FREE DVDS!!!

Folks, you might find this hard to believe, but the state of physical media in this world was once so much more plentiful, that studios would just give you some for free!  Major motion pictures, Oscar Award winners, hit TV shows, junk, you name it.  You could just pick them up at a store, find them mailed to your house unsolicited, or get with a box of cereal.  No kidding.  I lived through it and I saved the evidence.  So let's have a look; it can't all be boutique label comparisons.  I gotta live up to the name of this site and post something offbeat once in a while.  So let's start at the bottom and build up to the most interesting.

It's easy to understand why these first couple discs were given away for free; they're basically just novel forms of advertising.

In 2005, I was buying something at Suncoast Video in my local shopping mall.  And on the check-out counter was an open box of DVDs that said "FREE- TAKE ONE."  So I did.  It was a little promotional DVD for Tyler Perry's film Madea's Family Reunion, which was coming to theaters in a couple months.

So what's actually on there?  Not that much.  After a couple warnings and logo screens, for The Tyler Perry Company and Lion's Gate, we get the teaser trailer for the film.  That's followed by the full theatrical trailer.  And finally that's followed by what might have been interesting for big Perry fans at the time, but isn't worth much now that the film's out and readily available: a two minute clip from the upcoming film.  It's all non-anamorphic and improperly interlaced.  But looking it up, it seems like the home video release of this movie doesn't include the teaser or trailer, so maybe there's like one super hardcore fan out there who's happy to own this DVD.

if you only click to enlarge one screenshot in your entire life...

And along the same lines but a little more compelling is DVD Inside: The DVD Entertainment Magazine from Artisan Home Entertainment.  Calling this a "magazine" is exceedingly generous - it's basically just a collection of, as it says on the front cover, "over 30 movie trailers."  They're divided into exciting categories such as "What's Out There," This Holiday Season" and "$15.00 and Under."  But there is a magazine-like aspect, starting with a weird ass 30-second video of a woman talking to a creepy CGI man on his television (don't worry; he ends up in prison!).  Another woman speaks to us on the menu screens, explaining what all the options are.  And like the Madea DVD, it also tries to get us excited over an exclusive clip - in this one from their upcoming T2: Judgement Day restoration.  It's also non-anamorphic and and problematically interlaced, so I wouldn't say they do a good job of selling it.

But there is something marginally worthwhile on this disc, too.  An exclusive interview with Steven Soderbergh and Terence Stamp at a Virgin Megastore about their film, The Limey.  It's only a couple minutes long, but the actual Limey releases don't have any on-camera interviews and are generally starved for extras, so at least it's something.  There's no year on this, but given what they're marketing, this must be from 2000-2001, and it has buy.com branding on the back.  They had a whole website and (actual paper) magazine subscription service where they would send you a whole bunch of stuff; and they produced DVDs with whole movies on them (search "InsideDVD" on EBay).  But this is the weird freebie I got.

This next disc, I don't know, my parents just randomly got it in the mail one day in 2008?  The actual name of the disc is TWC_NY_MAILER.  It's a promo disc for TNT's show, The Closer.  It starts with a joint commercial for The Closer and Saving Grace, focusing on how they've "redefined what it means to be a woman on television."  Then it gives you a complete episode of The Closer, apparently from season 3.  That's it, no gimmicks or ploys, just a free episode of the show in the mail.  And despite being newer than the other discs, it's still non-anamorphic and badly interlaced.  But hey, back before most people had streaming, a free episode of a show in the mail was kind of a neat, random surprise.

everything's playing in that little box in the middle.

A little less straight forward is this promo disc for Lost that came free inside an issue of TV Guide from 2009ish.  No whole episodes here, but for fans, it had some interesting odds and ends.  The menu screen constantly plays ocean sounds the entire time unless you click the mute button, which you absolutely will want to do, because all of the video plays inside a window on the menu screen.  So yes, the ocean sounds play during, and conflict with, the audio from the videos.  It starts with a trailer for season 2 and a teaser for season 3.  But then we get some deleted scenes from season 2, and a couple behind-the-scenes featurettes, including an interview with JJ Abrams.  I looked it up, and some of this stuff wound up on the Lost season 2 boxed set, but one of them was only on the Spanish and German sets, and these particular deleted scenes appeared on any of them.  Something interesting for the Lost devotee who has everything.

