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Anchor Bay Appreciation Thread

post #1 of 10
6/23/10 at 5:35pm
Thread Starter 
In the mid-to-late-90's, as a budding film geek, Anchor Bay's output was near life-changing. It's hard now to imagine a time when there isn't a thousand, slightly different editions of Evil Dead 2 or Dawn of the Dead readily available, but seeing the VHS tapes (In those clunky, slightly-clamshell packages!) of those classics on the shelf at my local Tower Records was amazing. AB (With William Lustig) released so many great/fun movies that were unavailable at the time: Martin, TCM 2, Evil Dead, Knightriders, C.H.U.D., Two-Lane Blacktop, Manhunter, Suspria, The Beyond, Zombie, Hills Have Eyes, God Told Me To, Repo Man, Q: The Winged Serpent, etc.. Not to mention a bunch of Herzog! Aside from Criterion, Anchor Bay was the best studio releasing older/genre movies from the inception of the format.

Favorite disc/VHS of theirs? What films & filmmakers did Anchor Bay introduce you to? Relive the glory days of 1997!
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post #2 of 10
6/23/10 at 6:50pm
God, I miss the days when a new Anchor Bay release was marked on the calender with much anticipation. Not so much anymore.

Even though they get a lot of shit over their countless re-releases of Evil Dead, Halloween, and Army of Darkness, I have to give them props for at least getting most of those releases right when it came to A/V presentation and extras.

Looking through all of their countless releases I have to say that my favorite is their release of Bad Taste. I was introduced to the film when I blindly purchases the 2-Disc limited edition right before LOTR hits theaters. I'm so glad I did, because it's probably my favorite splatter film.
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post #3 of 10
6/23/10 at 7:29pm
Thread Starter 
Bad Taste was great. I kept hoping they would get their hands on Dead Alive or Meet the Feebles, but it wasn't ment to be.

I think (It might have been Image) they released Maniac, which has maybe my favorite commentary track of all time. Listen as Joe Spinell's buddy explains how Joe wanted Tom Savini to create an effect for him bitting off an lady's clit!
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post #4 of 10
6/23/10 at 10:21pm
I still have the late 90's Dawn of the Dead VHS release just because of the cool tiled Clamshell artwork. Very nice stuff.
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post #5 of 10
6/24/10 at 1:45am
Blue Underground continues on in the proud pre-Starz Anchor Bay tradition.

My favorite classic Anchor Bay memories all revolve around having to find the correct Halloween disc. The one with the extra Samhain footage shit and then the one with the Cundey approved transfer.

For some reason, I had a bitch of a time sorting out Halloween discs.
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post #6 of 10
6/24/10 at 4:54am
I recall them fucking up on Dawn of the Dead over and over. Releasing a "director's cut" (spread onto two VHS) twice, first as an open matte 4 x 3, then mailing out a replacement letterboxed version. (They later retconned this into a "Cannes Cut" after Romero was all "uh, that's not my cut. It's just longer, with temp music.")

Then they tried to correct their mistake by releasing a "US Theatrical Cut" which was still wrong (used several reels from the Cannes Cut, which was missing the Goblin score). This string of fuck-ups had me hanging onto the fullscreen theatrical cut they released back around 1996, when they were still Video Treasures. I have purchased Dawn of the Dead from them six times since 1996.
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post #7 of 10
6/24/10 at 5:16am
I'll always love them for the Fucli, Soavi and Argento collection, and the Ultimate Dawn of the Dead collection, but most of the great stuff was headed up by Bill Lustig, who brought a lot of it back to Blue Underground with him. From what I can remember Tenebre, Phenomena, and the Demons films are the only things Anchor Bay kept (other than the biggies like Dawn, Halloween, and the Evil Dead series).

More recently they did kick out two incredible Mario Bava collections. I only wish they had some interest in re-releasing some of them on Blu-ray, but Starz clearly doesn't give a shit about anything older than 2005.

My favorite classic AB fuck up was the Opera disc that flat out didn't work. Mine actually worked the first time I played it, then I had to mail it in for replacement. Got a copy of the Moonlighting pilot for my trouble. I also bought that Opera disc (along with Suspiria) on September 11th, 2001. That's how committed I am to being a fucking geek.
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post #8 of 10
6/24/10 at 5:21am
The transfer for the Army of Darkness: Director's Cut is pretty shitty.

Thinking about it now, outside of switching from VHS to DVD, I've only ever double dipped with the Evil Dead films once. That was for the Ultimate Edition that came out a few years back.
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post #9 of 10
6/24/10 at 5:30am
Yeah, when the Director's Cut came out they claimed up and down that they only had VHS bootlegs to work from, so we fans were patient with the transfer, until MGM released that region 3 version and we realized they were full of shit.

Incidentally, and entirely unrelated, does anyone want to buy one of the original limited edition, 2-disc AB Army of Darkness set? It's got a number on the back...
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post #10 of 10
6/24/10 at 12:49pm
They will always have my gratitude for their EVIL DEAD franchise and PHANTASM franchise DVD releases.

However (and this is a small however), why the hardly (if ever) include subtitles is beyond me.
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