Tales from the Thrift Store vol. 16

It feels like I haven't done a thrift store post in a while, and after checking, I can now confirm that it's been a bit since my last one, almost two months to be exact.

I've been in one of those stretches again, where other than the grocery store, I haven't been going out too much, and by that I mean not going to public places. I think that I've only been to three non-grocery stores since a little before Christmas, and two of those were Goodwill.

I picked up a few things during each of those Goodwill trips, things that I'll just combine into one post, two separate post would be overkill.

The first stop was either on New Year's Eve (I'm a real party animal), or New Year's Eve eve, I can't remember which, but either way it was at the end of December.

And here's how I spent part of my evening on New Year's Eve (yep, party animal!). This one was new to me, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. My only real criticism would be that the film was a little too short, but that's only because I wanted to see more of Monty Woolley's character, as an actor he never disappoints! The tape was marketed as a Marilyn film, but this was two years before her first "big" film (Niagara), so she's still in bit part mode here -- but even with just around five minutes of screen-time, you can definitely see what was coming, especially in regards to her underutilized comedy chops.

Yeah, I know, I could probably watch this episode for free on the Vudu/Hulu/goo goo g'joob, but I'm a physical media guy through and through, and anyone reading should know this by now.

Finding a Cagney film that I haven't seen is always a good thing. I still haven't watched it yet, so I can't offer up any sort of insight at this time.

This was a very fortuitous find, as not more than a week prior, my mom had asked me to keep an eye out for this film, and then what happens, I find it! This also happens to be the first copy of the movie that I've ever come across, so it makes her asking about it, and my finding it so quick just that much more weird.

20 movies for $2... sold! I love finding public domain multi-packs, especially the one's where I don't already have too many the films in other sets. In this particular instance, I only had one of them. I've only watched four so far -- Alien Contamination (gory, not for the kiddos), Battle of the Worlds (loved it), They (hokey, but had a great premise), and This is not a Test (another good one) -- but it's already been the worth the price tag, and I still have fifteen to go.

The second visit wasn't planned, but I was driving by, and had some extra time, so I figured why not? Given how much I found, I'm glad that I decided to pop in.

There were a lot of great old shows on in syndication when I was a kid, unfortunately this wasn't one of them -- I like it now, but I would've loved it back then.

I had seen everything on this tape many, many, times... not a great purchase!

I'm not gonna lie, my heart skipped a beat when I saw this one. For those that don't know, J.P. Patches was a kids show out of Seattle, and to my knowledge, isn't widely known, at least not to most folks under the age of about 40. Given that I'm on the other side of the country now, I figure that this video must've come here via a fellow transplant. For any of you horror host fans out there, you may or may not recognize one of the show's director's, Joe Towey, as he was Seattle's horror host du jour (The Count) on Nightmare Theatre for six or seven years way back when. And I just so happen to own a pretty cool piece of Nightmare Theatre memorabilia that I hope to share on here at some point.

I've been finding an awful lot of sealed tapes as of late, not that I'm complaining mind you, I just sort of wonder where there all coming from. I can't imagine that there's too many places still around that would have a bunch of new/old stock sealed VHS tapes just laying about, and non-video collectors don't tend to have a lot of sealed videos sitting around either, so I don't know what's going on?

[Note: all of the backs contain the same generic show info, so I didn't bother photographing them] I think I'm permanently burned out on Dean's Celebrity Roasts, but I'll never get tired of clips from his variety show... although entire episodes would be much more ideal!

Like a lot of other things in this post, finding cheap DC animated films, that I don't already own, is always a treat. This one had been on the radar for a while, but I wasn't looking to pay $10 or more for it, $2 will do though. This one was pretty good, although the interconnecting stories are done in different styles of anime, and anime isn't my favorite kind of animation, but I can watch it in small doses. Animation style aside, getting to hear Kevin Conroy voice Batman is never a bad thing, and goes a long way in making up for anime-ness of the film.

I didn't go back and add it up, but I'm pretty that the total sum of everything in this post was less than $10 -- that's a lot of hours worth of entertainment, for not very much money! For fans of the physical media posts, I've got another one slated for Sunday, this after another Free Stuff Friday on, well, Friday (spoiler alert).


