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Bargain Bin(ge): Bucket O’ Blood (Chicago, IL)

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Bucket O’ Blood is a bizarre little shop tucked away off the beaten path in a small neighborhood of Chicago. It is primarily a record store, but also has a specific niche as an emporium of science fiction and horror books, magazines, and movies. As a bonus, it also has an enviable and eclectic selection of film scores on vinyl.

bucketoblood13 bucketoblood11 bucketoblood10 bucketoblood8 bucketoblood7 bucketoblood6The store has been around for the better part of a decade according to the clerk I spoke with, though its current location is only a few months old. There isn’t much else around it: a couple of restaurants and a bar, but it is hardly a thriving commercial area.

bucketoblood5The selection of movies here isn’t particularly wide, but it is quality. A few standouts I left on the shelves include a (probably bootleg) copy of Sam Fuller’s Shark, a hilariously deceptive copy of Roger Corman’s self-parody Creature From The Haunted Sea, and a Korean movie about a killer Taxi Cab.

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Likewise, you might not find a bargain here, but the ambiance makes the cost worth it in my mind. Check out some shots of their delightful decorations:

bucketoblood1 bucketoblood2 bucketoblood4 bucketoblood3Now, on to my bucket o’ movies from Bucket O’ Blood:

Robot Wars

Apparently, according to IMDb, this movie is a sequel to Robot Jox, the cult classic by Stuart Gordon. I had always heard that Crash And Burn was the sequel, but apparently that movie just features some re-used footage. Honestly, though, I doubt that either movie bears much in the way of a real connection to Robot Jox. Robot Jox was a huge financial undertaking for Empire Pictures, and wound up contributing to that company’s bankruptcy. However, out of the ashes of Empire, Charles Band created Full Moon Pictures as a successor, which produced both Robot Wars and Crash And Burn in the early 1990s. As is often done with low budget pictures, a bunch of the more expensive special effects shots from Robot Jox were re-used, so that the company could get more bang for their buck. I imagine this is the only reason why multiple giant robot movies were put out by Full Moon Pictures in the years following Robot Jox.

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In a delightful happenstance, the box set that contained Robot Wars also included Crash And Burn, the other wayward descendant left in the wake of Robot Jox. Thanks to this haul, I might have enough material to do another Killer Robot Week in the near future.

Murdercycle

First off, what an awesome title. I don’t know anything about this movie, apart from a single clip of the transformation sequence that I watched on YouTube. That and the title were enough to sell me on this movie. It remains to be seen if this is a forgotten masterpiece or a disappointing failed concept, as Full Moon has been perfectly capable of creating both.

The Demon

The Demon is early 1980s slasher film that came out during the biggest boom period for the genre. From what I have seen, it is a bit polarizing: some dismiss it as no more than a Halloween clone, while others have positive things to say about the film’s atmosphere. However, most seem to agree that it isn’t a good movie when all is said and done. I haven’t seen it before personally, and the plot struck me as just odd enough to make it worth checking out. A serial killer movie involving a psychic detective made me immediately think of Suspect Zero, though I imagine that is where the similarities will end.

Creature

Creature is yet another film from the dark era of Klaus Kinski’s twilight years, not unlike Star Knight. From what I hear, it is a notably gory Alien knockoff that has developed some clout as a b-movie cult classic. Interestingly, it apparently re-used props and sets from an earlier abysmal Alien knockoff, The Forbidden World.

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Bargain Bin(ge): Unclaimed Baggage / Nerdtopia (Scottsboro, AL)

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Scottsboro, AL is approximately in the middle of nowhere. I’ve grown up with a family lake house nearby, so I’ve been going in and out of the small city for many years. However, I’ve never considered it much of a location for DVD hunting, so I never expected to cover it here on the blog.

One of the city’s few claims to fame (outside of racism) is Unclaimed Baggage: the mythical place where all lost luggage items from airlines eventually go to stay. As you might imagine, it has an interesting collection of media and electronics (as well as one of the creatures from Labyrinth, weirdly enough).

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However, the downside is that the store doesn’t exactly discriminate based on quality, so the selection is mostly special features discs and single discs from dvd sets. If you have the time to spend, you might find something decent in the muck. For example, I picked up an old Doctor Who dvd there for a couple of bucks once. However, on this particular round I didn’t have a lot of time to kill. That said, I still found a little something amidst the stacks:

The Kid Stays In The Picture

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This is an acclaimed documentary about Robert Evans, one of the key figures of the New Hollywood era. He had hands in movies like The Godfather, Chinatown, and Marathon Man, among many others. However, he is definitely a polarizing figure, and his interactions with Coppola on The Godfather are particularly legendary (depending on who you ask about them). I’ve read a bit about him in an assortment of books about the era, but I’ve never actually gotten around to this documentary. I’ve heard plenty of good things, so picking it up for a buck or two seemed more than worth it.

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Elsewhere in Scottsboro, a new little store has popped up: Nerdtopia, located right on the town’s square.

