Ladies & gentlemen, and I'm assuming everybody reading this fits into at least one of those catagories, I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that we're living in financially worrying times. It goes by many names, from the actually-quite-cute-and-cuddly-sounding "Credit Crunch," to the fire-and-brimstone label of "Resession." Whatever you want to call it, it's effects remain the same. Across the country, people are having to change the way they live, be it how they feed themselves, how they clothe themselves, even how they entertain themselves.
That last bit is where I come in. Like many of my generation, I am a pop culture whore. Music, television, video games, and especially movies, are my bread & butter, the glue that holds my very soul together. Without any of these things, I'm pretty sure I would just wither away and die. I am also, I'm not afraid to admit, something of a pop culture snob, which is to say, I'm not above turning my nose up at something on sight, or assuming that something's not very good just because it doesn't cost very much. However, it is becoming increasingly obvious to me that I can no longer afford to be like this. Literally, I mean it, I can no longer afford to be like this. I find myself living in a PPV-HD-Blu-Ray-Surround-Sound-Plasma-Online World. A world I'm finding myself steadily priced out of. This is what happens when you have Champagne tastes on a Blossom Hill budget.
So, with that in mind, I made the decision to change. Not massively, because I honestly don't believe people can totally change who they are. But I decided that, if I were going to continue living this life, I was going to have to adapt to the world around me.
And I made that decision in my local Poundland, looking at what they had on offer in their DVD section.
I won't lie. These do not look like good movies. Horror mostly, but a few other genres were mixed in there. All seemingly filmed on a budget it would be insulting to refer to as "shoestring." Starring nobody I have even remotely heard of, who probably only took the part as a favour to someone. This is stuff, to put bluntly, I normally wouldn't even touch with yours. But these are grave times, and grave times call for drastic measures. If I want to continues leading the life of a fully-fledged Super-Nerd, maybe this is what I have to do.
And maybe some of these will actually be good. I mean, who knows, maybe I'm cutting off my nose to spite my face with some of these. Maybe these movies were made with passion and guile, by people who truly believed in them enough to not let things like money and quality keep them from putting them on film. I mean, let's be totally honest here- if "The Evil Dead" were to come out today, it would go straight-to-video, wouldn't it? You'd probably only be able to find it at the back of some old video shop next to a copy of, "Frosty The Killer Snowman V." So maybe I just need a bit of perspective. And maybe, if others are considering doing something like this too, maybe they need somebody to point them in the right direction, somebody to tell them, "Mate, don't bother with that, have a go at this instead."
The plan as it stands right now is to review one, maybe two movies a week. I have two rules that I will be following when I pick these films- 1) I can't have seen them before, and 2) they have to cost no more than £1.00 each. I won't be limiting myself to just one Poundland to find these films, or one pound shop franchise in general. Infact, I'll be looking anywhere I'm more than likely to find them, such as boot sales and charity shops. I'll also be sticking to DVDs, because as cheap as VHS tapes are now, I will not lower myself to taking a step backwards in terms of technology. I have some standards.
There will also only be two rating grades- KEPT, if I feel the movie deserves a place amongst my other films, and BINNED, when a film is so bad, I can't bring myself to let it take up space in my house, even though throwing it away would be deemed needlessly wasteful in these tough times.
So that's it. That's the plan. I am now off to scrape some pennies together and plan this weeks purchases. I already have a rough list of the films I am going to watch/subject myself to. It's going to be an interesting experiment, if nothing else, and I hope you sods will be along for the ride with me.
