What's the worst public domain DVD you've seen or own? (1 Viewer)

[PaulKTF]

Subject says it all. I keep hearing that Madacy has released some really bad transferes but I've never owned any.

 

[ScottHM]

The worst one I have is Meet John Doe, released by Madacy. Their My Man Godfrey looks terrible too.

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[Patrick McCart]

Nothing will ever top the terrible Metropolis DVD that Madacy put out.

 

[captainjoe]

I think it was Madacy but it was a terrible DVD of Night of the Living Dead. Worst transfer ever. Same goes for Reefer Madness.

 

[Harry-N]

I'll nominate Madacy's JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME on a double bill with THINGS TO COME. I bought it for THINGS TO COME, but that movie was always pretty bad (until the remaster). JOURNEY has missing frames from a cut-up print, bad color, and terrible sound.

Another I have is from Simitar Entertainment, a title called KRAKATOA EAST OF JAVA. I've only watched it once but it was a mess.

We also have a really crappy release of CHARADE from Diamond Entertainment. Again, we only watched it once but I recall it being fairly brutal. Especially because the package proudly claims " Fully Restored and Enhanced Digital Masters." So why then are there whole frames missing?

Harry

 

[David_B_K]

Sword of Lancelot from Platinum Disc is worthless. Even for $6.98 I felt ripped off.

 

[Mark B]

That was the first one that came to my mind. Unwatchable.

 

[Patrick McCart]

What's funny about Charade is that I found The Truth About Charlie marked down to $9. It has the restored/remastered 16x9 Charade on the b-side. The cheapest PD discs I've found are around $6. Not a bad alternative if you don't want to get the $25 Criterion for the extras.

 

[Keith Paynter]

Oh yeah, anybody remember CMH (Classic Media Holdings)/XOOM's version? One of my first DVD's...

 

[Jim Peavy]

The Alpha disc of Fleischer's Gulliver's Travels (I'm assuming it's PD - ?). Unbelievable. Got it as a gift from a friend. Took one look at it, got it out of my player, walked over to the trash can, and in it went...!

 

[MielR]

I agree. Even some of the horror movies I've picked up at the $1 store have looked better than Mandacy's Metropolis.

 

[george kaplan]

Picking the worst looking Madacy is like picking which cesspool you'd like to take a bath in.

 

[Mark B]

Thanks for the tip off. I somehow missed this release. Just ordered it at DeepDiscountDVD for $6.09. Looking at DVDBeaver, I think Universal's master looks better than the overpriced Criterion disc.

 

[ted:r]

I'd have to put in a word for the PD "Mr. Arkadin" (I've forgotten what company put it out.) It was the only DVD transfer I've ever seen that was simply unwatchable. Thankfully, Criterion re-issued it.

 

[Harry-N]

I remember being curious about THE LADY VANISHES, ran out to a local store and bought a $6 DVD. I watched about six minutes of it, got up, went to another store and bought the Criterion version and "donated" the crap one to a library at work.

Harry

 

[george kaplan]

Apparently Criterion is putting out a new transfer of The Lady Vanishes in November, though it remains to be seen how much of a visual upgrade it will be.

 

[Patrick McCart]

Criterion's has a larger bitrate and was approved by Stanley Donen, so it depends.

Criterion does need to rethink some pricing on their handful of public domain releases. Charade can at least be found for $26 at DVD Planet. The cheapest I've seen for the W.C. Fields short collection is $20. That's really not that fair to price a bare-bones disc like that when you can get shorts collections from WB and Disney with four times as much content for the same price. Consider that you can get 7 hours of Popeye cartoons (with tons of extras) for $44, while the 2-hour Criterion of Fields (no extras) is $20.

Also, I'd like to offer up the St. Clair Vision 3-disc set of Charlie Chaplin films. While it does have all of his Keystones, they're all terrible video masters. Worse than Metropolis. They even stole the fantastic remaster of The Kid from the David Shepard transfer used for the CBS-FOX laserdisc and DVD... and screwed it up by compressing it to 2.5 mbps and adding a ton of DVNR.

 

[Bob Graham]

If I'm going to be honest, I'd have to say Alpha's release of the 1926 version of STUDENT OF PRAGUE, however, this is a film that was considered lost and is not available from any other source, so I'm glad to have it, "warts and all". Maybe it can be restored someday.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

My PD disc of The Blob is pretty wretched. Looks like it was taken from a well-worn release print.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

My bottom disc is the Madacy version of the Battle of Russia from Why We Fight. In order to fit it and another title onto a single-layer disc, they just CUT the climactic last 12 minutes of the film! It goes straight from a scene of increasing tension to the end credits!