This one can be chalked up to another “I didnt know what I was buying, BUT LOOK AT THAT TITLE!!!” style escapade. Theres a goodwillesq Charity shop that I frequent when Im running low on titles to review (I say “Shop” its really more of a thrift wearhouse) It was on route to a local dump and I have to assume at this point that quite a lot of the stuff that ended up in said Charity shop only did so because it was a shorter distance and often less fuss than dealing with the people who ran the dump.
I’d visit them at the end of every month and in amongst maze like arrangements of vomit and food stained sofas, broken kitchen appliences and Childrens toys that looked like they’d been tied to a tree and abandoned for the best part of 40 years I’d find the “DVD section”… I put it in quotes because realistically it was a book case full of DVD’s, pc games and anything else that could fit in a DVD bookcase.
While usually made up of TV series (Believe me if you’ve ever wondered where the biggest collection of “24” and “Midsummer murders” boxsets were held up you need go no further than this place. Nestled in amongst the TV trash and the mainstream titles that time had forgot (14 Copies of “Percy Jackson and the lightning thief” says it wasnt the most popular movie in the world) you’d find the good stuff. Films like “let’s ruin Dads day”, “Santa and the three bears” and the grail for me? “Hollywood DVD” releases and “DVD multipack” sets. The former a cheapo label that mainly deals with knock off copycat movies or the kinds of low budget affairs from the 80’s and 90’s that would make a prisoner on death row beg for the end. And the latter 9 times out of 10 being bundled in groups of 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 50 and very very rarely 100 and paired with a DVD player during the early days of the formats release.
Sadly, in both of these labels cases they’re sadly on the way out. improper storage, mass binnings and the general idea that these are worthless discs has rendered large swathes of them either scratched beyond repair or succumb to the deadly sickness that is “Discrot” (Basically when DVD’s were first being manufactured they used a plastic coating on the “read” side to protect the discs from damage not realising that that same plastic coating degrades when damaged and slowly turns into an acid that eats the disc.
Due to there prevelence you’ll always find these discs knocking around at CEX or in charity shops though I highly reccommend you check the silver side before you buy. They were manufactured cheap and sold cheaper with the understanding they were there to showcase how crisp DVD could look on a budget.
I dont visit that Charity emporium very often these days…I think there was a change in management a short while ago as I went on 3 seperate occasions over a 6 month period and all of the “Good stuff” was gone…replaced with actual proper mainstream titles that were legitimately good, there were even blurays thrown into the mix! and while I dont exactly need to find any more films to fill in my collection (I literally have stacks and boxes of tapes/dvds in my room right now). I cant help but feel a bit sad that a ritual that I did for years has been taken out of my hands…I’d clear them out of all the films they didnt want because noone in the general public would ever dream of buying “Cyborg 3” well…not unless they were genuinely mad.
This was one of the films I picked up in my final proper haul from that place and while I dont have anything to add that my review doesnt cover here…just bear in mind that when I pulled this out of a festering stack of “Little britain” DVD’s, just for a split second, I’d found my “Good stuff” for the day…and it made the trawling all worth while.
TYTD Reviews 