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Tales from the Thrift Store vol. 15

I had so much success last month when I went to Goodwill the day before the 50% off sale, that I decided to forgo this months sale, and go the day before again.

Spoiler alert: I wasn't quite able to duplicate last months success, but I can assure you that it wasn't for lack of trying!

Last month, all of the video shelves were completely full, and so was the spinny rack of DVD's. By comparison, the video shelves were only half full this time, and the DVD rack was only about 40% full. It was a little disappointing to walk in and see that, but since it takes me 35 minutes to get there, I'm still gonna try and get my money's worth -- besides, just because the shelves are only half full, doesn't mean that there still can't be some good stuff in there.

Having not had cable/satellite for a number of years now, I'm a little out of touch with what all of the various stations have been up to, for example, is TNT still making westerns? I remember back in the late 90's and early 2000's, they seemed to have a new original movie practically every week. Ok, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but they did crank out more than a few. The only that I watched at the time, was Purgatory (has since been bought on DVD too).

I like westerns, so I don't know why I didn't watch more of these films? Maybe I can just use my standard "There were too many other things to watch at the time", it works in most cases when talking about shows/movies from that era because it's true. Anyways, never saw Crossfire Trail, at least not until last week when I brought these home. Good movie, standard fare as far as westerns go, if you've seen a few of them, you can kind of guess how this one's gonna play out. Everybody did a good job acting wise though, you can really tell that Mark Harmon enjoyed getting to play a bad guy.

I have the whole series on DVD, but Amazing Stories is one of a handful of shows that I'll still buy episodes on tape of, even if I already own them in another format... if only because they remind me of my childhood.

I didn't watch a lot of Disney when I was growing up, especially the live-action stuff, as such there's quite a lot of that I have never seen, or even heard of -- No Deposit No Return being one of those. I may not have ever heard of it before, but it didn't take much to sell me on it, seeing Darren McGavin in his Kolchak suit was all that was needed for me to pick this one up.

I don't recall where I was, but a couple of weeks after I moved here to TN, I found volume IV of this series, Greatest plays, and hadn't seen another one since. It's kind of neat to finally find another one, especially one that looks like it's going to be really good.

At this point I had looked through all of the videos, since I was holding four tapes, I figured I might as well go back through them and see if I could get to the 5/$2 threshold (they're fifty cents apiece otherwise) -- but before I could start doing so, a woman that works there came out from the back with a cart of videos (how fortuitous!). Since there was no one else looking at videos, I figured that there was no need to crowd her, so I moved over to the DVD's while she unloaded the basket.

As I already mentioned, the DVD rack was only about half full, and about half of those were leftover from last month, but I did find one thing of interest though. The Equalizer and John Wick came out within a month of each other, so it's almost impossible to read about either online, without seeing a comparison to the other. You'll find plenty of "debates" over which is better, although more often than not, these "debates" just end up devolving into name calling... this is how our modern world works after all! Personally, I like John Wick more, but I'm a fan of the more traditional revenge pictures, so that's probably why I lean the way that I do. The Equalizer is still a solid film though, my only real complaint is that I wish it would've been a little bit more like the television show, but I'm guessing that's just a me thing.

After taking what felt like forever, the gal finally gone done putting out the rest of the videos, and now there was three more shelves worth of stuff to look at, as well as some competition in the form of two guys (one of whom was a hipster wearing a kitschy video store shirt) that showed up seemingly out of thin air once she got done. Thankfully though, I'm a seasoned vet when it comes to scanning VHS titles, so before they could even finish the first of the newly stocked shelves, I was already grabbing the only thing worth taking off of the third shelf (eat it, hipster!).

