Good movies that have bad DVDs?

[CrusaderX]

My local Circuit City frequently has the Blade Runner - Director's Cut DVD on sale for around 7 bucks. I enjoyed the movie when I saw it years ago, and thought it was strange that the DVD was so cheap. Doing a little online research, I discovered that this particular DVD is almost universally panned for being a poor quality transfer of the film. Which may help explain the low price.

Are there many examples out there of good movies that happen to have unusually poor quality DVDs? I'd like to know what to avoid as I build my collection.

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

It's not really a bad DVD exactly, but Braveheart is crying out for the deluxe 2-disc treatment. I thought for sure we'd get some kind of special edition set this year, since 2005 is its 10th anniversary.

 

[Dark Jezter]

I'd really like to see a deluxe DVD version of the 13th Warrior complete with some of the scenes that were cut from the theatrical version.

 

[wingsandsword]

Tank, a campy 1984 James Garner movie about a Sgt. Major who owns his own WWII surplus tank and uses it to rescue his son from a corrupt southern Sheriff. Not exactly high cinema, but one of my favorite movies (especially as an action-comedy).

I finally found a DVD of it about a year ago at Mal-Wart (having not found it anywhere else, I just noticed it on the shelves one day). It had to be the worst DVD treatment of a movie I've seen, ever.

Well, first it was "Fullscreen"/Pan & Scam, then it auto-plays the movie when you put it in, and there apparently is no menu, no alternate languages, no subtitles, absolutely no extra features whatsoever, not even a menu! All you do is pop it in and it plays the movie, then it repeats when it's done.

 

[Crothian]

Tank is a great movie. I have some older read 1940's films on DVD that are also like that, just the movie nothing else.

 

[Viking Bastard]

The Hot Shots!/Hot Shots! Part Deux double feature set has several scenes cut.

Most notably each movie's big joke sex scene.

It baffles me. Must be some kind of a TV cut or something, though it doesn't say on the box.

 

[KenM]

I picked up Sky Captian and the World of Tomorrow when that came out on DVD. I was very PO'ed with the presentation of it. The picture quaility was good, but:

1. There was no little paper with the chapter listings, NOTHING in the case except the DVD.

and even worse:

2. You put it in your DVD player, and it starts to play 3 trailers of upcoming films that you can't skip, at all. You hit the menu button and nothing happens. So every time I want to watch the movie, I have to "fast forward" though them to get to the menu. Thats the only way to get though them.

I heard more DVD's are going this route, I want to watch a movie that I paid for legally my way, I should not have to sit though the same trailers every fricking time.

 

[Dark Jezter]

2. You put it in your DVD player, and it starts to play 3 trailers of upcoming films that you can't skip, at all. You hit the menu button and nothing happens. So every time I want to watch the movie, I have to "fast forward" though them to get to the menu. Thats the only way to get though them.

I heard more DVD's are going this route, I want to watch a movie that I paid for legally my way, I should not have to sit though the same trailers every fricking time.

Ugh, tell me about it. I absolutely hate it when DVDs have "mandatory trailers" that can't be skipped over.

 

[Viking Bastard]

Yeah, I even can't stand those DVD menus with those really long animations.

It should always let you skip.

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

The "Two Women" DVD I bought is really bad. It's an Italian film, for which Sofia Loren won the "Best Actress" Oscar (way back in the early 1960s). I assumed it was on sale because how many Americans would buy a black and white foreign-language film that's 40 years old? Nope, it was on sale because it was the worst transfer to DVD in history. Fuzzy, almost out-of-focus, scratchy, print with poor sound.

It's supposed to be a good movie, but I'll never know (until I see it somewhere else). The DVD is not watchable!