Tag: Home Video Reviews

15 years ago, Monday Night RAW debuted. 10 years ago, RAW featured Mike Tyson and Steve Austin almost going at it. 5 years ago, RAW celebrated its tenth anniversary with a piss-poor awards show that was generally disliked by anyone who watched it (and the DVD they released was no better). Now it’s the fifteenth anniversary of WWE’s flagship Monday night show and the company has decided to celebrate with a three-hour reunion episode (which was actually pretty good), a quick music CD featuring entrance themes of more popular RAW superstars, and a 3-disc set which shows the best moments of RAW, throughout its 15 year run.

For the most part, this is a pretty sweet deal. As someone who only got into this stuff during the Attitude era, it was pretty neat to see stuff I hadn’t been able to witness back in the day. Even revisiting some of the more memorable moments like BANG 3:16 and McMahon’s Stooges coming out to Real American (back when making fun of Hulk Hogan was perfectly acceptable behavior) was a treat. There are also a couple matches here and there, although they are outweighed by the amount of vignettes included.

Most of the footage is pretty solid, although there does seem to be some “recycling” of past edited footage for the sake of filling the disc (the ECW chapter seems to be ripped right from the Rise and Fall of ECW DVD they put out a couple years back), but it doesn’t really kill the product. Just about the only other flaw is that everything on this 3-disc set really serves as a reminder of how great and predictable RAW used to be in its glory days in comparison to what’s being shown now.

If you want to revisit the days of RAW back when it was actually unpredictable and daring, you should pick this set up. It’s a nice companion piece to the RAW show that aired a couple weeks back.

Recently picked up the 3-Disc History set. For those who don’t know, this set contains a bunch of title matches stemming from the WWWF days to the WWF days to the current WWE days. Thankfully, we only get one John Cena match, which means plenty of room for true champions to show their stuff. I’m going to do you folks a favor and give you a quick little review of this thing;

THE GOOD
I dig the presentation on the DVD. There’s even a nice little montage showing off (almost) every (W)WWF/E title change up to the current day, which is a nice touch. Each of the three discs cover specific eras; the first disc cover everything up to the 80s, the second disc 1990s, and the third disc is everything up to today-ish. A good selection of championship matches, with some important stuff featured here.

THE BAD
If there is any real criticism to be had, it’s that there’s no footage of the earliest title change from Sammartino’s first win to anywhere before Billy Graham. Instead, you get a little text blurb describing the event. It’s entirely possible such footage is lost to the annals of time and that’s why they’re not included. Still, it’s something whose omission is felt immensely, even if it might not appeal to the more modern fan.

IS IT WORTH IT?
Overall, it’s a good collection of title matches and it was nice to be able to see Andre the Giant’s only world title win. If you haven’t picked this up, go ahead and do so. In any case, it’s way better than the crap calling itself sports entertainment that on TV these days.

In memory of Vince McMahon’s hair, I present a quick review of the McMahon DVD. This’ll be the first DVD review I’m doing (goodie) and also the first review that works under a different format than I usually do, so we’ll see how this works.

For some reason, people at World Wrestling Entertainment felt the need to compile a DVD retrospect on Vincent Kennedy McMahon. I don’t know why, but the DVD was made and I picked it up, just for a few laughs on how they would explain some of Vince’s mishaps.

THE GOOD: For the most part, the DVD is pretty extensive, as they talk about Vince’s uprising and the expansion of the WWF, as well as discussing a few “questionable” angles of recent years. Nothing flaky there, but then they bring up the WTBS deal with Ted Turner, spinning it as though they were getting great ratings to a point where Ted wanted to buy a piece of the company (many other written accounts tell a different – more accurate – story). There are just many things that are given a different spin here that it’s absolutely nuts (the XFL didn’t cost a lot to do, but lack of support from UPN forced the project to be canned… QUE?), but it makes for an entertaining romp. For those interested, the DVD includes Vince’s Slammy dance number in its entirety.

THE BAD: They skimp over the early-90s for some reason; it would have been nice to heard Vince’s thoughts on the WBF (his short-lived bodybuilding company) and the steroid scandals. The extras aren’t anything to write home about; just some more interviews and a select few of McMahon’s matches. None of them are great, although I did enjoy watching the first Austin/McMahon non-match from 98, as I hadn’t seen it the first time around. Other than that, nothing special.

OVERALL: If you want a good retrospect on the history of WWE, McMahon isn’t what you’re looking for. Revisionist history aside, this offers a good look behind the scenes as well as brief snippets of what goes on in Vince’s head. Worth a look if you’re remotely a fan of McMahons.

RATING: 6 / 10

WWE’s Best Of Intercontinental Championship is not a new DVD release, but rather it’s a re-issue of an old Colosseum Video compilation from 1993, featuring five matches from 1992-93. Beyond that, it’s a very barebones, very basic release with no additional features or bonuses of note. For what it’s worth, you’re getting the following matches.

– IC Champion Shawn Michaels vs. Crush from a ’93 show in England.

– IC Champion Bret Hart vs. Skinner from a 1992 episode of Prime Time Wrestling and pretty much the oldest match on the tape/disc by virtue of featuring Bret Hart as the champion.

– IC Champion Shawn Michaels vs. Marty Janetty from a July ’93 episode of RAW.

– IC Champion Shawn Michaels vs. Mr. Perfect from Summerslam ’93.

– IC Champion Shawn Michaels vs. “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan from a May ’93 episode of RAW.

THE GOOD: Well, it was a relatively cheap DVD. I think I only payed about ten bucks for this thing. Also, if you’re an HBK fan, you have a nice collection of matches from his first two IC title reigns. The matches against Janetty and Perfect are the highlights.

THE BAD: It’s a straight-up re-release of an old Colosseum Video release with no extra bits and very basic menus to navigate. Not only that, but there’s only five matches and other than the two I mentioned in the “good” segment, the rest of the matches aren’t exactly worthy of being dubbed the best of anything.

OVERALL: For a cheap re-release, it’s something for old-timers. But anyone who wants a collection of good Intercontinental championship matches should probably get the History Of The IC Championship DVD set that was released years later, where there’s not only more (better) matches, but there’s also variety, which this re-release lacks.

I’ll sum up this release in a single sentence; Destroy All Monsters is a fun movie, but the DVD release is pure trash.

Touted as a 50th Anniversary special edition, this is a two-disc set; one disc contains the movie, while the other disc is a CD containing the entire score of the movie by Akira Ifujkube. And for what it’s worth, I like the soundtrack. Even if the tracks are mostly variations of the same themes over and over.

The DVD, on the other hand, is lazily put together. Basically, someone took the movie, digitized it, slapped it onto a disc, and punched out. Never mind the lack of subtitles, alternate audio tracks, or even a menu for navigation; there are NO CHAPTERS on this disc. This means that if you want to skip to a later portion of the film, you’re going to have to fast-forward that sucker like you would an old VHS tape.

The movie itself is great fun; the ninth film in the Godzilla film franchise brings about ELEVEN monsters wrecking havoc all over the world and while the action is limited, it’s never boring. There’s also a basic tale with the storytelling and such. Maybe someday I’ll touch on the movie in greater detail, but considering how rarely I get to watch a Godzilla film from this era, I had a blast with this old film, even if the video quality isn’t the greatest.

It’s just unfortunate that there wasn’t enough care put into the surrounding package to make it special or even manageable. A milestone of this ilk for a fondly remembered movie deserves better treatment than what it ultimately got.

But I dig the CD.