My Hammer collection

[Behemoth]

It's been hard, and it's been expensive, but finally I've managed to buy ALL the available Hammer films on DVD, with the exception of Spaceways, which I'm going to order next time I buy anything from DV-Depot, and Shatter, which has just come out, and which I'll probably buy sometime during the summer. There are many new Hammer titles coming out the next six months, so I'm pretty happy with having all the old releases in my collection before this happens.

I've had problems with 2 titles:
-Frankenstein Created Woman, which started freezing up about half-way through. There were some strange sub-surface stains on this disc. I got a replacement disc and it works perfectly.
-The Witches; I got this just a couple days ago, but when I started watching it it started freezing up after about 6-7 minutes, and after a few minutes of this I didn't bother trying watching the rest of the film. Again, there were some strange sub-surface stains on the disc. I will send this back for a replacement disc, which hopefully will work better.

I know that also Rasputin the Mad Monk has been a "problem disc", but my copy is fine, or at least it was when I watched it when I got it a few months ago.

Some of my other discs, especially Plague of the Zombies, do have some strange stains on the disc, but I haven't had any problems with these discs.

Is there anyone who has had a problem with any OTHER Hammer DVD than Frankenstein Created Woman, Rasputin and The Witches?

[dvdasia62]

I only have three Hammer films on DVD, "Plague Of The Zombies", "The Reptile" and "The Abominable Snowman" and all three work fine and I haven't noticed any kind of stain or stains on them. :)

[Beastus]

Haven't experienced any problems with my Rasputin disc. But when I tried to see the World Of Hammer episode on my parents DVD player, it didn't work. They have a cheap player, though.

[Behemoth]

I don't exactly have the world's best DVD player, but I've never had any problems with any of my DVDs before (and I have approx. 200 DVDs), except for these two Hammer titles, and also the Anchor Bay-released Heathers disc.

[Beastus]

I did have problems with the Deep Red and Four Of The Apocalypse DVD's, both from Anchor Bay. But that was on my previous DVD player, which came out 98/99. Apart from them I haven't experienced any problems. (Except the Opera disc, which was a mispress)

[JW77]

I've heard of quite a few people having problems with both "Frankenstein Created Woman" and "Witches." I think there bad batches of both of those particular titles, among others.

AB is allegedly repressing FCR shortly, so you might want to look into getting it exchanged.

My "Plague of Zombies" disc also has a pretty funky stain on the playing side, but it plays fine. AFAIK, stains on the disc are not a sign of rot -- I have plenty of "stained" discs and they have played fine. I think it's really only a cosmetic issue.

[Beastus]

Well, the so-called "stains" on the disc, is the only discs I had problem with before I got my new DVD player. I think it's not just cosmetic, but it contains a signal (or something) that is supposed to prevent people with region modified players to play it properly. (It has something do with the signals the player gives to the disc, when the disc "asks" what region the player can play). Almost all new players has no problem with these nowadays.

I could be wrong about this, but I can recall having heard this one time.

[CJ]

Originally posted by Beastus
Well, the so-called "stains" on the disc, is the only discs I had problem with before I got my new DVD player. I think it's not just cosmetic, but it contains a signal (or something) that is supposed to prevent people with region modified players to play it properly. (It has something do with the signals the player gives to the disc, when the disc "asks" what region the player can play). Almost all new players has no problem with these nowadays.

I could be wrong about this, but I can recall having heard this one time.

But I don't think either of those discs carry any regional coding whatsoever. And the Argento discs mentioned elsewhere on this thred definitely aren't coded. They play perfectly on my R2-only player.