Monday, February 15, 2010

i love a good movie trailer comp


For me at least with some movies the best thing is the trailer. So I have always loved compilations of various movie trailers. And within the last few years the great company Synapse has released 5 volumes of 42nd Street Forever. 42nd street back before NYC was "cleaned" up,was the street that had piles of what are known as grindhouse theaters. These theaters usually had double or triple bills,cheap prices. And showed a wide genre of films. Sadly nowadays most of these films are forgotten or have become lost. But at least with some the great trailers still survive. Each volume of this must buy series runs about 2 hours. And the trailers are grouped by genre,IE Martial Arts films,then some Horror films,etc. One thing I love about volumes 3-5 is that they now have a group commentary for the collections. This is a good way to not only learn more about the films the trailers are advertising but also lots of interesting trivia about this era of film history. Most of the film trailers used on this series are in decent shape,but you will get a few per volume that have all the speckles and other hints of damage. But when you consider that most of the companies that released these trailers/films were first off very low budget and second went out of business many years ago,it is surprising how good 90% of the trailers look. One thing I have always done when watching each volume is keep a pen and piece of paper nearby cause I always end up seeing a trailer for a film that I feel the urge to track down. Sometimes I get lucky and the film is out on a nice anamorphic digitally remastered DVD. But then with a large percent of these films ,you will either have to find an old vhs release or acquire the film from one of the many "grey market" dealers that are on the Internet. One quick word of warning before I finish this review,I you are easily offended by nudity,violence,gore,or stuff that is just un PC avoid these DVDs at all cost. But if your taste in film runs more to Sonny Chiba and Jim Kelly give one of these great compilations a try. I give the 5 volumes and counting a well earned A+.