Post your blind DVD purchases here (1 Viewer)

[Craig S]

I have way too many "blind buy" titles to list here. But I will say the best recent "blind buy" for me was the "Three Colors" trilogy by Kieslowski (Blue, White, Red). All three films are amazing, great transfers & extras too. Highly recommended for anyone who loves film.

 

[Christian P]

This one always sticks out in my mind:
Vacation in LA, back in 1999, we were shopping for DVDs as usual (avoiding DivX at Circuit City ), I spotted the red cover of The Negotiator, which hadn't arrived in german cinemas yet, so we never even heard of it.
Samuel L. Jackson AND Kevin Spacey? Safe bet!
So I bought the DVD, another guy a DVD player and we went to Radioshack for an adaptor for the motel tv.
A great movie, a pleasant surprise, and still one of my favorites.

 

[Chris Farmer]

Let's see, my blind buys:
Pearl Harbor Vista: exactly what I expected, mediocre movie with a fantastic set of extras.
Star Trek I and II, both Director's Editions: Very glad I picked them up, although seeing Wrath of Khan for the first time just last August, I was not as impressed as many other people, I would also not pick it as anywhere near my fav of the series.
Bad Boys: Not quite as good as I was hoping, but still enjoyable. Well worht the $15
Total Recall: good, although a little too graphically violent, but still very good.
Spirited Away: Fantastic movie, need to see it agian. Wasn't all that impressed as the credits rolled, enjoyed it but not blown away, but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.
Ice Age: fun little movie. Not on the level of Pixar in animation or story, but nonetheless very enjoyable.
Three Colors: Need I say more?

On the whole I'm not a big blind buyer, I don't have the budget to let me routinely pick up movies I havne't seen, but when the buzz around it is big enough (like Three Colors or Spirited Away), the price is right (Bad Boys), or it looks like somehting I'd enjoy (Ice Age), I'm willing to go out on a limb.

 

[Sean Campbell]

I bought the following discs without having seen the movies:

Excalibur
The Wicker Man
A Clockwork Orange
The Road Warrior
North by Northwest
Vertigo
On the Beach ( mini series )
Lost Horizon ( original version )
A Bug's Life
The Rescuers
The Rescuers Down Under
Robin Hood ( Disney animated version )
Fantasia
The Plague Dogs
Kwaidan
Yojimbo
Seven Samurai
Dersu Uzala
Ran
Godzilla vs. Megaguirus
Godzilla GMK

I found them all to be excellent and was glad I took the chance.
My single best blind purchase ever was My Neighbour Totoro, which I imported from Japan last January. It introduced me to the world of Hayao Miyazaki and since then I've bought Kiki's Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, Laputa, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away ( all blind ). I loved every one of them.

Bad experiences with blind purchases? None that I can think of. I guess I'm just lucky

 

[Dan Rudolph]

Scott, wait until Xena Season 2, that's when the shows gets great. Unfortuantely, it doesn't stay that way in subsequent seasons.