But enough of these scraps!  Didn't I say entire, major motion pictures were given away for free?  Yes, like these two from 2005: 12 Angry Men (the original) and 1998's The Man In the Iron Mask, which were part of Kellogg's Movie Lovers Collection.  See, once you collected five "tickets" from your cereal boxes, you could print out an order form and mail them, select from one of eight titles.  The others were: Agent Cody Banks, Hackers, It Runs in the Family, Return to Me, Baby Boom and Honeymoon in Vegas, and later, they re-ran the program but with Fox DVDs.  So you just mailed them an envelope, and they mailed you back the DVD in a glossy paper sleeve.  You could even cut off part of the sleeve and use it as a $2 coupon on MGM special editions in stores... but I'm too much of a collector to cut up my DVD covers.

Anyway these, to be clear, are not special editions.  They're completely barebones.  They don't even have menu screens.  They're also fullscreen 1.32:1 editions, which was a little surprising, since MGM had already released the correctly framed widescreen versions at that time.  And yes, they're interlaced.  Apparently, all free DVDs must be interlaced, no matter what.  Maybe it's intentional sabotage to make viewers want to double-dip?  It was a little hard to complain, though, when they didn't even ask us to pay for shipping.

But the best gifts are surprises, right?  So here's an Academy Award winning movie that arrived completely unsolicited and unexpected, delivered in a paper envelop inside our morning newspaper (specifically, The Home News Tribune): Smile Pinki: A Real-World Fairy Tale.  It won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short in 2008.  It's a documentary about, and funded by, a charity called Smile Train, which performs free cleft lip and palette surgeries on impoverished children in India, focusing on one particular little girl named Pinki Sonkar.  It's a little schmaltzy and self-congratulatory - if you pay attention to Academy voting in the documentary categories, they often favor causes they like over what happens to actually be the best movie - but it's genuinely well done, filmed on location and following her journey first-hand.  I believe the reason Smile Train distributed this disc free of charge was a way to promote their charity, and hopefully make back the expense in new donations.  You can't be mad at that, especially when the only consequence for us was a free movie.

That's Chris Melonie in the dark green.  They just... let him do that.

Again, of course, it's non-anamorphic and interlaced.  English subtitles are burnt in and not always easy to read.  And obviously it's completely barebones, right?  No, that's where you're wrong!  There are actually hours of bonus features!  There's a featurette about how Pinki was flown to America so she could walk the red carpet at the Oscars and a traditional 'making of' featurette.  And then there is tons and tons of video by and about Smile Train.  It's like an infomercial broken up into pieces: "Walter Cronkite Reports," "10th Year Anniversary," "Report from Bangladesh," etc.  And there's tons of celebrity endorsement videos, by people like Diane Sawyer, Christie Brinkley and Alex Trebek, plus the chairman and founder (that's two separate people) of the charity.  There's even a piece about actor Chris Meloni (star of Law & Order SVU and Wet Hot American Summer) traveling to India and wvwn performing part of one of the children's surgeries.  Honest, for real!  Hey, it's all for a good cause, but I can't imagine any human being on Earth actually watched all of it.  But the stuff that actually acts as DVD extras for the movie are nice to have, and certainly unexpected.  Just like the disc itself.

But that's what life was like before 2010, young readers.  Sometimes the world just gave you DVDs, whether you asked for them or not.

The Frighteners, Or How I Learned To Stop Waiting for Arrow and Love the Turbine

Y'know, I think 1996's The Frighteners may well be my favorite Peter Jackson film.  He's certainly made more ambitious films, and more charmingly scrappy indie flicks.  Heavenly Creatures may be more moving, The Lord Of the Rings trilogy more epic, and Braindead more gleefully gruesome.  But this one just situates in the perfect middle: Baby Bear's Just Right porridge (and featuring Jeffrey Combs' greatest performance after Re-Animator).  Interestingly, Jackson originally presented this to Robert Zemeckis as a potential Tales From the Crypt feature film.  Zemeckis says in the documentary (discussed below) that he didn't think it was a good fit, but wanted to produce it anyway.  Really, he didn't think The Frighteners made a good match for the tone of Tales From the Crypt, but Bordello of Blood did?  The Frighteners' distinct blend of humor turning increasingly dark feels like the ideal encapsulation of the TFtC spirit; the best you could ask for outside of an authentic EC tale.  But hey, whatever got us to this end point, I wouldn't change it now, because the movie we've got now, as it is, is just about perfect.

