A Classic Disapointment

Recently, one of my personal sanctuaries around town to just relax and get away from it all shut down. No, I'm not talking about a pristine national park I'm talking about Borders Books. I could always buy a delicious and slightly snobby beverage such as an Italian soda, and just loose myself in all the books they had of various sorts and never really buy anything. Okay, maybe that's why they closed. Anyway, my Dad bought me one of my favorite Christmas presents this year-a generous gift card to Borders. Good thing that one Saturday, I was on my way to Borders for one such routine, and remembered the whole place was going out of business. To make ends meet, Borders was having a 20% off sale on all items in the store! So, I had to spend that gift card or loose the money-a fun afternoon ensued.

One of the things I bought was a DVD collection of cult classic films (surprise, surprise). The price was unbeatable, since with the sale, a collection of sixteen movies cost me about four dollars-no joke. The DVD collection that I bought was called Clash of the Olympians, and featured several of the original Hercules films featuring Steve Reeves, Reg Park, and Gordon Scott. These films, sometimes dubbed the "spaghetti westerns," are often regarded as the grandfathers of the whole sword and sandal genre. So, if you like anything such as Conan the Barbarian, Beastmaster, Highlander, Dragonslayer, Excalibur, Legend, Willow, Lord of the Rings, and so forth, then you can thank these flicks for paving the way.

Mill Creek Entertainment put out this collection, along with several other generous collections of horror and science fiction movies. For a moment, I thought I'd found some heroes, but not quite. The label was brilliantly designed with impressive work likely done with Photoshop and InDesighn (some info for graphic design junkies). The actual transfers of the film, and DVD authoring is pathetic. I opened the case to find four cheap DVD sleeves that anyone can buy at Walmart, with a cheaply labled DVD inside each one. Concerning the menu's, I don't know what they were thinking. I have made better one's with Windows' DVD Maker templates. The transfer of the films is terrible, and it appears that there was no attempt to touch up a terribly damaged old film . Some of the films have an actual green tint to them and bad audio. It looks like the video editors did not even want to bother with simple things like correcting hue, saturation, brightness and contrast, which most newbies pick up on soon. The technical qualites of the collection are horrible. To add insult to injury, you can find several of these movies online. A few Public domain collections and professional Youtube pages have some of these movies online for free.

On the up side, you will not find such a generous collection of these hard to find films available anywhere else. The problem with the internet is that the content might be taken down, unless you download it to your hard drive. So, you are at the mercy of whether it will stay online or not. If you want to own the original Hercules films in one comprehensive collection, I'd buy this. However, do not pay more than ten bucks for these, the transfer is to bad. I would'nt buy this collection unless you are a hard core sword and sandal fan, or you saw these movies as a child and they are a treasured memory.

Regarding the movies themselves, I have sat through three of them thus far ; Hercules Unchained, Hercules and the Princess of Troy, and Hercules and the Captive Women. As I expected, they are not Oscar winners by a long shot. All these movies fall under the "so bad it's good" category today. The dialogue is cheezy, the editing is terrible, and the special effects are laughable. However, some of the action is still entertaining and the male leads just have a more commanding presence as action stars than our modern actors do. In the epic conclusion of Hercules Unchained, Steve Reeves rips apart three lions with his bare hands in a gladiator arena. It's over done, over the top, exaggerated machismo at it's very best and somehow it's believable. I watch Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Caribbean, and I have a hard time believing the man could pick up a sword. I imagine the only reason he could ever be upset enough to fight is because he's late for his hair appointment. Contrary to the masses of fans today, I always thought Johnny Dep looked more like a bum than a pirate. Yes, let the angry postings ensue. I am just out of touch with this generation at times, and maybe that's why I appreciate the innocent yet unapologetic machismo, violence, and decadence of these old flicks. It's been commented that our leading actors are more "boy-men" today, such as Leonard Di Caprio, than men with a "hard face" like Humphrey Bogart and Sean Connery that could play a tough, confident, mature male lead. I just can't see DiCaprio or Orlando Bloom grabbing a lion by the mane and wrestling the mother !@%# to the ground. So, I shall enjoy my crappy movie collection, thank you very much. I would not recommend it to most people.