Edwige, my longstanding kangaroo companion, and I were searching for the Revenging Manta, the ninja vigilante of downtown Orlando. He had been dragged away by a punk dressed as the robot sheriff Elle from the movie Starcrash. My right foot crunched on something. It was a Smartie, a Nestle knockoff of M&Ms sold up in Canada. The piece of Smarties candy I stepped on led to a trail of Smarties. Edwige and I followed this trail, my kangaroo friend slurping up each chocolate morsel as we sallied forth.

— To be continued. 

I’ve been nostalgic for DVDs. Yes, I know DVDs haven’t gone anywhere and you still buy and collect these standard-definition marvels. But I remember the early days of DVD, when the format was new. And I remember one of my first goals as a budding DVD collector was getting my hands on Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy: Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, and Army of Darkness.

I think my first purchase was Army of Darkness released by Universal Studios on a bare-bones DVD that wasn’t even enhanced for widescreen TVs. My second purchase was the original Evil Dead DVD from Elite Entertainment. This one came with two audio commentary tracks. The first of these featured director Sam Raimi and producer Rob Tapert bashing star Bruce Campbell. Funny. The other audio commentary track featured Bruce Campbell continually bashing director Sam Raimi and pointing out every shoddy effect to the viewer. Very funny.

My next purchase was the special edition of Army of Darkness put out by Anchor Bay in 1999. This was THX Certified and came with a remastered version of the original Army of Darkness plus a Director’s Cut of the movie with an alternate ending.  The Director’s Cut featured an audio commentary with Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi where they got along swimmingly. I suppose Army of Darkness was my first introduction to what we used to refer to as the double dip, purchasing the same movie again on DVD to get some added features.

Next came the Evil Dead II Special Edition from Anchor Bay. I bought the special collector’s tin for this one. I think it came with a collector’s booklet and a postcard. It was the little things back then that made DVD collecting worthwhile. Next up was Anchor Bay’s own re-release of the original Evil Dead. This was a new widescreen edition of the movie that came housed in a replica of the Book of the Dead. The front and back cover was a rubber effigy of a human face. It was said if you stuck it in a freezer, the surface of the book would feel like real human skin.

And that was how I experienced the Evil Dead trilogy. It’s hard to explain to those of you who didn’t grow up with VHS just how huge a leap that DVD was. You could watch a movie over and over again without having to worry about wear and tear. Plus, many discs came with audio commentaries and making-of documentaries. The Anchor Bay Evil Dead DVD featured a documentary focused on Bruce Campbell going to a fan convention. It was wonderful seeing the look of horror on Bruce’s face when he saw a cosplayer dressed as Totoro from Hayou Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro. I’ve never covered the Evil Dead movies on this blog. It’s high time that changed.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, and episode 575) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.