So it's interesting that it largely lives on now as an extended "director's cut."  I put that in quotes because, in his own documentary on this film, Jackson specifies the theatrical cut is still his preferred director's cut, and he considers the extended cut a fun alternative for fans.  I enjoy the restored material, but I agree, the tighter cut is better.  The extended version, which runs a hefty twelve and a half minutes longer, mostly features more comic bits with the comic relief ghost characters, and there's a pinch too much of that for my tastes in the theatrical cut already.  Some of it is clever, many of the effects are well done and a couple of the action sequences feel a little more fleshed out; but there's a reason he cut it in the first place.  There's only one cut I regret, and it's no coincidence that it's the only cut imposed by censors rather than the filmmaker's inclination towards making a superior picture, where Dee Wallace stabs Jake Busey for their mutual enjoyment.  It's a great little moment that says everything about who they are and where they're at in life; and I'd actually love a third cut of the film that's just the theatrical version plus that.  But c'est la vie.  At least we get to see it in the extended cut.

Universal first released The Frighteners on DVD all the way back in 1998.  It was anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1, but pretty disappointing considering that same year there had been a massive special edition with four and a half hours of extras and a new extended cut, while this DVD just had the basic theatrical cut and a fullscreen trailer.  But in 2005, overseas fans got what we all wanted when Universal released special edition DVD sets in various regions around the world, with everything from the laserdisc and a new introduction by Jackson.  I personally opted to import the German version because it was spread over four discs rather then three like in most other countries.  There was no additional content or anything, but I hoped it might have a better encode?  Anyway, they did make a US version, too, but it was a single flipper disc that dropped the theatrical cut, so it was clearly the worst option.

And apart from reissues with variant covers or whatever, that was it until the days of HD, when Universal did pretty good by the movie in 2011 with a 15th Anniversary edition, which included both cuts and all the legacy extras.  Unlike Jackson's earlier work, it was looking pretty sweet on home video, and that BD carried us over to the 4k era.  In 2022, Germany's Turbine produced an exclusive 4k restoration as a pretty massive, and certainly not cheap, 6-disc BD/ UHD set.  That included a BD and UHD of a 1.78:1 open matte version, which I guess has marginal novelty value for truly enraptured Jackson lovers; but if you asked me, it basically just came down to paying a lot of money for an intentionally misframed version.  So I held out...

...Especially since there was strong reason to hope for a preferable alternative!  Arrow included a promotional postcard for a Frighteners release of their own in their 2020 4k UHD release of King of New York (confirmed in this unboxing video, screenshot above).  So when Turbine came out, many of us were already in ye olde' "wait and see which is better" mode.  Of course, there still has yet to be an official announcement to this day, and everyone assuming it was just around the corner is feeling pretty deflated.  Speculation is that Turbine signed an exclusivity agreement to be the sole international distributor for this film for X number of years, foiling Arrow's initial plans.  Maybe it's still coming eventually.  But then there's also always the concern that even if it does happen, Jackson will want to create some kind of janky AI-enhanced, 200fps DNR'd redux that would actually be worse than the 2011 blu-ray anyway.  Meanwhile, Turbine eventually released a much more reasonably priced edition that dropped the 1.78:1 discs and the 1080p version, but still included both cuts in 4k plus all of the special features in a very handsome 3-disc BD/ UHD set.  So I finally broke down and gave up on Arrow (which probably means it will be announced tomorrow, amiright?), and copped the Turbine, which I have for you now.

1) 1998 Universal DVD; 2) 2005 Universal DVD theatrical; 3) 2005 Universal DVD ext;
4) 2011 Universal BD theatrical; 5) 2011 Universal BD ext;
6) 2025 Turbine UHD theatrical; 7) 2025 Turbine UHD ext.

