One of the painful lessons I learned back in the 1980s was that "Direct-To-Video" (VHS, back in the day) usually meant that the flick wasn't good enough to get theatrical distribution.
The breaking of my DtV cherry was a little turd called A Return to Salem's Lot. I loved the Tobe Hooper adaptation for King's vampire tale (Barlow is still one of the coolest-looking vampire in cinematic history, to me!), so when my then-girlfriend and went to the video store to rent a scary flick for a date night, and I saw (what I thought was) the sequel to Salem's Lot, I snatched it up!
What the flick turned out to be, however, was a confusing mess of "and then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens" storytelling, written and shot and acted very poorly.
It was a bitter disappointment. Before that, I had no idea movies could get that bad! In fact, I don't know if I'm even remembering this correctly, but I could swear the "movie" was shot on videotape! (I recall a shot where everything is on fire, and fire looks different on videotape than it does on film.)
In my late teens and early twenties I had taken chances on DtV flicks, and the perception held.
In the 1990s, though, Disney began sequelizing their blockbuster animated movies into DtV -- and those sequels were pretty good! If you liked Disney's Aladdin, then The Return of Jafar was a fun little flick! The animation clearly wasn't good enough to cut it on the Big Screen, but the story was good!
Anyway, the reason I'm going on like this is because I just watched a couple of great DtV flicks! They're part of the DC Universe Animated Original Movies.
I don't remember exactly who started it, but whenever Marvel or DC release one of their Direct-to-Video features, they almost never disappoint!!!
The only exception I can think of is Batman: Gotham Knight. What a cynical piece of make-a-quick-buck-off-a-hot-property that was! If you haven't seen it, please don't bother. I swear to you, in one segment, Batman -- as well as most of the characters -- is shaped like a potato with toothpick legs and arms! Some may call it "artistic license" but I call it lazy! If an artist is so despondent about drawing an iconic character like everyone who has come before him, he should simply avoid iconic characters, not defile them! There were some segments that were well written, and maybe a couple that were well animated, but my memory is that no segments were both, and that the viewing experience as a whole was not worth the time or money I spent.
However, on the positive side DC Universe Animated Original Movies does not appear to have made that same mistake since!!! It appears they took a stylistic gamble, it failed (that is to say that it failed artistically; I'll bet they made their money back on the project), and they learned their lesson and moved on! Kudos to them, I say, for being open-minded and brave enough to take the chance and wise enough to learn from the experience!!!
Anyway, this elaborate lead-in is by way of sort of explaining why is was such a joy to me to watch Batman: Under the Red Hood and Superman/Batman: Apocalypse this morning!
I streamed them on Netflix, and it's such a delight to do that and get such a thoroughly pleasant surprise!
I mean, when you stream a theatrical release that has gone to DVD, you have a good idea what you're going to get. (The movie is likely to be, at least, watchable; that's why the studio paid so much to get it into theaters first.) And when you stream a Direct-to-DVD flick that you've never heard of before, you also have a good idea what you're going to get. (The movie may be watchable, but it's not likely to be good; otherwise it would have gotten a theatrical release, or at least aired on a Network or Cable station before it went to DVD.)
But when you stream one of Marvel's or DC's straight-to-video titles, you can bet that the movie will at least be good, and it may even be great!
The flicks I watched this morning were great! :D
Plus, I'm really enjoying a quaint, quiet Sunday! Friday was about drinkin' with my brother, blowing off steam from the work week, and watching the thoroughly awesome Red!!! Then Saturday was about getting my taxes done (YAY!), washing some dishes, working with my brother on our novel, and then watching some SpongeBob. (It had been a while since either of us had seen some SpongeBob, so I picked up a collection from the $5 bin at Walmart. Home Sweet Pineapple is the collection I got.)
Today, I still need to do some writing, and I really need some clean clothes. But since I share a laundromat with the rest of my apartment complex, and most who live here keep Normal People hours, I figure it might be best to do my laundry during the wee hours, when I'm not likely to be competing for an open washing machine or dryer. And I don't really have an excuse not to do my writing right now, except that I'm really diggin' on this simplistic little, no-pressure existence of just watching Netflix movies and TV shows (I caught a couple of Season One episodes of Murder, She Wrote episodes after my DC-palooza).
When I was a kid, one of my childish goals for my life was to watch movies and TV shows all day long, every day. As it is, I don't have cable at home (Time-Warner is the devil and they will not get my money if I can help it, unless and until they stop gouging people and start offering fair packages at reasonable prices!) so I'm not even tempted to spend all my time watching TV. And I'm actually thankful for that! I get A LOT more done because I'm not sucked into the boob tube. Still, the fact that I don't waste much time watching TV makes wasting a large chunk of today way on Netflix somehow particularly enjoyable! :) It's kind of novel.
I haven't decided if I want to return to Murder, She Wrote (I never watched the show when it was on the air, because it seemed to Young Ray Jay like some boring "grown-up's show"; but lately, I've become more fond of Mysteries -- I blame Agatha Christie, Sir Author Conan Doyle and Castle) or if I should hop into Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam while I have the time. I'm a huge Captain Marvel fan from way back, and one never knows when one's life is going to get unexpectedly busy.
Well...it looks like I just answered my own question. :)
I hope the rest of your weekend is blissfully fun AND relaxing!!!
:D
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