Ah, hello there, welcome!

Today we'll see what I found in my last trip to CeX, again, with my good friend who's still around for a few more days before returning to France.
I was kindda running short of money, but they just happened to have brought some new stuff to CeX, so let's see what I got!

We agreed to meet up in a park I've sometimes been to.
On the way there, I saw few weird things, just like last time. One of them was this advertisement, what the fuck is this about?

Really?
Who the hell thought this was a good idea for an ad? A CEO?
The irony writes itself...

Anyways, later on I found a advertisement that was actually good! Now this is a sign that makes me wanna throw money at the business, hell yeah.

Strangely enough, even tho I actually knew the park my friend had told me we'd meet up at, and had been there a few times by now, I somehow got lost along the way, and had to message my friend to try and find some common ground.
I sent him a photo of this old photobooth that had been in this street for quite a long time, and now sits pretty much forever unused here.

At the end of the day, I didn't actually need to send him that photo, as I did find my way to the park anyways, but I wanted him to see that somewhat nostalgic photobooth.

Once I got to the entrance of the park, after trying to figure out for a couple minutes where the East is, I found a cool black cat!
Sadly, he didn't want to become friends with me, but it was cool, nonetheless.

We finally found each other in the park, and as we were both just about to spontanoeusly combust, we decided to make our way to our usual KFC.
We were sheltered from the actually quite extreme heat, specially for my friend who wasn't so used to Spanish temperatures anymore, but after eating something and chatting for a bit, we decided to head downtown and see what was cooking over at CeX.

There were A LOT of new DVD's, and I really mean A LOT of them.
I saw DVD's of the Urban Legend movies, Jeepers Creepers 2... and uh I actually forgot the rest of them.
Unfortunately, the DVD of Bad Taste that I had had my eye on for a few weeks now, had finally been taken by someone else. Quite a waste, it seemed like a fun movie, but oh well.

Still, I didn't have much money on me that day, so I could only afford to buy about 3 movies, and I finally managed to pick the 3 films that I wanted, like 10 minutes before the store closed.

This one I picked pretty much right as I saw it, City of the Living Dead, or as it was originally called in Italy, its country of origin, Paura nella città dei morti viventi (which is also its Spanish name, meaning Fear in the City of the Living Dead).
This is the first movie in Lucio Fulci's Gates of Hell trilogy, of which, up to this point, I had only seen the last part of, House by the Cemetery, a film that I quite enjoyed.
A good friend of mine had actually recommended this movie and its sequel to me, so I didn't think twice before picking it up.

This is a Manga Films release, and if you know them, you'll know that they're mostly known for quantity, not quality, and this release isn't really an exception.
The DVD has a kindda cool animated menu, but it's severely lacking in extras, containing only some very brief technical and artist credits, and filmographies for just three of the people who worked on the films.
It does, however, have their usual "Also on DVD" section, with a trailer for their release of Pulse, a movie that I really want to watch. I hope I can find a copy of their release, someday.
The actual movie's quality is not that great, either. It's pretty badly compressed, so it's probably advisable to watch the movie on a CRT TV, and the Spanish audio sync isn't great. But, at least the movie is in actual anamorphic widescreen, unlike many of Manga's other releases which are in letterboxed 4:3.

Still, it's not an awful release, and I like collecting Manga Films releases, so it wasn't a bad purchase overall.

And speaking of non-anamorphic widescreen movies, here's the next movie I bought, another one of Manga Film's releases, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers!

I had been wanting to get a copy of this movie for a while, and I'm glad I finally did, as I'm now one step closer to owning the entire franchise on DVD.
It's not my favourite Halloween movie, in fact, it used to be one of my least favourites, but it has been growing on me over time, and I certainly have my fun with it.
Worse case scenario, you get to see Dr. Loomis and Michael in yet another movie. Plus, it does have some cool scenes and music, so it's not all bad.

Unfortunately, I can't quite say the same for the DVD itself.

The animated menus are kindda cool I guess, this time they actually have some footage of the movie playing in the background instead of just a static image, tho it kindda does spoil part of the movie if you haven't already watched it, and it has the main theme of the movie playing in the background, which I like.
One weird thing is the movies they included in the "Also on DVD" section, one being a film about Jeffrey Dahmer, and the other one being about a fictional serial killer, starring Michael Rooker, who would later go on to play Merle Dixon in The Walking Dead.
I thought these were somewhat odd inclusions because I don't think people who were interested in the Halloween franchise, would show that much interest in real life serial killers, or fictional serial killers that are pretty realistic when compared to Michael Myers.
Oh well, nitpicky, I know. I might actually end up watching the Michael Rooker one if I can get my hands on a copy.

Unfortunately, the main problem with this release actually resides in the movie itself. Take a look at this...

No, no, I didn't fuck up and accidentally added black bars into the image. This is one of those Manga Films non-anamorphic widescreen releases, where the image is technically in widescreen but is fit into a 4:3 image, with black bars encoded into the image itself.
While this may not be a problem if your DVD player or TV has an option to crop the image, there are many out there that don't, so this is pretty fucking annoying.
Plus, even if you crop the image, you're still watching a much lower resolution image, with 412 vertical lines of resolution instead of the standard 576 you would expect from a DVD.

That's really fucked up.

Anyways, let's move on to the next and final film, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers!

Annoyingly not actually called Halloween 6 (at least, officially), I actually quite this movie.
Or, at least, I like one version of it, the Producer's Cut. Unfortunately, this version never made it to the public until the very recent Shout Factory Blu-Ray release, and of course, only in the US, so for now I'm stuck with the old theatrical DVD releases.
Still, I find this to be a pretty good entry in the franchise, minus certain plot points and a few... decisions... made for the theatrical cut, so it's better having this than nothing, or having to pay a lung and a kidney for the Shout Factory version.

They actually had two versions of this movie at CeX, a newer one from I believe 2007, and this older 2002 one, by Lauren Films (although technically part of a horror movie collection by Planeta DeAgostini).
I chose this one mainly because I like Lauren Films, I prefer older releases, and honestly, older releases tend to be better, whenever a DVD gets re-edited in later years, it tends to feature blander menus, less extras and generally feel more cheap.

Now, to be honest, this release doesn't actually include that many extras.
Aside from the usual filmographies, credits sections and the "Also on DVD" screen, which, funnily enough, has a trailer for the Lauren Films Halloween H20 release, which I actually already own, which I thought was kindda cool. But yeah, aside from that, it just has a short featurette, which does technically include a bit of footage from the producer's cut, but nothing amazing.
It's pretty much just an extended trailer for the film.

The movie's actual quality is... fine, I guess. As you can see here, it's in proper anamorphic widescreen this time, but it does have some wasted space around the edges, which strangely happens to quite a lot of DVD's, and the image is a bit blurry (yes, I know my screenshot is compressed to hell and back, but trust me on this one, it's pretty noticeable).
It's not a deal breaker, but it does annoy me that I didn't get a single great-looking DVD this time. Oh well, I guess I'll have to save up for the 4K Blu-Rays.

And that was pretty much it for the day! After leaving CeX, we walked all the way back to where I usually get off the bus, because I missed the bus on earlier stops... twice, but it wasn't too bad because we were talking along the way and whatnot.
My friend then made his way back to France on foot again, I got back home, and well, the rest is history, I guess!
I hope you enjoyed reading this, and I'll see you in the next post.