Still…inexplicably unavailable on DVD

[VegaLA]

It's been a long time since the original thread of this topic has long since gone, with the popularity of Blu Ray increasing I wonder which films that have long been forgotten will ever make it onto a Digital medium! If they can't be arsed to release these films on DVD what hope have they ever getting a BR release?

For me i'm still waiting for 'The Exterminator'. Robert Ginty uttered the words '...i'll be back!' long before Arnie eveer did and surly the meat grinder scene is enough to make this B Movie action flick a classic of the video Nasty age, and yet still no show! I did find The Exterminator 2 on some of the more popular BT sites weirdly enough.

Spoiler alert

It's been a while since I last checked on this actually and it will be moments before one of you rub the DVD release, the unrated DVD release, the directors cut version and news of the Blu Ray special flame throwing mental version in my face.

[close]

And you? What film are you waiting for?

[Ignatius_S]

Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling so Sad - a rather interesting black comedy starring Robert Morse, which also features Jonathan Winters. For trivia fans, the two actors also co-starred in The Loved One, which I think is Region 1 only on DVD.

[SavageHedgehog]

Allow me to be the bearer of good news; The Exterminator has been released on DVD in the UK a couple of times, the latest (at least) uncut and currently £2.99 on Amazon!

The second one isn't on DVD at all, and has never been released uncut in the UK to my knowledge.

[knight123]

While it's available on DVD, the Criterion Collection released the Thin Red Line on Blu Ray in the US and it's been described in various places as the best looking blu ray of all time. I'm not quite prepared to spend £30 on an import yet

[El Unicornio, mang]

Amazon has it for $30 (about 20 quid)

Definitely looks worth the upgrade, judging by these comparison pics

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews37/thin_red_line.htm

[Serge]

Still waiting for 'No Surrender', the Alan Bleasdale scripted film from 1985, which features most of the 'Boys From The Blackstuff' cast - Michael Angelis as the hapless Mike, who takes over the running of a nightclub on New Years Eve to find that his predecessor has organised the New Year from hell as a fuck-you to his former boss, a gangster played by Tom Georgeson; the doorman is played by Bernard Hill (and his name is Ber-NARD), and Alan Igbon has a minor role as a driver, if I remember correctly. Also in the cast are the mighty Ray McAnally, James Ellis (as a blind former boxer), Ken Jones, Michael Ripper, several McGanns, Elvis Costello as a shit magician, a young Joanne Whalley, and an even younger Ian Hart.

Mikes predecessor has double-booked the club out to a group of Catholic pensioners and a group of Protestant pensioners, not to mention a bunch of senile and mentally handicapped pensioners who turn up later, and laid on as entertainment the inept magician mentioned above, a screamingly camp comic and a punk band. Mike has to deal with all of this and the realisation that he's now working for a gangster on the last night of the year. It's great, has some of the best dialogue Bleasdale ever wrote (which is saying something) and even ends on a positive note.

Oh, and can someone sort out the music rights so we can get 'Coast To Coast' on DVD too?

[Saucer51]

Perfect World - the comedy series starring Paul Kaye. After about 2 years of promises, still nothing.

[Famous Mortimer]

Still waiting for 'No Surrender'...

It's one of those things I've heard about loads of times down the years, have always wanted to see and never have. I remember having half a conversation when Costello popped up in "Talladega Nights" about his previous acting chops but I was drunk and didn't remember.

[Serge]

He's only in the film for about two minutes, but is quite funny. (And this is coming from someone who hates Costello.) I've just remembered that he was in Bleasdale's 'Scully' as well, playing the title character's train-set-obsessed brother - and that is available on DVD.

[Ignatius_S]

He's only in the film for about two minutes, but is quite funny. (And this is coming from someone who hates Costello.) I've just remembered that he was in Bleasdale's 'Scully' as well, playing the title character's train-set-obsessed brother - and that is available on DVD.

I didn't know he was in Scully.

Costello played the butler to the caffeine-addicted bandits in Alex Cox's Straight to Hell – Andrew Schofield, who  starred as Scully, has been in a few Cox films (three, I think).

[gmoney]

Robert Altman's Nashville is only available on region 1 for some reason. Irritating, as it's probably my favourite of his, and my DVD player is seemingly uncrackable.

[SavageHedgehog]

Astonishingly I don't think that one has ever even been released on VHS over here, at least not since the pre-cert era as the BBFC don't seem to have classified it since its theatrical release.

[The Roofdog]

Billy Wilder
Kirk Douglas

Ace In The Hole

I have still never managed to see this bloody film. But no one wants to watch that pile of old shit do they? Let's re-release The Godfather in a slightly different box.

[Absorb the anus burn]

Regarde Les Hommes Tombier... See How They Fall.

Excellent mid 90s French thriller from the director of A Self Made Hero & Read My Lips. In two different timelines, a pair of old men (one lawful / one criminal) find their lives change when they get involved with a timid, mentally impaired man.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Road by Alan Clarke, along with a lot of other great stuff by him

[The Roofdog]

Robert Altman's Nashville is only available on region 1 for some reason. Irritating, as it's probably my favourite of his, and my DVD player is seemingly uncrackable.

Good call, Short Cuts took its sweet time coming out on DVD too (or was there a ludicrously expensive Artificial Eye version that you could never find anywhere knocking about at one point?)