The US disc starts us off at 2.40, while the German disc (on both cuts... on every release with the two cuts; their transfers are identical) opens it up a smidgen to 2.35:1.  You can also see the framing shift vertically, showing more along the bottom and less along the top.  This framing persists through the rest of the subsequent releases, which are also 2.35, though the UHD reveals slivers more picture along the edges.  Color-wise, there are never any vast swings.  The original DVD is a bit red, which was corrected by the special edition DVD, and the UHD is a pinch cooler than all previous editions.  Turbine's Dolby Vision HDR pulls a bit out of the shadows, but it's not like the previous blu was crushing stuff.  It is more naturally defuse, though, and the 4k resolution definitely captures the film grain much more thoroughly and naturally.  In short, each edition is a subtle but distinct improvement over the previous, but you'll really appreciate the boost if you've skipped any of them along the way.

The initial 1998 DVD starts us off with the original 5.1 track, optional English subtitles, plus a French dub and Spanish subs.  The special edition keeps all of that and also adds a new DTS 5.1 to the director's cut.  They also add a German dub (of course) and additional French, German, Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovenian, Swedish and Turkish subs.  Then the blu-ray scales back all those options, returning us to just the 5.1 (now in DTS-HD) and French dub (still lossy) with English, Spanish and French subtitles.  And finally, Turbine gives us The English and German tracks in 5.1 DTS-HD, 2.0 mix-downs also in DTS-HD and a new Atmos mix for the extended cut, with optional English and German subtitles.

So, as I mentioned above, the original DVD only included a fullscreen trailer as an extra.  But the the special edition DVD, and the subsequent releases covered here, rounded up all of the extras from the laserdisc, which is a ton.  We're talking four and a half hours, not even including the commentary.  And it's a great commentary.  Jackson delivers it over the extended cut, and enthusiastically discusses all manner of the production, from pre to post.  But then that's like a pittance to the elaborate documentary he crafted, rivaled only by his Lord of the Rings appendixes.  This has everything, from the deleted scenes, extensive behind the scenes footage that sticks with scenes for long stretches of time (as opposed to your usual B-roll, which just gives us frustrating glimpses), outtakes, cast and crew interviews and more.  There's one section where he animates the film's storyboards, scores them and provides an audio commentary for that, pointing out all the ideas that didn't make it to the final film, etc.  It's a real treasure.  Jackson also shot a brief, new introduction to the bonus features for the special edition DVD, which has also made its way to the BD and UHD editions.

Now, besides that, Turbine has created an all new, feature-length retrospective.  And I am not just happy but surprised to report this new doc is great and doesn't simply repeat details adequately covered in the previous extras.  It features a Jake Busey, Dee Wallace and a whole bunch of crew members sharing additional, unheard memories of what it was like when LA came to New Zealand.  Besides just having the additional perspective of time, they get into less promotional-areas that the original supplementary materials skipped, like working with Michael J. Fox as his Parkinson's symptoms were staring to flare up or effects artist Wes Takahashi talking about how he was made to act as a sort of spy for ILM and Zemeckis when working with WETA.  This feels like the filmmakers did what I always pleading for them to do: watch the original extras and cut out all the repetition, so everything is fresh and adds to the conversation rather than repeating it.  So this is a great addition to the already comprehensive collection of extras, which to be clear, have been carried over in full on the Turbine release.

The 2022 edition came in an outer slipbox with a hefty 196-page book (but remember, it's all in German), plus a fold-out poster, six art cards and a replica of Frank Bannister's Psychic Investigator business card.  The three disc-set did away with all the swag, but was also released in three cover slipbox variants (using the same art pieces) with a back slip that does pass Grindhouse Mike's "does it fit int he box" test.  There's also a steelbook version of the three disc set that comes in a slipcover.

So who knows?  Maybe Arrow will still come out with their version one of these days, and hopefully not processed through Jackson's virtual reality machine.  But even if that day comes, I'm not sure there's much that bears improving upon here.