Look at that beauty! You don't see a lot of tapes like this in the wild anymore, as most of them, as well as pretty much all of the big box horror, are in private collections (or sitting in eBay stores). I have more than a few obscure horror videos, but 99% of those were acquired decades ago, back when almost nobody cared about such things. Most of the 80's slasher pics were not very good, they're made up of mostly just boobs and blood, but almost always had great video covers, which is where most of the value lies -- (most) people don't collect them for the film itself, they do it for the covers, as they remind them of being a kid/teen and wandering down the horror aisle(s) of their local video stores. In a way, it really is nostalgia in it's purest form. I sure am glad that I waited for that woman to put those tapes out (I almost didn't), because finding this one really made my day. And I almost forgot, the best part about this particular tape? It's not an ex-rental, which is pretty darn rare for something like this.

I may not have found as many videos as last month, but overall I don't think that I did too bad, I mean it was certainly worth the trip, and in the end that's all I really care about... getting enough to justify me going out. I also made a somewhat rare (at least for me) stop at Big Lots that morning as well, a stop that yielded some surprising goodies, which will be covered in Wednesday's post. And yes, I know, two video/DVD posts in a row, deal with it!


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Tales from the Thrift Store vol. 13

I think I've mentioned it on the blog probably more than a few times now, but I absolutely love the 50% off sales that Goodwill runs on the first Saturday of each month. That being said, I haven't been to one in months, and my attending the August edition wasn't looking too promising, so I just said to heck with it... and went the day before!

The participating stores open up a couple of hours early on the sale days, I think 7am is what they've said publicly, but I'm fairly certain that the one I go to opens even earlier, and no matter how hard I try, I just can't seem to get there before eight -- which means that people have been coming and going for at least an hour, and the lack of items/general disarray of everything, is usually a pretty good sign of the chaos that has occurred before my arrival.

I suppose I could try waking up earlier, but I'm already up a little before 6am on a daily basis, and don't like having to get up any sooner, save for the occasional card show. Plus, I'm terribly sluggish most mornings, so getting up and eating real quick, only to then toss on some clothes and leave, really isn't an option for me. So what's a fellow to do? Why, go the day before the sale of course!

This turned out to be a really good decision (I do make them occasionally) on my part, as the shelves were absolutely packed when I got there, they open at 9am on Fridays, so I was able to get there within minutes of the doors being opened. Having never been to this store on a non-sale day, it was a little weird to see so much stuff, especially in the toy aisle, which is decimated by the time I see it on the sale days. The highlight of the full toy aisle was an old Lego Empire State Building set in a bag for like $8, and when I say old, I mean the Legos looked like they did when I was a kid, not like the weird looking stuff that is put out these days. I didn't buy it, because a) I didn't know if it was complete, and b) the Legos looked very played with, in fact I've never seen Legos that looked so rough before. Still fun to see though, and I'm sure that somebody bought it the next day.

Anyways, if you've seen any of these posts before, then you already know which section that I headed to first... videos! Followed by DVD's, records, video games, etc.

The last couple of half-off sales that I've been to have seen me getting there only to find quite a few empty spaces on the VHS shelves, so I was rather pleased to see that the shelves were completely full on this particular Friday...

Confession time: Before getting this tape, I had never seen an episode of WKRP before! I know that it's been syndicated forever now, and I do remember it being on quite a bit during my childhood, teens, and twenties -- but as anyone who had cable during the late 80's and into the 90's knows, there was always stuff to watch, and for me, WKRP just wasn't a high priority at the time. However, now that I'm couple of years removed from having cable/satellite (and I don't do streaming), I've started to become interested in trying out some of the shows that I didn't have time for when I was younger.

I tried to watch Cloverfield for the first time last week, and big surprise, it didn't go well! I'm sure that there's a few other people out there who still haven't seen it, so I won't spoil anything, but I will say that I only made it to about the 35-minute mark, just long enough for the monster/alien to show up, and then I just couldn't do anymore (to be fair though, I was hating it after the first five minutes). I don't know if it was the intention of the filmmakers or not, but if I was supposed to hate every single human in that film, than they did a great job, because I did. I knew that I'd never be giving this one another go, so after stopping it, I went to IMDB to read some spoilers, and boy am I glad that I didn't decide to power through that last hour, because the rest of the movie sounds just as bad (if not worse) than the first half an hour. As disappointing as that was (I had been wanting to see it for a long time), I still had an hour of free time to fill, so I got up and popped in the above tape, and ended up enjoying the show, or at least the first two episodes, quite a bit -- so much so, that I'll now be on the lookout for some cheap seasons on DVD.

