Unsolved Mysteries

[domino harvey]

Original Unsolved Mysteries is up on Amazon Prime!

[cdnchris]

I've been going through them and it appears they are missing episodes but it's a blast revisiting them. I was surprised to see the reenactments are pretty well done all things considered.

When I started they only had season one but last I checked season 2 was also just added. I do appreciate that they also give updates to the stories when there have been any since the original airing.

[domino harvey]

Are they new updates? I know they used to include the infamous UPDATE music in reruns, so it may be carried over from that

[cdnchris]

Oh, maybe they're from the reruns. I never saw this in reruns, but basically it's just (in most cases) text notes with the music. They still have the video updates from the original episodes.

[domino harvey]

Oh that might be different, I only remember video updates with Robert Stack's narration

[bearcuborg]

Later, a VERY beautiful Keely Shaye Smith, did the updates.

I've been watching them for the past few weeks, and they hold up very well. Well, apart from reunions...I didn't care for those. The Matthew Chase ATM segment is one of the scariest things I've ever seen.

I still sometimes imagine Stack narrating my last moments if I'm out walking late at night...

[thirtyframesasecond]

How did Dennis Farina narrate the later series? Knowing him from Snatch and other films of similar ilk, I can only imagine mean, foul-mouthed voiceovers!

[bearcuborg]

Slightly better than he did narrating a tour of Chicago's Art Institute.

[domino harvey]

This is something enough people have bought that it’s almost fully sold out. Luxury LPs of broadcast audio cues… there really is a whole world of collector out there that I just have no concept of

[Never Cursed]

This is something enough people have bought that it’s almost fully sold out. Luxury LPs of broadcast audio cues… there really is a whole world of collector out there that I just have no concept of

This is the same label that restored The Nail Gun Massacre and put it out on a stacked UHD/blu-ray, they've been The Enemy for a long time

[domino harvey]

It’s incredible scrolling through their website and seeing slasher titles that I watched on VHS rips downloaded from YouTube getting UHDs, I really haven’t been keeping up with this market

[Murdoch]

This is the same label that restored The Nail Gun Massacre and put it out on a stacked UHD/blu-ray, they've been The Enemy for a long time

I don't have any interest in this label's output but what makes them "The Enemy"? Doesn't seem much different from some of Arrow's less than desirable releases

[domino harvey]

He’s presumably referring to how I (accurately) labeled the film as the worst of its kind

[Murdoch]

That's fair, it looks awful. Although I've yet to have a worse time watching a movie than Spawn!

[Never Cursed]

This is the same label that restored The Nail Gun Massacre and put it out on a stacked UHD/blu-ray, they've been The Enemy for a long time

I don't have any interest in this label's output but what makes them "The Enemy"? Doesn't seem much different from some of Arrow's less than desirable releases

They’re The Enemy because of what domino said, and because they’re one of several labels that spends time and resources on putting out extravagant limited editions of z-grade garbage to appeal to a sweaty collector/secondhand market when who knows how many more interesting movies languish in poor DVD or VHS editions. Them putting out an expensive vinyl of cues is slick business sense from one perspective, nauseating contempt for art in another

[hearthesilence]

I had no idea Matthew McConaughey had one of his first acting gigs as a murder victim on the show. Also didn't realize Henry Rollins appeared on the show to help find the killer of one of his roadies.

[pianocrash]

I had no idea Matthew McConaughey had one of his first acting gigs as a murder victim on the show. Also didn't realize Henry Rollins appeared on the show to help find the killer of one of his roadies.

Still unsolved, unfortunately. Rollins collected his writings before & after the incident (See A Grown Man Cry, Now Watch Him Die) which is a tough, meaningful read, even if you're not wholly into Rollins.

This is the same label that restored The Nail Gun Massacre and put it out on a stacked UHD/blu-ray, they've been The Enemy for a long time

I don't have any interest in this label's output but what makes them "The Enemy"? Doesn't seem much different from some of Arrow's less than desirable releases

They’re The Enemy because of what domino said, and because they’re one of several labels that spends time and resources on putting out extravagant limited editions of z-grade garbage to appeal to a sweaty collector/secondhand market when who knows how many more interesting movies languish in poor DVD or VHS editions. Them putting out an expensive vinyl of cues is slick business sense from one perspective, nauseating contempt for art in another

It's really no different than any other player in said market (creating a product for an audience in exchange for money), but holding a grudge on either side of the issue is kind of pointless, especially when a majority of these releases are just for them? All art is about ideas, even bad ones! But considering someone The Enemy because they choose to make decisions you don't care for (for an audience you have contempt toward) probably says more about you than it does them.

I, for one, am looking forward to finally revisiting that video store croaky Rumpelstiltskin once my neighborhood Wal-Mart starts carrying it locally (Terror Vision has done a few distribution one-offs with them in the past), mostly because they do a wonderful job at adding new audio descriptive captions/subs to their releases (unlike other AI-afflicted big-time labels who shall remain nameless). Even if you think The Nail Gun Massacre sucks (easily true for most people on Earth), Terror Vision's captions alone are a pretty hilarious enhancement of that experience.

And while I don't have much use for splatter vinyl of anything, I did & have paid American money for several copies of Mark Robinson's Mark E. Superstar cassette (and, much later, pressed CD-R), which was at least 75% audio taped from a VHS copy of The Taking Of Pelham 123.