My Blind Buys:
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
All About Eve
All in the Family (season 2)
Amadeus
American Beauty
Amélie
Babylon 5 (pilot and season 1)
Band of Brothers
Barbershop
Bear in the Big Blue House (Free w/ Cheerios)
A Beautiful Mind
Best in Show
Beyond the Mat
Blade II
Blood: The Last Vampire
The Bourne Identity
Bring It On
Buddy (free w/ Honey-Nut Chex)
Buffy: The Vampire Slayer/i] (Seasons 1 and 2)
Caddyshack
Cartoon Crazys #2
Cartoon Crazys Christmas
Cartoon Crazys Sci-Fi (for these I had seen a couple of the shorts, but not most)
Castle in the Sky
Catch Me if You Can
Changing Lanes
Citizen Kane
Cleopatra
Clerks: Uncensored (The tv series)
The Color Purple
The Complete Musketeers
The Count of Monte Cristo
Coupling (season 1)
The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course
Crying Freeman: Portrait of a Killer
Dawson's Creek (seaon 1)
Deranged/Motel Hell
Dinner With Friends
Dirty Harry
.hack//SIGN - Ver.01
8 Mile
Enter the Dragon
An Evening With Kevin Smith
Evolution
The Fly/The Fly 2
Friends (seasons 1-3)
From Dusk Till Dawn
From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money
From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter
From Hell
Gentleman's Agreement
Ghostbusters 2
Glenngary Glen Ross
Good Will Hunting
Gosford Park
A Hard Day's Night
Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Heavy metal
Highlander
The Hurricane
Ice Age
In the Bedroom
Jackass the Movie
Jackie Brown
Jackie Chan Adventures (free w/ Honey-Nut Cheerios)
Jaws
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
The Jeffersons (season 1)
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
Jonah: A Veggie Tales Movie
Jurassic Park: The Lost World
Jurassic Park III
Kiki's Delivery Service
Killer Klowns From Outer Space
A Knight's Tale
Knockaround Guys
The Last of the Mohicans
Lethal Weapon
Lethal Weapon 2
Lethal Weapon 3
Lethal Weapon 4
Lilo & Stitch
M*A*S*H (seasons 1 & 2)
The Majestic
The Man Who Fell to Earth
Men of Honor
Metropolis
Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis
Minority Report
Monsters, Inc.
Moulin Rouge
Murder by Decree
The Musketeer
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Mystery Science Theater 3000 Vol.3 (Seen plenty of the show, but none of these episodes)
Night of the Living Dead
Nosferatu (1922)
Novocaine
NYPD Blue (season 1)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
One Hour Photo
Open Your Eyes
Orange County
The Osbournes (season 1)
The Others
Parasite Eve
Pearl harbor
Pearl Jam: Single Video Theory
Permanent Midnight
Pi
Planet of the Apes (2001)
Porky's and Porky's II
R2D2: Beneath the Dome
Reservoir Dogs
The Return of the King
Revenge of the Nerds and Revenge of the Nerds II
A River Runs Through It
Road to Perdition
The Royal Tenenbaums
Rush Hour 2
Say Anything
Shallow Hal
Shenmue: The Movie
The Shield (season 1)
Shrek
Signs
Silent Service
Sleepy hollow
Sleuth
Snatch
Speed 2
Spy Kids
Spy Kids 2
Stan Lee's Mutants, Mosters & Marvels
Stand By Me
Standing in the Shadows of Motown
State and Main
Steel Magnolias
Sunrise
Superman II
Sweet Home Alabame
The Temptations
Thelma and Louise
Three Colors: Blue
Three Colors: White
Three Colors: Red
Total Recall
The Toxic Avenger
The Toxic Avenger part II
The Toxic Avenger part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie
Tocix Crusaders
Trainigng Day
True Romance
24 (season 1)
Twin Peaks (pilot and Season 1)
Undercover Brother
Unforgiven
Vampire Hunter D
Vampite Hunter D: Bloodlust
Where's Marlowe?
xXx

I've been happy with most of them. Didn't really care for Novocaine, though.

 

[Scott Leopold]

We've purchased over 120 DVD's blind (about 21% of our total collection), and still own all but two of them. The ones we sold off were Undercover Brother and Boondock Saints. I bought Undercover Brother based on Ron's review, and found it to be slightly amusing, but not enough to warrant a rewatching. We sold it the next day, then took that cash and ran to Best Buy to finally get I'm Gonna Get You Sucka! I bought Boondock Saints kind of on accident. My sister had me order it for her husband for Christmas. When the release was delayed, I cancelled the order, but when it finally came out they sent it anyways. Since I'd heard so many great reviews of it, I made the unfortunate mistake of not returning it. I then made a bigger mistake and actually watched it. We sold it early the next morning, and when the guy offered me $8 for it, I actually argued and called him an idiot for offering to pay so much for such a stinking pile of horse manure (my wife calmed me down before he could retract his offer).

Of our more recent blind buys, the most pleasing ones were Secretary, Far From Heaven, Shadow of the Vampire, Roman Holiday, Ringu, and Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy. The biggest disappointments recently were Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, and The Ring. Both were watchable, but not as good as the original.

The movies that we've bought blind that absolutely blew me away are The Third Man, M, Metropolis, everything from Kurosawa (Seven Samurai, Hidden Fortress and Rashomon being the only ones that weren't blind buys), Lagaan, Citizen Kane (I had actually never seen it prior to buying the DVD), Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, Battle Royale, and The Passion of Joan of Arc. Some other notable blind buys were The Happiness of the Katakuris, Audition, Tales of the Unusual, Amelie, and Mona Lisa.

The only two blind buys that I regretted but still kept were Can't Stop the Music and Hollywood Knights. I'm holding onto Can't Stop the Music just so when people look at my collection and ask if it's possible to own anything worse than Showgirls (I only own that because my dad bought it, couldn't stand it, and couldn't find anyone else to take it), I can answer them with a resounding "Yes!", and put this in as proof (to be honest, though, it's hard to decide which is actually worse). Hollywood Knights was the first DVD I ever purchased, so I keep that for sort of sentimental reasons. I bought it before we even owned a DVD player (had a DVD-ROM drive, though). This was my cousin's favorite movie when we were kids, and he was going to be in town, so I thought I'd surprise him. I tried watching some of it before he got to town, saw how bad it was, and didn't mention it to him until after he'd left. It's probably not something we'd ever watch again, but since it's the first one I ever bought, I still want to hold onto it.