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While it didn’t provide much of a selection for movies, it is certainly a spirited little eclectic store. It was filled with comics, trading cards, vintage toys, albums, tabletop games, video games, and even a little box of ancient pre-laserdiscs (!) that I didn’t even recognize in the corner. I considered picking up the Tron one just to act as a piece of wall art.

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I did wind up picking up a solid compilation of classic bad movies to give them some support, but this place is worth checking out in spite of the limited movie selection. These little nerd shops off the beaten trail especially need support from their local geeks and passers-through, so I recommend dropping by there if life ever lands you in Scottsboro, AL.

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Bargain Bin(ge): The Music Box (Pensacola, FL)

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Pensacola, FL is a top-notch beach-going destination for the southeastern United States, and is perhaps the gem of the Florida panhandle. Not only that, but it is also home to the acrobatic airplane team The Blue Angels! Unfortunately for the pasty and nerdy of us, that is about all there is to the city.

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This is pretty much all of Pensacola in one image. This is even from the city website.

Lucky for you fellow film geeks, there is some DVD hunting to be had in Pensacola! Specifically, there is a little record shop called The Music Box with a significant selection of eclectic films (interestingly set aside in a glass-cased room), as well as a ton of soundtracks on vinyl. I honestly lost count of how many rare flicks and IMDb Bottom 100 entries this place had copies of, because most of them were things I personally already own. That said, I still came out with a nice little haul to round out my collection.

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The DVD chamber

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Bad Taste

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For those who don’t know, Peter Jackson’s origins are a bit…strange. Bad Taste was his first feature back in New Zealand, and is true low-budget comedy gore in its purest form. It isn’t particularly easy to get a hold of at this point, so I was happy to find a copy here. If you haven’t seen it, it is an interesting forerunner for Dead Alive and Meet The Feebles, which both improve on various elements introduced in Bad Taste. Also, Jackson cuts a rubber alien in half with a chainsaw at one point, which is awesome.

Trick or Treat

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At this point, I think more people are familiar with the similarly titled 2007 cult classic Trick ‘r Treat than this earlier flick from the 1980s. However, Trick or Treat certainly has its following, particularly among classic rock and metal fans. As you might deduce from the box art, Ozzy Osbourne and Gene Simmons both pop up in small roles, and have been used significantly to try to sell the movie in recent years. I’m curious to give it a watch, because the plot reminds me a bit of the lawsuit against Judas Priest that popped up a few years later, alleging that subliminal messages were put into their albums encouraging harmful behavior. Otherwise, I have heard mixed things in regards to its entertainment value, but I’m more than willing to give it a shot. Look forward to a review of this flick in October.

Showdown in Little Tokyo

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Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee is one hell of a duo. This is another one of those action movies that is clearly up my alley, but has managed to somehow evade me over the years. I’m looking forward to finally catching it, as I assume it is as magical and wonderful as it appears to be.

Warriors of the Wasteland

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Enzo Castellari is a name that deserves a lot more attention in the bad movie world. He is one of the masters of the Italian knock-off, with works like The Shark Hunter, The Last Shark, 1990: The Bronx Warriors, and Inglorious Bastards to his credit. Warriors of the Wasteland (aka The New Barbarians) is yet another one of his b-movies with a dedicated following, focusing on the aesthetic of post-apocalyptic flicks like Mad Max. I’ll be interested to see how it stacks up next to other Mad Max knockoffs like Hell Comes to Frogtown, which starred the late Roddy Piper. The involvement of Fred Williamson (Black Caesar, Hell Up In Harlem, 1990: The Bronx Warriors) here has me plenty excited to check this thing out as well.

Teen Wolf / Teen Wolf Too

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Teen Wolf is considered a classic of the 1980s, and I imagine that everyone has at least heard of the defining werewolf teen sports comedy of the age (though Full Moon High had its moments). The popular re-imagining on MTV has kept the idea in the public consciousness at the very least, even for those who don’t recall Michael J. Fox’s hairy basketball career.  Teen Wolf Too, on the other hand, goes among the rankings of the most maligned and unnecessary sequels in movie history. Jason Bateman (who was at the time just a recognizable child actor) has succeeded in his career as an adult in spite of the hiccup, but it still looms over him like a black cloud for people who are aware of the film.

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As I mentioned earlier, The Music Box also had an interesting selection of soundtracks. Of course, I picked up a couple of notables that I couldn’t turn down:

Xanadu

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Xanadu is a deeply polarizing movie, with die-hard fans and staunch detractors all carrying passionate opinions on its value. Whether you consider it a cult classic or a bad movie of the lowest order, nothing defined this flick quite like its soundtrack. Here, I managed to dig up a vinyl copy of the ELO-helmed album, which I’m happy to have in my collection. Again, this is a movie that I feel will make for an inevitable blog post, as it was a winner/loser in the very first Golden Raspberry awards, and made a significant impact on the public consciousness. Not only that, but it also released on one of the most infamous double bills of all time with the unarguably wretched pseudo-biopic of The Village People, Can’t Stop The Music.

