Horrible Horrors Vol 1

Rating:
Summary: Good deal, but without much effort behind the presentation
Review: No attempt will be made to discuss the merit of the movies themselves, this is just a few quick notes on their presentation.

This is a 2-disc set of double-sided discs with two movies on each side. That means 8 movies. :) Here are the details and a comment or two...

Disc 1, side 1, movie 1: The Hearse (1980), 99 minutes. Presented in anamorphic widescreen, with picture quality a bit worse than the previous standalone Rhino release of the title. I rate the picture quality at 6/10 (PQ:6) (Your common new release blockbuster DVD typically rates 8 to 10.)

Disc 1, side 1, movie 2: Prime Evil (1988), 83 minutes. Full frame. PQ:7

Disc 1, side 2, movie 1: Terror (1978), 94 minutes. Full frame. PQ:6 (There is a PAL VHS widescreen release of this movie.)

Disc 1, side 2, movie 2: Lurkers (1988), 84 minutes. Full frame. PQ:6

Disc 2, side 1, movie 1: Fleshburn (1984), 90 minutes. Full frame. PQ:6

Disc 2, side 1, movie 2: Satan's Slave (1976), 90 minutes. Full frame. PQ:6 (There is a PAL VHS widescreen release of this movie.)

Disc 2, side 2, movie 1: Twisted Brain (1974), 91 minutes. Full frame. PQ:4 (Worst quality of all the movies in the package)

Disc 2, side 2, movie 2: Point of Terror (1971), 87 minutes. Full frame. PQ:7

As you can see, the only movie presented in widescreen is "The Hearse", all the others are full frame (some are definitely pan & scan, some might be open matte, I don't know). Picture quality varies from "passable/OK" to "rather poor". All of the movies have been encoded at an average bitrate of 5.6 mb/s (except "Twisted Brain" at 5.7 mb/s). The major difference between this and most of the other "million movies for ten bucks" packages out there is that I don't think these titles are in the public domain, so this may be the only way we'll see them. Whether that's important or not is up to you. :)