The blind buys we haven't watched yet are the following:

Moulin Rouge
Quadrophenia
Love is a Many Splendored Thing
The Paradine Case
Ran
Legend of the Sacred Stone
Diary of a Lost Girl
Family Plot
Playtime
Marnie
Juno & the Paycock
For All Mankind

 

[Nick Senger]

My blind buys tend to be mostly classics, since I'm so worried about being burned by hype surrounding new dvd releases. Here they are, in descending order of how I like them:

Singin' in the Rain - Greatest blind buy of my collection; my favorite dvd after Fellowship of the Ring
The Magnificent Seven - absolutely love this movie!
Lawrence of Arabia
Citizen Kane
Some Like it Hot
Dr. Strangelove
All About Eve
Sunset Boulevard
North by Northwest
Saving Private Ryan
Shrek
Chinatown - was not taken by this movie at all
Cutthroat Island - I had low expectations, so this movie was actually pretty enjoyable, especially the music and surround sound
The Fast and the Furious - very disappointing; will be traded in soon

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - looking forward to watching this for the first time
The Godfather Collection - waiting for summer when I will have time to really savor these films--I know, I'm probably the only one on this forum never to have seen them, but don't the rest of you envy me seeing them for the first time?

 

[oscar_merkx]

Most of my blind buys over the past year have been those recommended by Ron, such as She wore a yellow ribbon, the Fog, and all of the Fox Studio Classics that I had not seen before, need I go on!!!!!

Others that I have bought mainly tend to be older classics simply because the new releases tend to be just bland.

 

[Jeff D Han]

Out of the 300 DVDs I have, there have been only 2
blind purchases-

THE APARTMENT (because of reviews and the $10 price)

RED DRAGON (because Hopkins IS Hannibal and I like
Norton's work)

I plan to blind-buy THE RIGHT STUFF Special Edition
because of reviews and it's a packed DVD.

 

[Jeff D Han]

Oh, yeah- I forgot to say if I liked these blind buys.

THE APARTMENT- Very good black comedy. Very happy.

RED DRAGON- Not as good as MANHUNTER (didn't like
the ending and Norton was wrong for the part of Graham).
Not too happy.

Another blind buy that I haven't watched yet is
HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS. Since I
enjoyed the first one I probably will be happy
with it.

 

[Brian PB]

I mostly limit my purchases to classic/foreign/independent films, and carefully research both the film and DVD quality before I buy. That said, I’ve made a lot of blind purchases: nearly 200 of my 317 DVDs. So far, I have a pretty good track record. I rate my DVDs on a scale of 0 to 5 after I’ve watched them. Close to 75% of these (61/83) rate between 4 and 5, and I’d highly recommend these. 19 of 83 (23%) I wish I’d rented first, and I may or may not have bought them. Only 3 of 83 (4%) do I totally regret having purchased. (Sorry for the large post, but maybe my experience will help someone else.)