Mannequin

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Not too long ago, I had a request to cover Mannequin, one of Cannon Group’s many odd contributions to the 1980s. If there is anything that has stuck with the public consciousness about this flick, it is the hit song “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” by Starship. As opposed to being a full album, this one is just a single, but I figured it was still certainly worth picking up. I’m thinking it will go nicely on one of my walls, even if it never comes anywhere near my record player.

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Bargain Bin(ge): Replays Gameware (Tuscaloosa/Northport, AL)

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Tuscaloosa, AL isn’t a particularly big or interesting place. Unless you’re there for football, school, or the unimaginable combination of the two, there isn’t a whole lot to soak in. I would know, because I lived there for a while.

That said, there are a surprising number of used media stores in the area for how modest the population is. I’ve already covered the MovieStop chain quite a bit, which has a prominent location in Tuscaloosa. However, the real gems in the area are two sites of the small franchise Replays Gameware & DVDs, which you will seldom see outside of small towns and modest cities like Tuscaloosa.

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While the selection isn’t outstanding, these shops aren’t afraid to hold blowout sales to clear out their stock, particularly for their DVDs (as they are primarily vintage gaming shops).  If you catch them during one of those (as I did), the deals are very solid. There is also something to be said about the atmosphere at these shops: they are far less sterile than many of the larger buy/sell/trade chains, and hold on to the intimate and casual ambiance that a lot of people miss from the days of video rental. For people who are into that, Replays has never failed to deliver that for me.

Getting on to the actual haul, let’s start with the central Tuscaloosa location:

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Evolver

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Holy shit! It’s my favorite William H. Macy-voiced killer robot: Evolver! I covered this particular flick as part of Killer Robot Week, but this is actually the first time I had come across a DVD copy of it. Of course, I had to pick it up. Why wouldn’t I? If you want to know more, go check out my earlier review of it. Or, better yet, just dig it up on Netflix without any primer.

Action Jackson

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Action Jackson is a movie where Carl Weathers (Predator, Rocky, Arrested Development) plays a super-cop, which is all I need to know about it. Also, Vanity of Never Too Young To Die and The Last Dragon co-stars alongside him, in case I needed extra incentive to pick this up (I didn’t). This is another one of those movies that I have just never gotten around to, so when I spotted it on sale, I decided that it should come home with me. I have a feeling that if I throw that movie in my DVD player, I’ll have a mean stew going.

The Thing With Two Heads

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Gosh, where can I possibly start with this bizarre b-movie? It is about a racist white man whose (functioning) head is grafted onto a black guy, which results in a movie’s worth of hilarious, action-filled hi-jinks. Academy Award winner Ray Milland did this flick in 1972, the same year in which he featured prominently in the outlandish horror movie Frogs, which I covered here previously. I first heard about this flick when Stuart Gordon did a spotlight on it for Trailers From Hell, and it has been on my to-watch list ever since.  Keep your eyes peeled, because this sounds like a lock for me to cover at some point in the future.

While the Tuscaloosa location did yield me those three much-appreciated finds, the Northport location just outside of town really gave me some fuel for the bad movie fire:

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The Crippled Avengers

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Martial Arts films definitely aren’t my strong suit, and my knowledge base is admittedly pretty lacking in this department. However, this is a flick that I heard about recently via The Cinema Snob, and I was a little surprised to see it with a DVD release at all given how obscure most of his picks are. I hear that this is actually a pretty decent action flick, but I may just cover it anyway for its cult appeal.

Children of the Corn II / Children of the Corn III

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This is a franchise that I have no experience with outside of the original. However, I do know that people hate these two movies with a burning passion, and that I have never seen them. Thus, this was an obvious pickup for me.

The Substitute / The Substitute II / The Substitute III / The Substitute IV

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There are three sequels to The Substitute? And they all star the zombie-cop  Treat Williams? There is absolutely no way that these movies are good, and the fact that I had no idea they existed makes me absolutely giddy. I can’t wait to dig into these, and I hope they yield something worth covering here on the blog.

The original The Substitute was featured on the We Hate Movies podcast not too long ago, which made me give consideration to picking it up at some point. I vaguely remember seeing it as a kid, but it was really easy to get confused with The Principal, one of the finest films in the history of cinema. Regardless, I am baffled that this flick managed to spawn so many sequels, which has me deathly curious as to how the story continuity works between them.

Fright Night / Monster High / The Craft / Brainscan

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It is hard to resist the allure of a cheap compilation DVD. In this case, cult classics Fright Night and The Craft anchor a couple of lesser-known flicks that leech onto their sides like barnacles. The one that initially caught my eye was Brainscan, which was on my shortlist to cover back during Killer Robot Week. However, I have a hunch that Monster High is going to be the highlight of the bunch, because it sounds absolutely wretched, and holds an unenviable IMDB rating of 3.3.