Cheap Entertainment 1: Dollar DVD's

Back in college, and I went to kind of a boring college, but that's another blog altogether, my roommate the Party Reptile and I would oft find ourselves without anything to do on a Sunday night, and make our way to a disreputable old dump known as the Village Theater. The Village was saved only by the fact that it did a thriving business in dollar movies -- three screens, two flix each, and very little supervision for the noisy teenagers who populated the aisles.

The Reptile and I played a game: we would drive to the Village, and whatever movie was playing next that neither of us had seen before, we would see it, no matter what. As I recall, we didnt come off too badly: Adventures in Babysitting, House, and several other high-grade B-flicks were ours at just the right price, soured only by Clan of the Cave Bear. Even a lousy movie was good at a buck -- heck, I've paid more to rent lousy movies at blockbuster.

Well, I thought the time of the cheapo flick was gone, but I was wrong. I have discovered a plethora of films, some of them classic, waiting for me in the dollar discount stores of the world. Apparently some companies have gotten ahold of film properties that nobody wants, and have repackaged them in very no-frills editions that contain some classics. Now, of course, you have to want the movies available to you, and the range is limited, but if you are of a particular bent, you can find great fun in these cheap discs.

I have so many of them now I havent been able to watch them all. Here's a few you may find in your local dollar store, with a couple of capsule reviews, and a listing of some others.

Silent Horror Films: A couple of discs from PC Treasures have yielded great fun. One double feature includes the original silent horror classics Nosferatu and Lon Chaney Sr. in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Often these double features include a cartoon, as does this one. One tricky thing with the silent classics is they are, in fact, silent -- not even a backing track of organ music. Nothing. Be prepared to enjoy in silence. Another disc had Hunchback coupled with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a German expressionist horror film that I had heard about since I was a kid but never seen -- much spookier than I had expected.

Non-Silent Horror Films: Probably the best find in this lot is a disc titled "Matinee of Terror" featuring the original George Romero Night of the Living Dead and the Vincent Price movie The Last Man on Earth based on Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend". Again, I had never seen either of these classics and both lived up to my expectations. Night of the Living Dead is one of my favorite movies ever, now.

If you ever want to host "Bad Movie Night" there are many options: the double feature of The Giant Gila Monster, a 50's teen-monster movie, and the incredible-to-behold Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (read it again) is particularly good; another is the truly horrid Snake People / Sabaka double feature, both starring Boris Karloff in his later years. Karloff fares much better in the actually quite good The Terror, also starring a very young Jack Nicholson, available on a doublebill with Bela Lugosi in Scared to Death.

There's lots of other movies and a great deal of old TV available, with, as you can see, some gems scattered among the refuse -- but the refuse can be great fun. Here are some other titles you may be on the lookout for:

• The House on Haunted Hill (Vincent Price again) / The Bat
• The Corpse Vanishes / The Invisible Ghost (both with Lugosi)
• Popeye the Sailor (two hours of cartoons)
• My Man Godfrey with Carole Lombard
• The Inspector General with Danny Kaye
• Nothing Sacred with Carole Lombard
• Road to Bali (Hope / Crosby / Lamour)
• Musical Mania featuring Betty Boop
• The Jackie Robinson Story / The Lou Gehrig Story
• Dead Men Walk / The Monster Maker

...and we'll see you at the movies!