VERY SATISFIED
5 out of 5
400 Blows (Truffaut/1959/Criterion—Antoine Doinel Box Set)
Belle de Jour (Buñuel/1967/Miramax)
Children of Paradise (Carne/1944/Criterion)
Cries & Whispers (Bergman/1972/Criterion)
Decalogue (Kieslowski/1988/Infinity—Korea, R0, NTSC)
Happy Together (Kar-wai/1997/Kino)
Man with the Movie Camera (Vertov/1929/Image)
Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer/1928/Criterion)
Red River (Hawks/1948/MGM/UA)
Seventh Seal (Bergman/1956/Criterion)
Sunrise (Murnau/1927/Fox)
Third Man (Reed/1949/Criterion)
Three Colors Trilogy (Kieslowski/1994/Miramax)
Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara/1964/Asmik—Japan, R0, NTSC)
4.5 out of 5
Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky/1966/Criterion)
Band of Outsiders (Godard/1964/Criterion)
Black Narcissus (Powell & Pressburger/1947/Criterion)
Contempt (Godard/1964/Criterion)
Carl Theodor Dreyer Box Set (Dreyer/Criterion)
Grand Illusion (Renoir/1938/Criterion)
Lady Eve (Sturges/1941/Criterion)
Last Laugh (Murnau/1924/Kino)
L'Atalante (Vigo/1934/New Yorker)
Le Million (Clair/1931/Criterion)
Los Olivados (Buñuel/1950/Films sans frontières—France, R0, NTSC)
Maborosi (Kore-eda/1995/New Yorker)
Nights of Cabiria (Fellini/1957/Criterion)
Rashomon (Kurosawa/1951/Criterion)
Safe (Haynes/1995/Columbia TS)
Searchers (Ford/1956/Warner)
Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami/1997/Criterion)
Wages of Fear (Clouzot/1955/Criterion)
4 out of 5
8½ (Fellini/1963/Criterion)
Amarcord (Fellini/1974/Criterion)
Beauty & the Beast (Cocteau/1946/Criterion—re-release)
Bicycle Thief (De Sica/1948/Image)
Blue Angel (von Sternberg/1930/Kino)
Brazil (Gilliam/1985/Criterion)
Careful (Maddin/1992/Kino)
Dead Ringers (Cronenberg/1988/Criterion)
Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Bunuel/1972/Criterion)
Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick/1964/Columbia TS)
Good Morning (Ozu/1959/Criterion)
Jules and Jim (Truffaut/1962/Fox Lorber)
Last Tango in Paris (Bertolucci/1973/MGM/UA)
M (Lang/1931/Criterion)
McCabe & Mrs Miller (Altman/1971/Warner)
Mirror (Tarkovsky/1975/Kino)
Mother & Son (Sokurov/1997/Winstar)
My Man Godfrey (La Cava/1936/Criterion)
O Brother Where Art Thou (Coen/2000/Touchstone)
Open City (Rossellini/1945/Image)
Padre Padrone (Taviani Brothers/1977/Fox Lorber)
Seven Samurai (Kurosawa/1954/Criterion)
Shoeshine (De Sica/1947/Image)
Southerner (Renoir/1945/VCI)
Straight Story (Lynch/1999/Disney)
Thief of Bagdad (Powell/1940/MGM/UA)
Trouble in Paradise (Lubitsch/1932/Criterion)
Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Demy/1964/Fox Lorber)
Yi Yi (Yang/2000/Winstar)

AMBIVALENT
3.5 out of 5
12 Monkeys CE (Gilliam/1995/Universal)
Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Herzog/1972/Anchor Bay)
Arsenal (Dovzhenko/1929/Image)
Fight Club SE (Fincher/1999/Fox)
In a Lonely Place (Ray/1950/Columbia TS)
Killing (Kubrick/1956/MGM/UA)
Last Year in Marienbad (Resnais/1961/Fox Lorber)
Life & Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell & Pressburger/1943/Criterion)
Metropolis (Lang/1926/Kino—restored)
Sweet Smell of Success (MacKendrick/1957/MGM/UA)
Victim (Dearden/1961/Home Vision)
3 out of 5
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick/1968/Warner)
Cinema Paradiso (Tornatore/1988/HBO)
Diary of a Chambermaid (Bunuel/1964/Criterion)
Fox and His Friends (Fassbinder/1975/Wellspring)
Ossessione (Visconti/1942/Image)
Solaris (Tarkovsky/1972/Criterion)
Tales from the Gimli Hospital (Maddin/1988/Kino)
2.5 out of 5
All That Heaven Allows (Sirk/1955/Criterion)

DISSATISFIED
1.5 out of 5
Breaking the Waves (von Trier/1995/Artisan)
1 out of 5
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas (Gilliam/1998/Criterion)
Suspiria (Argento/1976/Anchor Bay)

 

[Mark_vdH]

My latest blind buys are (ratings are on a scale of 0 to 5):

The Mission (4)
Irréversible (3,5)
For All Mankind (4,5)
L'Atalante (3,5)
Eraserhead (4)

No perfect 5, but not too bad either....

My best blind dvd buys ever are (all 5 out of 5):

The Passion Of Joan Of Arc
Children Of Paradise
Carl Th. Dreyer Collection
The Third Man
Grand Illusion
Rules Of The Game (R2)
To Kill A Mockingbird
Z
Barry Lyndon

 

[Greg_S_H]

Some of my blind buys:

A Bug's Life -
Carnival of Souls -
The Changeling -
Day of the Dead -
Evil Dead II - this one was okay
Frequency -
Leon - another one I merely liked
Plague of the Zombies - ambivalent
Sleepy Hollow - ambivalent
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three -
Unbreakable -
X-Men -
Yojimbo -

 

[Matt<>Broon]

Seems like a lot of us blind buy more frequently than might be expected. Not sure what the marketing guys will make of that.

