The Quest to Own Our Favorite Movies

Clue (1985)
When it released in theaters, Clue had a fun gimmick where the solution to the central murder mystery could be one of three possible culprits, with different prints being shipped to different theaters. Home video releases had a version that played the potential endings in order along with a “true” ending. But in a shining example of great film preservation, the Clue 4K UHD, available through Shout Factory’s website, has a feature that lets you watch either that cut or a version of the movie that randomizes the ending to give you that experience. Great!
Difficulty: Easy

Coco (2017)
Coco, being one of the bigger Disney/Pixar releases, is easily available as a standalone Blu-Ray or as a 4K UHD/BD combo pack from the major retailer of your choice. We found our Blu-Ray copy in the wild.
Difficulty: Easy

Corpse Bride (2005)
A fairly basic Blu-Ray is easily available, and a 4K UHD was released in 2025. We were able to pick ours up for a couple dollars at GameSwap, but it goes for $10 sealed online and still seems to be in print, though and FYE-exclusive steelbook is not. One extremely funny collection is also no longer in print, and that is The Best Of Blu-Ray Disc Family Collection, containing Corpse Bride, Scooby-Doo, Happy Feet, and The Ant Bully. If you want that brand new, prepare to shell out $111 for some reason.
Difficulty: Easy

Crumb (1994)
Criterion came through in clutch with this one. This was one of the first Criterion purchases I made, half-off during a Barnes & Noble sale, and it’s well worth it. A great transfer and it even comes with a book of R. Crumb art.
Difficulty: Easy

Dave Made A Maze (2017)
The Blu-Ray of this movie is surprisingly easy to find and still in print, and there’s a DVD as well, but the Region A release is pretty barebones. Arrow has a region free release that has more features but has to be imported and is listed as Region B/2 in most places you can order it from.
Difficulty: Easy

Death Note (2006)
This was a pleasant surprise! I was sure that the only way to watch this movie would be through my old DVD copy, but thankfully Viz released a double pack of this movie and The Last Name on Blu-Ray, which is great because I consider them to basically be one large movie when ranking them on my faves list. It’s a good thing this Blu-Ray exists, because before this your best bet at getting both of them in a collection would be on a DVD set running you around $200 (or $80 total for both).

Note: Shortly after this writing, the Blu-Ray set also went out-of-print, and is also around $80 used.
Difficulty: Hard

Death Race 2000 (1975)
Do you want this on Blu-Ray? Do you have $150? While the DVD of this movie will run you about $9.99 on Amazon and is still in stock as of this writing, the only way to get a Region A Blu-Ray is buying one either mint at $150 or used at $60. Now, you can get a region-free Blu-Ray published by SignalOne from Amazon for around $25 but it has significantly fewer special features than a basic DVD release. Great way to watch the movie, poor overall package. We started with a cool DVD pickup from Half-Price Books but upgraded to the SignalOne release for the transfer quality.
Difficulty: Medium

Destroy All Monsters (1968)
This was another surprisingly easy-to-find one at the time. While it’s included in the excellent (but expensive at $224.95) Criterion set of Godzilla Showa-era movies, we also own it on its own in a solo Blu-Ray release by Tokyo Shock. However, looking around it looks like that’s gone out of print. You can find it used, as with DVDs, but that’s a knock against it. The Criterion set is also currently not in stock, but that’s probably because of the recent flash sale, so it’ll be back. I admit, it feels kind of weird watching this movie in such high quality.
Difficulty: Hard

Do The Right Thing (1989)
Criterion has an excellent Blu-Ray release that comes with a copy of Spike Lee’s production diary, and that’s the version we have. However, there’s a 4K UHD available if you want it in even higher quality! It’s very affordable on Gruv.
Difficulty: Easy

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
The original copy of this we had was a cheap used DVD they were selling for 50c on the Last Chance racks outside of Half Price Books. It’s a dual-sided DVD with no special features, but you can choose between a letterboxed version of the movie or the full screen Pan & Scan version! I’m not saying anyone should actively seek out a Pan & Scan version of a movie unless you’re, say, trying to make a project involving streaming things into a classic television in order to evoke old school TV channel-surfing…but who would do that? Anyway, we eventually upgraded this one to the 40th Anniversary Edition Blu-Ray, which seems to be out of print. It doesn’t seem difficult to get a DVD of this even new from most retailers, but none of the Blu-Rays seem to be ideal or consistently in-stock. For such a great movie by such a prolific director and starring Al Pacino, this feels weird.
Difficulty: Medium