The Re-Animator Is the Dominator

Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator is in the weirdly unique position where its unrated version is actually shorter than its censored, R-rated version. By several minutes, too; not just a few seconds. I remember holding both VHS tapes in my hands back in the day and thinking they had to have been mislabeled; but no, it's true. Why? Because the R-rated version, though missing the most extreme, controversial shots like you'd expect, features a bunch of less shocking scenes trimmed out of the unrated version. I guess for pacing. But I grew up with both versions, and so, while horror fans naturally gravitate towards the bloody unrated version, I always thought something special was missing from it. Of course, something special was missing from the R-rated version, too; and if you've seen the film, you know exactly what moment I'm thinking about.  heh

Update 7/17/15 - 6/7/26: Wow, talk about a page in need of an update, huh?  Well, I've skipped a few editions since I originally wrote this, but I'm back with the new 4k UHD from Second Sight.  Oh, and yes, the title of this post does come from the fact that I'm listening to this song.  I'm easily susceptible.

When Elite Entertainment released their excellent 10th anniversary Re-Animator laserdisc, it included, amongst many other things, the unrated version with all of the deleted scenes as extras and a detailed timeline of where each of those would fit into the complete film. I always wanted to use those to make a composite cut, but back in those days, getting a digital recording of a laserdisc and trying to edit a high quality movie file on a personal computer was technically possible, but rather daunting.

So, when Elite came out with their Millennium Edition special edition, I got that; and when Anchor Bay came out with their re-release, including a new 70-odd minute making of documentary I switched to that version. And I've still got that one, so we can use it for a comparison here. Yeah, Image put out a blu-ray; but I never felt compelled to upgrade. And I'm glad I didn't, because a year later, the German DVD company Capelight came out with their own 3-disc special edition blu. And not only did it feature a new and much improved 4k scan and restoration from the original negatives, which frankly would've been enough, but they used that new transfer to create "the Integral Cut," which combined all of the extra R-rated version's footage with the essential unrated moments. It's the Re-Animator I've always wanted... although admittedly some of those long scenes of Bruce Abbot and Barbara Crampton could've been left on the cutting room floor. But still, this is now my definitive Re-Animator; it's great.

Now, Capelight's released a couple different versions of their new Re-Animator blu. A cheaper single disc edition, a combo pack with Bride of Re-Animator, and the one I opted for: the 3-disc mediabook set. The 3-disc set is two dual-layer blus and one DVD, containing all the extras (more on that later). It has the Integral cut, of course, but also the traditional unrated version from the same 4k scan, in case you're not as sure of the new cut as I am. And it has a standard def presentation of the TV cut as well, for completists, or yaknow, just for fun.  It was the cutting edge ten years ago.

But now we've had some new contenders.  Arrow released a blu-ray which is basically the same as Capelight's, but with some extra features mostly about Re-Animator: The Musical.  And more recently, Ignite in the US and Second Sight in the UK have made a new scan (well, I think Ignite made it and SS licensed it) for a proper 4k Ultra HD release, taking it to the next generation for the next decade.  Let's take a look.

1) 2007 Anchor Bay 2007 DVD; 2) 2013 Capelight Integral BD;
3) 2013 Capelight Unrated BD; 4) 2013 Capelight unrated DVD; 5) 2013 Capelight TV BD;
6) 2025 Second Sight Integral UHD; 7) 2025 Second Sight Unrated UHD.

I'll get one thing out of the way right off the bat: not only are Capelight's Unrated and Integral cuts using the exact same transfer, so is Second Sight's Integral cut, which despite being on a UHD disc is still just 1920x1080.  Their unrated version boasts the new transfer, but their Integral cut is just a carry over from 2013 (and the same is true, for the record, of Ignite's release), no upgrade to be had there.

Now, let's get into the framing.  Anchor Bay's 1.82:1 aspect ratio may be more correct than Capelight's 1.78:1 numerically, but seeing how it chops off Dean Halsey's hand, I'd say the Capelight more properly reveals more.  But Second Sight finally perfects it with an exact 1.85:1 ratio and most of the picture AB lacked.  Also interesting is the TV cut, included on one of the blu-rays but in standard definition none the less. Sure, it's the fuzziest and worst looking of the lot, but it's also open matte.  At 1.32:1, while it has all the same picture on the sides (compared to the older framing, of course, as seen on the AB shots), there's additional picture on the tops and bottoms.  Ugly, boxy misframing, of course, but fans may want to at least pop it in and scan through it as a curiosity piece.

