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Gussied-up packaging hides the fact that this is just another public domain rehash set.
I am not ashamed to say that I’ve bought my fair share of bargain-bin DVDs. You know, the kind you can find in dollar stores. Generally, these are public domain films, often mystery and horror, and if you start paying attention, you’ll notice that a good number of them are the same thing over and over. There are dozens of companies that specialize in these cheapie discs, all releasing the same stuff.
Alpha, Madacy, Diamond...there are just too many to name. They even started releasing massive sets on insanely small amounts of DVDs. Those 50 themed movie boxes you see are often just all the movies those companies have combined. BCI used to be big into this, but seemed to slack off as they went legitimate.
With quality releases of Filmation’s animation library and other titles, the days of public domain seemed to be over for them. Sadly, they have lapsed back into it with a series of boxed sets in their Legends of Hollywood series.
One of those Legends boxed sets is Kings of Horror, a five-disc set devoted to terror icons Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. It collects no less than 16 films starring the duo separately, and all are the usual public domain suspects. The Ape Man, The Corpse Vanishes, The Terror...even a couple of non-horror films, like Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome.
The prints used are the same we’ve seen countless times. There isn’t a single special feature. Essentially, it’s just another cheapie set. If you don’t own these films, this may be the set to get, but otherwise they offer little.
The one neat thing about the set is that BCI shelled out at least a little dough for the packaging. With an agreement with the estate of Al Hirschfeld, the legendary caricaturist, the box is adorned with his likenesses of the horror kings. It may be a blah set, but it looks nice.
However, the packaging also proves a tremendous source of frustration. The set up allows the discs to rest on doors within the box in a way I haven’t seen before, and while it looks cool, it’s extremely difficult to remove the discs. You’re almost guaranteed to crack one trying to remove it.
Kings of Horror is a (hopefully temporary) lapse in BCI’s recent succession of fine DVDs, and I really hope they stick to the authorized stuff in the future, leaving the poor public domain transfer collections to more dubious companies.