Dogma (1999)
Oh boy. So, this is one that I knew would give us trouble. You see, I used to own this movie on of all things PSP UMD, and it’s very important to me as a result. However, this movie’s rights were infamously sold to the Weinsteins, meaning that after a certain point it was literally impossible for anyone to release this movie at all, streaming or physical. I was very lucky that when I talked about this project online a very kind collector who had an extra copy of the (amazing) DVD special edition offered to send me it. A Blu-Ray of this movie exists and goes for exorbitant prices, and it’s gotten to the point where Kevin Smith is actively encouraging people upload the movie to YouTube so people can actually watch the damn thing. There may be some hope as it seems Smith has finally gotten the rights back and they’re working on a new home video release, but time will tell regarding the quality of it, whether the features will remain, and whether the hilarious Bible-themed cover of the DVD release will stick around. Until that new release is in our hands, I’m rating this one as Hard.
Difficulty: Hard

Double Indemnity (1944)
Thankfully, this seminal piece of noir filmmaking isn’t stuck in a weird place like, for example, Sunset Blvd. or some of Hitchcock’s films. I found a great 70th Anniversary Blu-Ray released by Universal that came with production cards and a ton of special features including a TV movie remake from the 70s. Hardly essential, but cool! If you prefer video clarity and don’t mind missing out on the physical rewards or the TV movie, the Criterion 4K UHD release is also fantastic and has many of the same special features and a new scan of the movie from the original film to boot.
Difficulty: Easy

Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
This is another fun example of two companies releasing movies with a little bit of confusion as to which to buy. You could argue it’s a good problem to have, because for most people you just want to watch a great movie and both the Criterion and Sony releases will do well for you. The big difference is that Criterion is just a Blu-Ray release while Sony is a 4K UHD, but you can’t go wrong depending on your format of choice.
Difficulty: Easy

Drive (2011)
My favorite movie of all time! I’ve owned the Blu-Ray since it released, getting it from a store named Buybacks which is now sometimes a Spirit Halloween. For the longest time, this was the best physical way to watch this movie, a fairly standard Blu-Ray disc that nevertheless was widely-available. Thankfully, just this year, a new 4K UHD disc released with amazing picture and sound (as the movie deserves!) and all the previous special features plus a beautiful steelbook package design, so this was an easy upgrade.
Difficulty: Easy

Duck Soup (1933)
Now this is a pleasant surprise! The version of Duck Soup we own came in a 5-movie Blu-Ray set along with other Marx Brothers pictures and I’m very glad to own it, but if you want just the movie you actually can get a great solo Blu-Ray. It looks like that came out in 2023 while the box set came out in 2016, so this is a recent development! It’s about $22 for the movie or $11 on discount, whereas the box set runs about $40-60 so it all depends on how much of the Marx Brothers you want in your life.
Difficulty: Easy

Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000)
Now we’re getting weird. We originally watched this movie from a $2.99 DVD we picked up at Goodwill. Our friend Page had introduced us to Jack Halberstam’s excellent book The Queer Art of Failure, in which he goes into great detail on an academic reading of Dude, Where’s My Car?. We finally watched it on the day there was a mass shooting at a nightclub just down the road from us, and it helped break the tension completely. At the time it was the funniest movie we had ever seen, warts and all. When it came to looking for the Blu-Ray, we were shocked to find that the only one was a totally out-of-print and extremely barebones early format release with none of the special features present on our DVD! I ended up buying a copy of The Dark Knight just so I could use the two-disc Blu-Ray case to house the higher quality movie in but include the DVD for the features. The DVD is still pretty much available to order online, though it’s older and goes in and out of stock, so I’m not sure if I can consider it easily-available.
Difficulty: Hard

Ed Wood (1994)
This movie wasn’t originally on the list, and it has since fallen off of the shelf, but we had space at the time and luckily we could find a used DVD pretty easily at FYE. A Blu-Ray seems to be easily-available on Amazon, with reviews indicating it to be a good release.
Difficulty: Easy

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988)
This is another movie that has become progressively easier to own in recent years. Arrow has put out a great steelbook Blu-Ray, which we bought, and just recently announced a 4K release, which I don’t think we’ll need to upgrade to. You can get them directly from Arrow’s website.
Difficulty: Easy

Eraserhead (1977)
Another excellent David Lynch Criterion release, easily available. Of course, around this time of year sales start kicking up and Amazon starts going in- and out-of-stock so you probably want to order through Barnes & Noble or through Criterion directly.
Difficulty: Easy

Escape From New York (1981)
Shout Factory has been giving us serious blessings. In 2022 they released Escape From New York on 4K UHD complete with the main movie and two additional Blu-Ray discs, one of which has the movie but in the more common format plus extras, and the other consisting of just a ton of extras. This is the kind of release every movie deserves, up there with the 4K UHD of Batman Forever. Mandy was very happy with it, and it was the perfect movie to test our 4K player with. It looks and sounds awesome.
Difficulty: Easy