It's time to look back at another year to see what the best disc of the year was (just don't look too closely at your Amazon receipts to see how much money you actually spent this year, though!). There was quality stuff from the likes of Scream Factory, Blue Underground, Synapse, Scorpion, Vinegar Syndrome, Kino, Criterion, Anchor Bay and others, which was your favorite?
I should probably vote for The Burning or The Fog (both of which are fantastic releases), but I'm going to give a vote to Body Bags instead. I think it's just an extremely fun little movie, plus it's a HUGE upgrade over the severely edited fullscreen DVD while both Burning and Fog already had quality DVD releases. There is a little audio hiss in the dialogue near the beginning of "The Gas Station", but this is a movie that I never imagined would make it to blu-ray, let alone in a special edition with a nice retrospective featurette. Plus, I'll give honorable mention nods to Night Of The Demons 2, Ticks, and Just Before Dawn, three favorites of mine that I'm overjoyed to own in hi-def. Just wish the featurette from the Just Before Dawn DVD was carried over. Regardless, 2013 has been an incredible year for blu-ray collectors. My credit card statements have been ridiculous of late thanks to all the cult labels out there.
Have several on the list, but I'm not enough of a videophile to weigh the merits of each and/or any improvements on previous releases. Having said that, there is a lot of review consensus that the Vincent Price collection is a near landmark set for fans of the actor and/or the period style.
Of the listed options, I went with Prince of Darkness, although if I went strictly by "movie I most wanted on BD" and not overall release quality, I'd go with In the Mouth of Madness. We may have gotten the same old boring extras, but at least the movie is finally out in 1080p. Also, despite its issues, I have to give a shout out to Friday the 13th: The Complete Collection. All the movies look and sound good, and the only non-ported extras from the previous releases were two commentary tracks from the Manhattan set. If it weren't for the lack of unrated Jason Goes To Hell, I'd give the collection top marks.
Demons, strictly for the audio/video quality. The amount of time and care Synapse put into this release is phenomenal.
Night Train To Terror it was a movie that i found quite fun to watch, a lot of work has been done in the A/V quality department, good extra's and 1 film as a bonus
As it's been said before the amount of work put into Demons/Demons 2 by synapse was above and beyond but I went with other. My favorite release was Scream Factory's The Nest. Light on extras but just a personal favorite of mine that hasn't already been released millions of times.
The Nest was one of my favorite first time viewings in 2013. I blind bought Scream Factory's Blu and really enjoyed it. Good director's commentary on the disc as well.
I would say Maniac Cop 2, another outstanding Blue Underground release. I hardly ever skip one of their titles. This is probably the best from them since Zombi 2 or Maniac. Also really liked their release of Snuff even though the film isn't very good itself. Another great release was Grindhouse's Corruption. Just fantastic in every detail from the transfer to the supporting materials. That would be my runner-up, followed by Twilight Time's release of Body Double which is one of my top five favorite films and arrived with a solid transfer, an isolated Pino Donnagio score and a nice little essay booklet.
The best release of 2013 in my opinion was Scream Factory's Vincent Price Collection. Invaluable in terms of presentation and collection of bonus materials. Others worth mentioning include some terrific Blu-ray releases from Arrow UK: Spider Baby, The Car, and Motel Hell. Arrow did fine work in 2013 on Mario Bava films. Have to say Black Sabbath was the best of the bunch. It was awesome to finally get the AIP English speaking version of the film & in such high quality!
Vincent Price set for me. It's easy to nitpick the selection of films. The transfers look good and the book-ending studio segments with Price are really enjoyable. I always like that kind of thing.
I went with Demons just because of how much work and effort Synapse put into it. Runners up would be The Fog and Halloween, two favourites. Halloween looks probably the best it ever has but could have used a lot more effort. Where are all the missing extras and TV cut? Vincent Price Collection is up there as well, but it could have used some more extras IMO, as well as the alternate cut of Witchfinder General.
