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Bargain Bin(ge)

Bargain Bin(ge): Movie Exchange (Houston, TX)

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Movie Exchange is a local buy/sell/trade media chain with six locations around the Houston, TX metropolitan area. Like many other similar stores around the country, it has a selection that includes DVDs, Blu-rays, and a smattering of video games, but also notably still has a significant stock of VHS, which is rapidly becoming a rarity.

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The deals on movies were generally pretty good, but I was much more enthralled with the selection of more rare and off-the-wall features (which ultimately comprised most of my haul). Just check out some of the BBC DVDs of old school Doctor Who features below.

2 3Likewise, I was surprised to see a copy of Lucio Fulci’s The New York Ripper, which isn’t a DVD that you would casually stumble upon every day.
6Anyway, on to the handful of movies I actually walked away from Movie Exchange with:

The Changeling

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The Changeling stars George C. Scott (of Patton and Dr. Strangelove) in one of the most memorable haunted house movies you’ll ever come across, or so I’m told. I’ve never actually seen this movie, nor have I ever come across a DVD copy of it in my travels. I’m a big fan of horror movies that are done well, so I am eager to give this a shot.

Straw Dogs

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Straw Dogs is probably the most controversial movie in Sam Peckinpah’s notoriously violent filmography, and that is really saying something. Dustin Hoffman and Susan George star as a couple who are new residents in a small town, and rapidly become the targets of intense harassment from a gang of vicious locals. This movie taps into a fear that I don’t think it used enough these days in features: the sinister potential of the every-man. Your neighbors, if they were so inclined, could turn your life into a living hell in a mere instant. I can certainly say that Straw Dogs makes a compelling case to avoid the remote countryside at the very least.

Targets

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This movie kick-started the feature film-making career of one of the New Hollywood luminaries: Peter Bogdanovich. While his career has been one with pronounced highs and lows, his first Roger Corman produced b-movie influenced the future of the entire horror film genre by shaking it to the core. It may not be the pinnacle of his career, but I’d dare say that Targets has has about as much influence on film as a whole as any of his later features. This has been a movie on my list to dig up for a long time, and I can’t describe how thrilled I was to finally find a copy of it out in the wild. Keep your eyes peeled, because it will wind up back on the blog before too long.

Zeus and Roxanne

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Look, I don’t really have much to say about this. I honestly felt like I had to leave the store with something at least a little light-hearted after picking up Straw Dogs, The Changeling, and Targets. I mean, that is one hell of a trio of dark violence and depression. So, here is a Steve Guttenberg movie about a cross-species relationship between a dog and a dolphin. If that doesn’t sound like a winner, I don’t know what does.

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Bargain Bin(ge): Disc Replay (Indianapolis, IN)

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As mentioned in an earlier post, Disc Replay is a small regional chain of buy/sell/trade stores, not unlike MovieStop or Replay’s that I have covered previously. Apparently Disc Replay’s primary stomping grounds are Illinois and Indiana, with a little bit of bleed-over into Iowa, Kentucky, and Michigan.

discreplayindy2After checking out the Skokie location of Disc Replay a few days prior, I decided to give one of their Indianapolis locations a shot on the way back home from B-fest.

What I found was a collection that was less impressive, but with notably better deals than the Skokie location. Whereas the Skokie store had movies ranging from 3.99-5.99, most of the DVDs here were between 2.22 and 3.33. On top of that, the standing deal at the Indianapolis location was “Buy 5, Get 2 Free,” compared to Skokie’s “Buy 5, Get 1 Free.”

discreplayindy1Given the quantity over quality theme of the store, I mostly picked up some relatively more common DVDs on the cheap. That said, there were still a few cool finds:

Sorcerer

William Friedkin is one of a handful of influential directors of the New Hollywood era that many believe never got out of the 1970s. In fact, many hold the opinion that his grand supposed master work, Sorcerer, was of the movies that killed the auteur paradise of 1970s Hollywood. After going over budget, it was vastly overshadowed by George Lucas and Star Wars at the box office in the summer of 1977, and some argue that Friedkin never recovered from the stumble. Personally, I think that Killer Joe and Bug are both pretty good recent works by Friedkin, and that he gets unfairly written off a bit these days. Also, people have been steadily coming to appreciate Sorcerer as a forgotten treasure of the era, so I am interested to give it a shot myself.

Frailty

Bill Paxton is an always entertaining character actor to be sure, who has popped up in everything from Aliens to Slipstream to Predator 2. However, Frailty not only cements him as a genuinely talented actor, but also as a more than capable director. If you haven’t seen this thriller, you are missing out. As an added recommendation, his director’s commentary on the DVD is fantastic. Also of note about this flick: Matthew McConaughey gets to show off his acting chops years before anyone took him particularly seriously.

Cop Out

Cop Out is undoubtedly the most maligned Kevin Smith movie, and the reception to it nearly drove the beloved indie personality out of the business all together. Bruce Willis reportedly didn’t care for the film at all from the start, Tracy Morgan was Tracy Morgan, and Kevin Smith was, for once, working with material that wasn’t his own. It was a bad formula all around, and the result isn’t good.

The Fog

I covered this John Carpenter classic a while back. However, I didn’t actually have a copy until now, so I’m happy to have it in the collection.

Popeye

This is another big time New Hollywood auteur flub. Robert Altman had a long up and down career with some high highs and some low lows, and Popeye is almost certainly one of his biggest dips. While some people hold fond nostalgic feeling towards it, the popular reception to the movie hasn’t softened quite so much in the way Sorcerer‘s has.

Mission To Mars

A while back, I covered a movie called Red Planet, which hit theaters in November of 2000. A few months prior to its release, another similarly-themed Mars movie hit theaters: Brian De Palma’s Mission To Mars. Neither movie was loved by audiences by any means, but I think that the proximity of their releases made audiences and critics react more harshly to them than they might have otherwise. Occasionally, movies with similar themes are released within months of each other, which has the effect of flooding the market. Some examples of this include Armageddon/Deep Impact, Volcano/Dante’s Peak, and The Abyss/Leviathan/DeepStar Six. Typically, the movie that comes first does better both critically and commercially. In this case, however, Mission to Mars and Red Planet were pretty neck-and-neck.

Moon 44

Moon 44 was a feature by Roland Emmerich before he became the Roland Emmerich we all love to hate today, who has helmed such masterpieces as Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012. I’m interested to check it out, if only for the presence of Malcolm McDowell.

Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter

Captain Kronos is a classic Hammer movie that I’ve never seen before. That’s a good enough reason to pick up a cheap DVD for me.