Blu-ray & DVD: The Digital Dread Report for September 2nd

I know we've been saying that September was going to be a goldmine for Horror & Genre fans on the new release front, but that goldmine doesn't really begin until next week. This week, there are no doubt a bunch of worthwhile and fun releases to be had, but they pale in comparison to what comes next week, and beyond.

Any week in which the DVD releases are more enticing than the Blu-ray releases, is an odd one to say the least, and this one is surely that.

This week, Universal is releasing a bunch of old favorites onto Blu-ray for the first time, all of which seem to be bare-bones upconverts (read about upconverting HERE), which is a shame. We'd like to see Firestarter or People Under the Stairs in pristine 1080p quality, but if we want to watch them upconverted, we'll just throw in our old DVDs and be done with it. Why spend the money? Those two movies, along with Dracula, The Return, The Watcher, and White Noise, all seem to have been given the upconvert treatment from Universal, rather than receiving a new HD transfer, which doesn't automatically mean that they are going to suck, just that they could have looked and sounded much better. If you're eager to buy any of these flicks, they'll most likely look and sound better than their old DVD counterparts, just maybe wait until they hit a price point below $10. 

*In all fairness, we haven't seen any of these Uni Blu-rays with our own eyes, on our own equipment, so we can't say anything about their quality (or lack thereof) first hand. Others have seen them though,and those others are people who are far more anal about Picture and Audio quality than we are, so we tend to take them at their word.

Aside from the Universal releases, the only new release that really interests us this week is Cabin Fever: Patient Zero (our review HERE.) Is it worth buying? I don't know, probably not, but we do have to say that it was a crazy gorefest that will most likely look great on Blu-ray. Not much of a ringing endorsement, I know, but it's the best we've got this week.

This week's DVD releases are ruled by a bunch of interesting 4-packs. We love multi-pack DVDs & Blu-rays, not only because they save space, but because they usually tend to deliver a good bang for the buck. If we didn't already own most of the movies, we'd grab the Aliens, Creatures, and Zombies 4-packs in a heartbeat.

*Is Prince of Darkness really a Zombie movie though?