[domino harvey]

I’m with Never Cursed. Like any label of this nature, some releases are not as, uh, cursed as others (I quite like Hide and Go Shriek for what it is, which is the only reason I even know this label exists), and I agree that they’re not much worse than other labels doing the same thing… but that’s not a defense for me, it’s an indictment of the market overall. And I think he’s dead on that these boutiques releasing deluxe vinyl soundtrack albums with pretty art that are not meant to be listened to at all is a bad omen of the cult of conspicuous consumption moving forward at all costs towards a hellish nightmare world of unchecked capitalist terror. Other than that though? Great label!

[Never Cursed]

The market is definitely the root problem rather than Terror Vision itself, though I guess I also draw a distinction between labels that have dipped (sometimes really hard) into genre stuff while demonstrably using the proceeds thereof to put out other kinds of movies and a label that only exists to take money from people who will buy/resell z-grade ephemera, like this one. I don't really feel the need to be charitable to a label that also makes lots of money flogging cassette tapes and VHSs and vinyls of music cues and CDs of of the "music" of the animatronic "band" from the ShowBiz Pizza Place restaurants and mystery boxes of its own movies. Taken as a whole, one has to conclude that this is a home video distribution label second and a purveyor of embarrassingly juvenile nostalgia bait for people stuck in a particular place and time (to be resold at a markup, no less) first. Why else would they let you subscribe to their blu-rays for anywhere between $373 and $1040, and why else would one of the benefits of such a subscription be access to buying their merch catalog wholesale?

[hearthesilence]

I had no idea Matthew McConaughey had one of his first acting gigs as a murder victim on the show. Also didn't realize Henry Rollins appeared on the show to help find the killer of one of his roadies.

Still unsolved, unfortunately. Rollins collected his writings before & after the incident (See A Grown Man Cry, Now Watch Him Die) which is a tough, meaningful read, even if you're not wholly into Rollins.

Ugh. It wouldn't surprise me if Rubin's Rolls Royce did give someone ideas.

[colinr0380]

I see that they put out an upgrade of Suddenly In The Dark from Mondo Macabro's Blu-ray to UHD, and US Blu-ray editions of Door and Door II: Tokyo Diary, which Third Window double-billed together in the UK. Plus the 2021 Japanese remake of Cube!

In terms of Shot on Video films, the closest I have come to any of these are the Cinema Snob's videos on different titles - Woodchipper Massacre has particularly stuck with me ("This is the kind of movie that makes you kind of wonder where the actors may have ended up these days. All I can think of is: Stripper; Alcoholic; Dead"), but I'm not sure that I need to see any more of this subgenre than those critiques!

[Maladroit Aggregator]

This is the same label that restored The Nail Gun Massacre and put it out on a stacked UHD/blu-ray, they've been The Enemy for a long time

I don't have any interest in this label's output but what makes them "The Enemy"? Doesn't seem much different from some of Arrow's less than desirable releases

They’re The Enemy because of what domino said, and because they’re one of several labels that spends time and resources on putting out extravagant limited editions of z-grade garbage to appeal to a sweaty collector/secondhand market when who knows how many more interesting movies languish in poor DVD or VHS editions. Them putting out an expensive vinyl of cues is slick business sense from one perspective, nauseating contempt for art in another

What utterly predictable middlebrow snobbery this response is, like something an unimaginative, incurious dullard like Jeff Wells would say.

In what way does Terror Vision releasing garbage or nostalgia-bait inhibit any of the other four dozen labels from releasing "interesting" films? In no way at all is the correct answer. It sounds like you and many others here would be happy with coercive government sanctioned bodies or inbred hidebound academics doling out approved media. You're welcome to it, if that's the case. Enjoy your narrowing horizons.

I also think Terror Vision sucks, but their model is only a few percent different than Criterion or Second Run, and that's a fact. CC release hats and tote bags, for fuck's sake, and SR's stuff is visually "branded" which impels a completionist urge no different than any other consumer cockteasing.

As for soundtracks of fragmentary music cues, that's been a thing since the 1980s, even longer among tape traders, and it's (at best) another example of fans doing what so-called professionals can't or won't do, which is cataloging the real culture we live in. If it weren't for people like Irwin Chusid, entire genres of music would still be neglected and unstudied while the boorish and knuckleheaded mainstream (including 99% of "alt" bands like Pavement or Spoon) streamrolls us all.

[domino harvey]

I for one am glad someone is finally speaking out against the mainstream over saturation of a band that hasn’t released a new album in over 25 years

[Never Cursed]

I don't have any interest in this label's output but what makes them "The Enemy"? Doesn't seem much different from some of Arrow's less than desirable releases

They’re The Enemy because of what domino said, and because they’re one of several labels that spends time and resources on putting out extravagant limited editions of z-grade garbage to appeal to a sweaty collector/secondhand market when who knows how many more interesting movies languish in poor DVD or VHS editions. Them putting out an expensive vinyl of cues is slick business sense from one perspective, nauseating contempt for art in another

What utterly predictable middlebrow snobbery this response is, like something an unimaginative, incurious dullard like Jeff Wells would say.

Protip: Don't use the same username on every film website you're registered for, unless you want people to be able to plug it into Google and see you having a conversation with Jeff Wells in the Hollywood Elsewhere comments. Unless that's another Maladroit Aggregator.

[Mr Sausage]

Criticizing the extravagances of late capitalism = fascism now, apparently.