The new colors, even starting with the Capelight, are far more natural than the red-heavy look of AB disc. Grain is very real there, too; though of course the UHD really perfects it.  Its Dolby Vision also pulls out a smidgen from the shadows, but honestly not very much.  Capelight's restoration was already excellent, there wasn't much else to do in 2026 besides tweak the AR and slap it on a proper 4k disc.  The colors and HDR differences are pretty subtle.  Don't get me wrong; it's excellent, arguably perfect; The Re-Animator was just in a really good place already.

Anchor Bay starts us off with stereo and 5.1 remixes, and no subtitles.  Besides the multiple German audio tracks, the unrated version (on both Capelight's blu and DVD) sports 5.1 and 2.0 stereo English mixes. And it's got optional English subtitles as well. The Integral cut doesn't have the subs or 2.0 mix, but does have a DTS-HD 5.1 English track. Capelight has also added an isolated music score.

And Second Sight?  They've gone back and restored the original mono in DTS-HD, as well as the stereo and 5.1 mixes on the unrated cut, as well as included English subtitles on both cuts.  Unfortunately, not only does their Integral cut only have the 5.1 remix, but it's lossy.  Their one point of downgrade.  I think they really regard the Integral cut as just an extra.  Oh, and they've dropped the isolated score. Another niggling disappointment.

Extras are a pretty solid lock for the Capelight blu, carrying over everything from past editions. Re-Animator covered itself in the special features department pretty early on. The old laserdisc already had two excellent audio commentaries with all the major players, plus the long list of deleted scenes and trailers. Then the Millennium DVD set added interviews with just about everybody, plus some storyboards and odds & ends and even an isolated music score; and those extras have stuck with just about every subsequent release. Anchor Bay, being Anchor Bay, of course added something new to the mix: that 70 minute documentary I mentioned earlier. And that, along with all those other extras have been ported over to Capelight's release. No, they didn't really come up with any new extras, but there's not much left that needs to be added that wouldn't just be redundant at this point. Re-Animator already came fully-loaded.

The media book packaging includes a nice 24-page booklet, but the text is all in German. Looks nice, though. There's also a couple inserts and auto-playing bonus trailers for other Capelight releases on each disc. But that's the only non-English friendly content. Every cut of the film and all of the extras are in English.

Redundant or not, though, we have new extras now.  Like I said, between Capelight and now, Arrow added the musical-related stuff, plus a new interview with Crampton, that goes over more of the rest of her career, and a long featurette about Lovecraft adaptations on film.  Second Sight hasn't carried over the musical stuff (though for the record, Ignite did), but they do have the Crampton and Lovecraft interviews.  Then Ignite and Second Sight share a bunch of new stuff, including Re-Animator at 40, a new conversation between Brian Yuzna, Combs and Crampton, which is a nice look back, but repeating many of the same anecdotes we've heard already in these things.  But there are also new on-camera interviews with editor Lee Percy, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon and a featurette where filmmakers like Mick Garris and Joe Lynch sing Re-Animator's praises.  And Second Sight has a couple of exclusives, both by expert Mike Muncer: a video essay and an audio commentary.

Second Sight's release comes as a single UHD disc or a limited edition which throws in an extra BD copy of the film, plus a 150-page hardcover book and six collector's art cards.

You could tell the people at Capelight really cared about this film, and came up with a blu-ray package that didn't just upgrade our old DVDs to HD but really strove to give us a definitive release.  Other countries are started to pick up on their 4k scan and integral cut and release it around the world, including Second Sight (hey!), Arrow and Umbrella.  It wasn't until 2025, when they were able to land this film on a higher gen disc, that there was really cause to upgrade.  And even now, more casual fans may be satisfied with any of the BDs with the Capelight scan, and hold out for a UHD restoration of the integral cut, too.  But there's no denying that they've been topped.  Time comes for us all.  And then we're left carrying our heads around in a small surgical pan.