Anyway I blind buy from time to time, I'd say about 30% of my collection is sight unseen, usually within genres I'm fond of or if they are regarded as classic films.

The most recent blind buys that I've been happiest with are -

Little Big Man. Based solely on Rons glowing review. I've said 'Thanks!' before but I may as well say it again here. I'm very pleased with this one.

Escaflowne LE Series box. This is probably the biggest one off (fiscal) risk I've taken in my DVD collection since it's oop and I could only find it on Ebay for $149. I don't regret a cent of it though, great Anime series. Bought on recommendation by the Otaku of HTF.

Spirited Away. I bought it because I'm learning Japanese. I'd not heard anything about it except that it was Miyazaki and after watching a DVD a friend had of Princess Mononoke I figured 'what the hell'. I'm in the percentage who can't rate the film highly enough so I'm pretty pleased with it.

 

[Kevin Thompson]

Here are a few blind buys that stick out in my mind--without actually taking a look at our collection to jog my memory, since I'm not at home now:

Vanilla Sky
The Road to Perdition
I Spy
Two Weeks Notice
Analyze That (loved the original)
Serving Sara

I have concluded that I will try to at least rent the video before I buy, with exceptions made on a case by case basis. I'll probably continue to blind-buy the following:

1) Star Wars or Lord of the Rings releases
2) DVDs highly recommended by trusted sources
3) Tom Cruise movies (for my wife) :b

 

[Will_B]

Heist http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htforum/images/smilies/thumbsdown.gif Ok, but I still wanted to throw it away because it was sick.

 

[JohnDMoore]

I have yet to be totally dissatisfied with blind buys.

Most recently I picked up "Clerks" blind and I think it's one of the best movies I've seen in a while.`

 

[Matthew Chmiel]

Some blind buys I have made in the past 4 years of DVD buying:

- 100 Girls
- 100 Women
- Adrenaline Drive
- Battle Royale
- Cat O'Nine Tails
- Cheats
- Citizen Toxie: Toxic Avenger IV --- ( not a or )
- Dark City
- Donnie Darko
- Ginger Snaps
- Hedwig and the Angry Inch
- Lost and Delirious
- Maelstrom
- Metropolis (anime)
- Mulholland Drive
- Ringu
- The Princess and the Warrior
- Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th
- Sol Goode
- Volcano High --- ( not a or )

I know I've made a lot more blind buys for films I thought that were utter shit, but I forgot about them as I quickly sold them on eBay.

 

[Artur Meinild]

The following is a list of DVD's I've bought blind, and how I rate them:

Heavy Metal+Heavy Metal 2000 (7/10)
Fantasia+Fantasia 2000 (8/10)
The Prince of Egypt (8/10)
The Road to El Dorado (8/10)
Chicken Run (8/10)
Shrek (8/10)
Final Fantasy (8/10)
Susperia (9/10)
The Thing (8/10)
Cast Away (7/10)
Princess Mononoke (9/10)
Spirited Away (8/10)
Kiki's Delivery Service (8/10)
Castle of Cagliostro (8/10)
Metropolis (anime) (8/10)
Starship Troopers (8/10)
Fight Club (8/10)
Gladiator (8/10)
Re-Animator (7/10)
Dagon (7/10)
The Prophecy (7/10)
The Prophecy 2+3 (6/10)

 

[Alex Spindler]

I've been pretty cautious about blind buys, but have gotten the following that I recall:

Kept
Boondock Saints - still a bit on the fence, but not bad at all
Below - Great find
Dagon - On the fence as far as keeping it permanently
Six-String Samurai - weird story. I was tempted to make this my first DVD. It was before I had a DVD player (before DVD was big), so I wouldn't have been able to watch it. Instead, in order to meet an instant gratification need, I bought it as VHS. Having since purchased it as a DVD, I have corrected the one regret in my life.
Blood : The Last Vampire
Cowboy Bebop : Perfect Sessions
Metropolis (Anime)
Serial Experiments : Lain
Dark Star - On the fence
Ghost World
Blood Simple
Run Lola Run
Lilo and Stitch - Just a beautiful film
Strangers on a Train
Twin Peaks : Pilot and Series

Got Rid Of
Once Upon a Time in China - I was trying to develop an interest in collecting HK action films, but there just wasn't any drive to rewatch them
Battle Royale - An excellent film, to be replaced with the 2-Disc Korean set
Dancer in the Dark - Outstanding movie, but far, far too depressing.