[weirdbeard]

Robert Altman's Nashville is only available on region 1 for some reason. Irritating, as it's probably my favourite of his, and my DVD player is seemingly uncrackable.

You could probably get a multi-region DVD player for cheaper than the actual disc, these days.

[HappyTree]

A Self Made Hero (Un Héros Très Discret) is one of my favourite films, and Kassovitz one of my favourite actors. I remember seeing Regarde Les Hommes Tomber, notable for Kassovitz and the ever-brilliant Jean-Louis Trintignant.

There are loads of amazing French films that don't seem to have made it to DVD. A real shame since I have got rid of my painstakingly taped off the TV collection of French cinema. I was going to do a PhD in French cinema once upon a time and become a lecturer on it. I may still do that, but events in my life have thrown me on a different path for now.

[Brundle-Fly]

That Summer (1979)

I've never seen this early Ray Winstone Brit youth drama on TV, at the cinema or on a grubby VHS cassette but the New Wave/rock soundtrack turned up at record fairs and charity shops for years.

I love this era of UK films but haven't even found a bootleg of this lost gem/pile of shit.  John Junkin appears too!

[Garfield And Friends]

* China Beach (great war drama tv series)

* The Last Remake of Beau Geste (one of my favourite comedy films)

[Gulftastic]

* The Last Remake of Beau Geste (one of my favourite comedy films)

What's the deal with that film? It's never on telly either. I saw it just the once, when it was on Channel 4 years ago.

[Bad Ambassador]

What's the deal with that film? It's never on telly either. I saw it just the once, when it was on Channel 4 years ago.

http://www.secondsightfilms.co.uk/coming_soon.php?a=159

[vrailaine]

Billy Wilder
Kirk Douglas

Ace In The Hole

I have still never managed to see this bloody film. But no one wants to watch that pile of old shit do they? Let's re-release The Godfather in a slightly different box.

I've watched this on DVD, criterion, I believe.

Fantastic film.

[Feralkid]

I've watched this on DVD, criterion, I believe.

Fantastic film.

Yeah the Criterion set of this is lovely.  Well worthy getting and, as noted elsewhere, the mulit-region DVD player and the disc are likely to cost the same.

[Garfield And Friends]

http://www.secondsightfilms.co.uk/coming_soon.php?a=159

HURRAH! thanks!

[Jake Thingray]

One I'd like to see, and never have, is THE TWO-HEADED SPY, directed by one-eyed veteran Andre de Toth, who briefly had a critical renaissance in the 1990's, shortly before he snuffed it. On the face of it your straightforward Great British War Film, lower down the cast list one can apparently find Michael Caine (as a German -- maybe that explains his increasingly right-wing declarations), Kenneth Griffith as Hitler, Donald Pleasance, Bernard Fox (unknown over here, but Americans think he's famous, in the way we think Ruby Wax or Ed Bishop was famous over there) and, according to David Quinlan's ILLUSTRATED DIRECTORY OF FILM CHARACTER ACTORS, Leonard Rossiter. Rossiter may have been an extra in this, in any case his participation is not confirmed anywhere else, certainly not in the new biography of him.

Frustrating that THE AVENGERS has long been trapped in rights issues, when its inferior contemporaries (the ITC nonsense that bent over backwards to try to seem American, and had Roger Moore smirking at air hostesses) have been freely and constantly available for ages, people often mistakenly assume it was an ITC thing. There are DVD's of it now, but they cost a bomb. It's just like its long-delayed debut on video in 1993, the ITC things had been available in that format for much longer, too.

[The Roofdog]

Yeah the Criterion set of this is lovely.  Well worthy getting and, as noted elsewhere, the mulit-region DVD player and the disc are likely to cost the same.

Aha! Thought it wasn't even out on R1. Ordered. I love you guys.

[scarecrow]

There are a few other Wilder films that haven't come out over here: Five Graves to Cairo(as far as I know), Love in the Afternoon(you'd think there'd be a market for this brilliant Audrey Hepburn vehicle), The Front Page, Fedora and Buddy Buddy(which is actually a lot of fun, in spite of its reputation). There are no UK copies of Midnight which is one of his best scripts in my book, and the amazing Ball of Fire only came out on DVD this year. Like a lot of Ernst Lubitsch's work, the Brackett/Wilder comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife is commercially unavailable, and sorely in need of a release.

Which brings me to Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be. Perhaps my favourite film of all time, hugely influential, unanimously acclaimed and still unavailable. Everyone needs to buy this from Korean eBay sellers, absolutely essential, utterly seminal.

P.S. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the one with Charles Laughton.

[Smeraldina Rima]

P.S. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the one with Charles Laughton.

I bet he would have had the right hump about it... _{unlike Sir Thomas More's Richard III, whose left shoulder was much higher than the right.}

[sirhenry]

That Summer (1979)

I've never seen this early Ray Winstone Brit youth drama on TV, at the cinema or on a grubby VHS cassette but the New Wave/rock soundtrack turned up at record fairs and charity shops for years.

I love this era of UK films but haven't even found a bootleg of this lost gem/pile of shit.  John Junkin appears too!

My favourite soundtrack album of all time, an almost perfect collection of pop-punk gems.
Unfortunately the film really is shit and impossible to sit through all of without the aid of restraints/disabling drugs.