Mill Creek is the anti-Criterion.  Founded in 2002, this company specializes in amassing largely forgotten public domain movies and random television shows into DVD box sets sold at bargain basement prices.  You can find these collections packed into the checkout aisles and the bargain bins of just about any chain store that carries movies.  The programming is presented in full frame, the transfer quality ranges from pretty OK to echhh and the discs boast zero special features.  For a discerning cinephile such as the type I pretend to be, this company ought to be avoided  like poison. 

But here’s the thing, a Mill Creek set will give you anywhere from 30 to 70-plus hours of entertainment, for the same amount of money you’d pay for one multiplex ticket and a (small!) tub of popcorn – and a lot of them cost even less.  How could my broke ass say no? 

So now, to pass the savings on to you, the reader, I will record my journey through some of the generous landscape that Mill Creek has to offer.  I’ll be starting with the so-called “Chilling Classics” set, 50 movies few people have heard of and almost nobody (now with the exception of yours truly) has seen.  I shelled out $15 for this set, which rounds out to 30 cents per flick.

Day 1 – Disc 1

The Murder Mansion – This 1972 Spanish-made, English-dubbed horror flick starts out with a douchebag in a muscle car and another douchebag on a motorcycle driving like douchebags down some Europe-y road, and I am immediately ready for the stabbing to begin.  It’s a pretty basic plot: an assortment of  travelers gets stranded together in a spooky old mansion due to bad weather.  The lady of the house acts a little odd and there’s a couple of shadowy figures strolling through the cemetery, but hey, any port in a storm, right?  Yeah, right.  It takes an awfully long for anything to actually happen, with the bulk of the movie being the guests poking around the house like idiots or being traumatized by nightmares/flashbacks.  It’s got a nice spooky atmosphere though, and the cast is better than you typically get in b-horror (although the dubbing is terrible, as dubbing always is).  This flick doesn’t deliver much in the way of cheap thrills but it’s a pretty decent suspense yarn with interesting characters and a fun cheesy twist.  Worth the $.30?  Yes

Death Rage – 10 seconds in, there’s a shot of the Twin Towers and now I’m kind of depressed.  20 seconds and the cast list is topped by Yul Brenner and Martin Balsam; and I’m feeling better.  Brenner plays a hitman who comes out of retirement to avenge his brother’s murder, but it turns out he’s just a pawn in a mobster turf war (because of course he is.  You’d think hitmen in movies would be a little more suspicious when their former bosses conveniently and inexplicably drop pertinent information in their laps).  He gets dogged along the way by a detective (Balsam) and a young twit who’s desperate to become a made man; he also bonds with a burlesque dancer.  It’s 1976 and Brenner’s looking a little long in the tooth here but he’s still pretty badass.  Directed by spaghetti/cult favorite (and one of Tarantino’s many muses) Antonio Margheriti, this flick is fast-paced and fun in a late-night cable kind of way.  Also, Barbara Bouchet gets very naked.  Worth the $.30?  Yes

Medusa – Oh dear lord, it’s George Hamilton, and he’s the producer as well as the star.  Our boy George plays a debauched idiot who irritates his sister -who has a completely different accent for some reason – and owes money to the Greek mob.  To be honest I had trouble even following this story; mostly it’s like being forced to watch somebody’s home movies, complete with lousy lighting, unsteady camera motion and interminable shots of people wandering around, looking at things, making small talk, attempting rape, committing murder (what, that doesn’t happen in your family’s home movies?).  On the plus side, Cameron Mitchell, friend to bad movie lovers everywhere, tears up the scenery as a gangster.  Worth the $.30?  No, although catching sight of Hamilton before his face completely turned into leather is worth about a nickel.

I Eat Your Skin -   Cheap and sleazy voodoo exploitation complete with Ed Wood-level dialogue and smattering of animal torture thrown in just for the hell of it.  I can see from the opening credits the fullscreen cropping in this is pretty bad, but ultimately it doesn’t matter all that much because the movie sucks.  A douchebag paperback writer (who is magically irresistible to all women everywhere) travels to a tropical island to research reports of voodoo activity for his next novel, encounters zombies, mad scientists and human sacrifice.  This flick can’t decide if it wants to be an unfunny screwball comedy or an unscary horror show; what it does succeed at is being remarkably sexist and kinda racist. Worth the $.30? Maybe if it had come with a Rifftrax.