and still a tiny handful of them that I found used, but I had no idea just how many they produced in some categories, or how much stuff Mike Vraney actually had in his archives. Each of these tapes ran nearly TWO HOURS, so there’s a staggering treasure trove on YouTube now. Much as I would’ve loved to see AGFA do more comps like INTERMISSION TIME and than Christmas disc, there’s truly just too much stuff to justify more than a few carefully-curated collections like those and the Trailer Shows

I subscribed to the Something Weird channel as that's a ton of videos to get through.