Scream Factory Blu-ray Discussion Thread

[Mike0284]

Originally Posted by SonnybytheSea

I was tempted to grab High Spirits (1988), but because it was a double feature with Vampire's Kiss (1988) I never bothered! I'm hoping with the Blu going out of print that SF might attempt licensing a single disc release and try to get Neil Jordan's Director's Cut of the film as well.....

There's a German release also.

[Trekkie313]

I'd love to see the original version of High Spirits, same with Death Becomes Her...

[MassiveMovieBuff]

Originally Posted by moviegeek1992

You sure you ain't tempted by this?

Something is telling me I should jump on it lol!

OK. After some research I will be getting this. Thanks for the heads up!

[SonnybytheSea]

Originally Posted by moviegeek1992

If they thought it wouldn't sell as a single release back then, there's no way they'll release it as single now.

Apparently the reason a lot of the Double Feature disc were poor sellers is because people where either fans of one of the films or the other but did not think it was worth buying together. It's one of the issues that happened with The Initiation of Sarah and Are You in the House Alone? people wanted The Initiation of Sarah but didn't bother getting it because of Are You in the House Alone? It sold poorly and almost cause SF not to deal with TV-Movies at all, that's why The Spell became a sing disc!!!

[kyleblack]

Originally Posted by SonnybytheSea

I was tempted to grab High Spirits (1988), but because it was a double feature with Vampire's Kiss (1988) I never bothered! I'm hoping with the Blu going out of print that SF might attempt licensing a single disc release and try to get Neil Jordan's Director's Cut of the film as well.....

Maybe another label like Kino Lorber or Scorpion Releasing could do it.

[jrsl76]

Originally Posted by jrsl76

Ordered Monkey Shines which I’ve wanted for a while. Would like Jeepers Creepers 1&2 but will have to track them down with slips.

Also noticed that Dead Of winter and Robot Jox has gone OOP, both of which I’ve been wanting, so I ordered both of those too.

[The Great Owl]

Double-posting from the dedicated thread...



1990s teenage angst takes a grisly turn when Steve, played by James Marsden, moves with his family to Cradle Bay, a seemingly idyllic Puget Sound town, only to find that the popular kids with the letter jackets at his new high school are uncannily persuasive when it comes to inviting outcasts into their clique. Self-improvement is a good thing, except when these clean-cut students occasionally blow their gaskets and turn into violent psychopaths. When his stoner friend, played by Nick Stahl, is assimilated into the fold and inexplicably turns into a short-haired and well-groomed preppy in a sweater, Steve and a local bad girl, played by Katie Holmes, find themselves in the ultimate battle against the worst kind of peer pressure.

When I first saw the 1998 sci-fi horror feature, Disturbing Behavior, upon its release, I found it to be a derivative affair that simply injected a young adult flavor to the Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Stepford Wives blueprints, along with dashes of the Pied Piper of Hamelin legend. Director David Nutter, who was best known up to that point for helming several episodes of the television shows, The X-Files and Millennium, knew how to generate tension, but had trouble closing the deal with a logical conclusion.

Today, over two decades after my first viewing, I still believe that this is a flawed movie, but the rose-tinted rearview mirror images, filtered through my nostalgia for certain aspects of that era, turn it into a fun slice of imperfection. The late 1990s marked a time when bleak grunge music aesthetics were transitioning to blandly safe Hot Topic sensibilities, complete with faceless bands populating the radio airwaves and fashionable dysfunction populating fictional movies and shows. Some things now seem better in retrospect, namely the song, “Got You (Where I Want You)”, by The Flys, while others, namely “Flagpole Sitta” by Harvey Danger, are just as grating on the nerves as they always were.

Fortunately, Disturbing Behavior makes an honest-to-goodness effort to bring horror back into relevancy at a time when Wes Craven's Scream had led to detrimentally self-aware scare films. I like its thematic brushes with over-medication of adolescents and pre-Columbine acts of random violence. The drab visual aesthetics, which conjure comparisons with music videos from the likes of Temple of the Dog and Pearl Jam, are amplified in effect by the Washington state film location.

Part of the odd joy of revisiting this film lies in spotting the faces from that decade that still thrive in entertainment today. Marsden found greater fame with the X-Men franchise. Holmes lent some new layers to her Dawson's Creek days. Stahl, who would later show up in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, is a multilayered character addition. Bruce Greenwood, who is known now for his role in the Star Trek reboot movies, is quite good as a school counselor with a secret. William Sadler (The Shawshank Redemption) is a welcome presence as a school custodian. Finally, Katharine Isabelle, who would later be cast in Freddy vs. Jason, has a few brief moments of screen time.

If the music score sounds familiarly nuanced to those with a memory of those years, then the recognition may stem from the fact that Mark Snow also gave us the sounds of The X-Files.

This is still not great, but, as an artifact of its time, it works.

This was never a particularly good-looking movie because of its film style, but this Scream Factory Blu-ray is faithful to what we'v got. The director commentary track is all in good fun as well.

[VeronicaSawyer]

Originally Posted by SonnybytheSea

Apparently the reason a lot of the Double Feature disc were poor sellers is because people where either fans of one of the films or the other but did not think it was worth buying together. It's one of the issues that happened with The Initiation of Sarah and Are You in the House Alone? people wanted The Initiation of Sarah but didn't bother getting it because of Are You in the House Alone? It sold poorly and almost cause SF not to deal with TV-Movies at all, that's why The Spell became a sing disc!!!

