Belated Swap Meet Finds: Das Return!

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For the first time in a while, I managed to snag some tapes this past weekend. A fellow veteran of the horror VHS wars came down to the swap meet and I ripped some goodies away from the swarming "buy-to-sell off" vultures. He's really into horror mags as well and keeps showing me the awesomeness of HorrorHound. I really should get a subscription, despite Fangoria sadly floundering currently.

The first picture is Anchor Bay's Evil Dead 2 Limited Tin, which I already have, but it's in great condition and sports the excellent looking THX transfer of the film (see here and here). Wizard Video's fanastic big box of Trauma sits next to it. Trauma (Enigma rosso) is actually a 1978 Alberto Negrin-directed giallo starring Fabio Testi. I have another copy of this Wizard tape, but the box was butchered to fit into a small plastic case.

The second picture starts out with the Simitar Video edition of Daniel Boyd's Chillers from 1987. I'm unsure about this tape, but I've heard the Raedon Video VHS is uncut while the Troma VHS/DVD releases are cut. Still trying to find concrete information on this though. I hear Movie House Massacre (Blood Theatre) (1984) isn't terribly good, but that cover is an eye-catcher. I believe it was released with the same art in big box before this cheap "Star Classics" edition. It's hard to believe Gate II is sitting dusty in a Sony-owned vault since the tape below was distributed by Columbia Tri-Star.

Then we have New Horizon's Demon Keeper, again horrid, but in great shape. I've been pining to see John McNaughton's The Borrower and Rolf de Heer of Bad Boy Bubby-fame's Encounter at Raven's Gate, so these were cool finds which I'll pop in soon. I picked up Roller Blade merely because of this goofy title screen intro uploaded by Mr. TangerineMan of The Scandy Factory.

The last two are a bootlegs of Tim Ritter's Killing Spree and Lucio Fulci's A Cat in the Brain. My DVD copy of Killing Spree from the cheapo Eden Entertainment simply doesn't work in any player I have. I really enjoyed Truth or Dare: A Critical Madness, so I'm looking forward to checking this one out. The Fulci boot is an odd one. The cover appears to be a scan of an Italian VHS release from "Dischi Ricordi" with a quote from Jean-Luc Godard(!?!) on the front. This was one of those weird occurrences where you find a tape in which the seller and other items for sale don't match. An old guy with all these blacksmith tools had the tape (and this tape only) sitting atop old Popular Mechanics issues just under a table. The situation was so weird, I asked him if it was even for sale first instead of how much. The transfer turned out to be ripped from the Box Office Spectacular/Grindhouse Releasing Laserdisc release. Hopefully I can uncover some more this coming weekend!