DVDs With Dean: October 2008

October is shaping up to be an expensive month for DVD consumers. The majority of releases are TV box sets cashing in on their show’s new season or Epic collections which arrive early enough to add to your Christmas list. I could fill my Christmas wishlist purely with selections from this month. Here are the highlights:

Oct 7th

The 7th is a dumping ground for TV comedy the best being The Simpsons – The Complete Eleventh Season, How I Met Your Mother – Season Three, 30 Rock: Season 2, and Robot Chicken: Season Three. I’ll buy the first 3.

The new releases are pretty weak this week with The Happening and You Don’t Mess With the Zohan (Unrated Two-Disc Edition). These are rentals at best for me.

The re-releases are extra sweet with a horde of classic films. Disney cracks open the vault once again to unleash Sleeping Beauty in 2-disc glory. I’ll snag this for my wife before they lock it away again. Alfred Hitchcock gets his due with nice special editions of his best works like Psycho, Rear Window, and Vertigo. They have largely been available only in collections until now. We also get two 50 year old blasts from the past with The 7th Voyage of Sinbad – 50th Anniversary Edition and the Touch Of Evil – 50th Anniversary Edition.

Touch of Evil is notorious as the film where the producers stole the production from Orson Welles and recut the film before release. Long credited as “The Greatest B Movie of All Time” we will get multiple versions of the film including one trying to capture Orson Welles’ original vision. You also get the chance to understand all the “in-joke” moments from movies about moviemaking (Get Shorty, The Player, Ed Wood) referring to a film which features Charlton Heston as a Mexican.

Oct 14th

A couple duds roll out namely Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and War, Inc. I will rent War, Inc. based on its John Cusackness, but I am more likely to invest in the re-release special edition of Chaplin. If you are only familiar with Robert Downey Jr. from Iron Man and Tropic Thunder get yourself a dose of his Oscar nominated power as the mighty Charlie Chaplin.

Your money draining collections for this week include another Alfred Hitchcock Collection. Included in this set are many films new to DVD like Lifeboat, Spellbound, Notorious, The Paradine Case, Sabotage, Young and Innocent, Rebecca, and The Lodger.  All of these are only available in this set so, if you’re a big Hitchcock fan, you probably need this to complete your collection.

Start planning a Halloween marathon now with this cheap collection of classic horror classics from Hammer Films. Icons of Horror: Hammer Films 2-Disc Set includes The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll, Scream of Fear, and The Gorgon. Hammer Films was famous for bringing the blood factor to horror films and they lay it on thick in these classics. Also included: a healthy dose of the Immortal Christopher Lee.

And if you want to throw money away you can buy the horrifically expensive Halloween: 30th Anniversary Box Set. It has an excellent case and mask which opens to reveal a treasure trove of garbage. You get not only Halloween,  but Halloween 4 and 5. You may ask where are Halloween 2, 3, 6, H20, and Resurrection? I imagine it is because they take Trick or Treating very seriously and prefer the former. I wouldn’t buy this at gunpoint and I love Halloween.

Oct 21st

Halloween strikes again as we get The Strangers and George Romero’s Diary of the Dead on Blu-ray. I’ll wait on both and watch some classic horror instead.

What I will buy is The Incredible Hulk (Three-Disc Special Edition) and Sold Out: A Threevening with Kevin Smith. If you haven’t seen the previous two Kevin Smith “Evening” DVDs you are probably not a nerd. Good Job.

I will also put Family Guy, Vol. 6 on my Christmas list and make plans to rent Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, an interesting documentary from the genius Ben Stein.

Oct 28th

The highlight of all October is the Mystery Science Theater 3000: 20th Anniversary Edition [Limited Edition] Tin with a bonus Crow T. Robot figurine! It features four of the show’s most-requested episodes First Spaceship on Venus (1960), Laserblast (1978), Werewolf (1996), and Future War (1997). Their stuff has a nasty history of becoming very rare so grab this one quick.

If that doesn’t do it for you, grab The Flintstones: The Complete Series also available today.