I bought that TV Terrors DVD for The Initiation of Sarah (a blind buy), but I actually ended up liking Are You in the House Alone? much more, despite having no expectations. I'm bummed that they didn't continue that line. Personally, double features are always more attractive to me when they're blind buys, but yeah, I also understand the reasoning behind those who passed on releases like that because they were a fan of one film but not the other. If you already know you only like 50% of the content you won't want to pay 100% of the price.

[spacenoid1]

Have they discovered these lists are a clever way to boost sales of old titles?

Have any titles previously mentioned actually become unavailable yet? I smell something fishy.

[Professor Echo]

Looks like BLOOD AND LACE is gone from Amazon save for the Marketplace and I couldn't find a single copy on eBay? Anyone ever see this flick? Is it any good? Now that I know it's headed OOP, I'm kind of panicking to get it, but to be honest, the reviews don't make it sound all that great.

[Member-222782]

Originally Posted by spacenoid1

Have they discovered these lists are a clever way to boost sales of old titles?

Have any titles previously mentioned actually become unavailable yet? I smell something fishy.

You ain't the only one that smells something fishy. Announce that a bunch of titles are "going OOP", everybody panics and starts buying them up in droves. My theory: Shout makes announcements in "blocks", meaning they don't make traditional monthly announcements like Arrow and VinSyn do, so there are long stretches of nothing happening. One way to remedy that is announce that a bunch of stuff is going OOP - BAM! The message boards stay active and the cash registers keep ringing. It's pretty clever, actually.

[BarnDoor]

Originally Posted by Cinema84

Shout makes announcements in "blocks", meaning they don't make traditional monthly announcements like Arrow and VinSyn do, so there are long stretches of nothing happening.

As I've said before, I'm not sure why you're under that impression - the chief culprit is the SDCC announcements, which of course take up November and December, and a share of January-March (but not all). April to October will usually be done in a monthly fashion, barring leaks and exceptional announcements.

And on that note, I expect today will see a major announcement or two which will surely get people talking (I don't know anything obviously, just a guess).

[neo_reloaded]

I believe they are really choosing to not renew the license and not repress - but the announcement is also a marketing strategy, because it triggers the 'fear of missing out' impulse in lots of collectors. So now the remaining stock flies off shelves instead of languishing there for however long.

[spacenoid1]

They must have loads left. It's a bit iffy to announce things are going oop 'next year'. It's ok to announce titles which have a low stock and which will not be repressed, but that's not what they've done. I'm assuming they've gotfour figure stock counts of most of these titles. Maybe they will even repress to meet the new 'stimulated' demand.

[Dk8819]

April Fools Day on bluray from Scream Factory. Finally.

**TITLE ANNOUNCEMENT** Happy Halloween! It may be Oct 31st but we have April 1st on our minds today as we reveal that we are preparing a Collector's Edition for Fred Walton's clever 1986 film APRIL FOOL'S DAY for a Blu-ray release next Spring. No joke! More details by year's end.

[Puffy]

Not surprising but nice to see. Now a Halloween announcement for February titles (My Bloody Valentine!) would be great. I'm ready to preorder and toss that disc rotted LG BD.

[JLaLibs]

Originally Posted by Dk8819

April Fools Day on bluray from Scream Factory. Finally.

**TITLE ANNOUNCEMENT** Happy Halloween! It may be Oct 31st but we have April 1st on our minds today as we reveal that we are preparing a Collector's Edition for Fred Walton's clever 1986 film APRIL FOOL'S DAY for a Blu-ray release next Spring. No joke! More details by year's end.

I still can't believe this one has taken so long. Back when I was programming a theater, I couldn't even find a 35mm in the US!

[BarnDoor]

Originally Posted by Puffy

Not surprising but nice to see. Now a Halloween announcement for February titles (My Bloody Valentine!) would be great. I'm ready to preorder and toss that disc rotted LG BD.

That they ended it with 'Have a fun and safe day' suggests that will be it for today unfortunately. Still, they should start revealing February's schedule from Monday, so we're due another 3-4 new announcements next week as well (as well as art for MBV and Pet Sematary 2). Them telling us to look for the pre-order page for April Fool's Day 'before the end of the year' almost certainly confirms it as a March title, which obviously makes the most sense.

[JupiterMission]

Originally Posted by Cinema84

You ain't the only one that smells something fishy. Announce that a bunch of titles are "going OOP", everybody panics and starts buying them up in droves. My theory: Shout makes announcements in "blocks", meaning they don't make traditional monthly announcements like Arrow and VinSyn do, so there are long stretches of nothing happening. One way to remedy that is announce that a bunch of stuff is going OOP - BAM! The message boards stay active and the cash registers keep ringing. It's pretty clever, actually.

I might have missed something (lots to keep track of), but I don't think Scream made an announcement that these MGM titles were going OOP. Somebody in the forum noticed that a couple of the MGM titles had silently gone OOP on Scream's site, and extrapolated from that that all of the MGM titles were going OOP. People posted lists, and others bought up what they could. It does seem like a lot of them are OOP, but I don't know that this has been confirmed by the company for all of the MGM titles.

[TripleHBK]

Originally Posted by JupiterMission

I might have missed something (lots to keep track of), but I don't think Scream made an announcement that these MGM titles were going OOP. Somebody in the forum noticed that a couple of the MGM titles had silently gone OOP on Scream's site, and extrapolated from that that all of the MGM titles were going OOP. People posted lists, and others bought up what they could. It does seem like a lot of them are OOP, but I don't know that this has been confirmed by the company for all of the MGM titles.

A Scream Factory insider posted those lists. They were also shared on the Scream Factory Facebook page. Page 1 of this thread is updated with all titles that are out of print or that are going out of print. This isn't speculation unfortunately.