Oh, and one other thing, is anyone interested in a Cloverfield DVD?

Watching Gaslight on TCM used to be a yearly tradition for me, because of that, I never felt the need to look for a physical copy -- but after I cut that proverbial cord, my yearly tradition fell by the wayside, and I have since been in search of a physical copy. This is one instance where DVD might be better, but I haven't seen a cheap one of those, so VHS will have to suffice until I do.

Not much to say about this one, it was new to me, and I still haven't watched it yet. I did notice that it was released back in 1992 on my birthday, so that's something. Also, I really love screener tapes, people used to collect them, but I don't really know how strong the market is for them anymore?

And another one that I had never seen (and still haven't), but I was at least familiar with it.

How about an old documentary that was clearly made to be watched in classrooms? And you can tell that it was made for a different generation (my generation), because it hasn't been dumbed down in the least, there are no jump cuts, and there is no artificial/unnecessary drama. In other words, it was made for kids who were capable of independent thought. This was the first thing from this haul that got watched, and it did not disappoint! If you have any interest in dinosaurs, do yourself a favor, and keep an eye out for this one -- or try to find it online if that's your thing.

Finding a non-Jackie Chan martial arts film in this part of the country is not an easy task, so imagine my surprise when I found this one! Finding a Sonny Chiba picture in this part of the country is damn near impossible. And if finding one is damn near impossible, then...

... finding two is like, well, I don't know what it's like, but I probably should've stopped to buy a lottery ticket on my way home that morning.

Like the video shelves, the big spinny rack of DVD's was completely full, which by the way, was something that I hadn't encountered before, usually that rack is only half-full at best. Of course just because the rack is full, doesn't mean that there's going to be anything good in there, but thankfully this was one instance where full rack equaled good stuff!

In general I do like most submarine movies, the only problem is, they tend to bleed together, at least for me. So trying to remember what scene came from what movie can often be a rather difficult, if not impossible, task. Because of this, I can't always recall which films I've seen, and which one's I haven't, case in point, The Bedford Incident. Have I seen it? I don't remember, and probably won't until I watch it again. At least I was able to remember that I didn't already own it though, that by the way, is something that I never have trouble with.

I had seen this film a few times over the years, but had never encountered a physical copy before. If someone were to ask me, I'd say this is a good movie, but definitely not for everyone, especially if you're looking for historical accuracy. I watched it again a couple of nights ago, and after having not done so for around a decade, a couple of things stood out, things that I hadn't noticed in the past. I'm quite a bit more familiar with Merle Oberon than I was the last time I saw it, knowing what I now know, it's considerably more interesting to watch her portrayal of George Sand, because for all intensive purposes, she's playing herself... neither gal was ever going to be winning any humanitarian awards. The other thing that I noticed was that I really enjoyed some of the secondary characters, in fact they sort of make the movie for me, George Coulouris as Louis Pleyel, Howard Freeman as Kalkbrenner, and my favorite, Stephen Bekassy as Franz Liszt.

I hadn't seen this one before, but I knew that with this cast that it couldn't be bad, and as it turns out, I was right. There isn't a lot of depth to the characters, and everybody's kind of playing their typical roles, but that's okay, because that's what I'm paying to see with most of these guys.

From one ensemble cast to another! Not my favorite Sergio Leone western, but I hadn't seen it for a long time, so for less than $2 I figured I might as well give it another go -- and I'm glad I did, because I ended up enjoying it quite a bit more than the last time I saw it (15-20 years ago).

I think I did pretty well overall, obviously everything wasn't half-off, but had I waited a day, most of this stuff wouldn't have still been sitting there. And other than a brief negative interaction with a guy who didn't seem to understand the etiquette of spinny racks, I had pretty decent time -- although I did go to Hobby Lobby afterwards, and that was a complete bust, but Goodwill was... good!

With the next half-off sale being a little less than two weeks away now, I'm fairly certain that I'm going to try and go the day before again, as it doesn't hurt to see if I can duplicate the success of this last trip.


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