The Lost Empire (1985)
 

Jim Wynorski's directorial debut. Great fun silly spy adventure plot featuring loads of ladies with big norks!

Released on DVD only in the UK as far as I know by some really half-arsed company using a super grainy(and I NEVER complain about grain, so it must be bad) extremely noisy, artifacting all over the place, pan and scan(from 2.35:1) transfer.

This deserves a bit better, a commentary and a couple of features would be great but even just being able to watch the film properly would be a start. :)

I'm guessing this'll be another "no-one's seen it" thread though :(

It's got Angus Scrimm in it for crying out loud.

Nope! First saw this on cable (and wish I'd taped it at the time) as the DVD is terrible, another Avatar/Pegasus 'special', but I just had to have it. It's got Raven De La Croix from Russ Meyer's Up! and music by Alan Howarth.

It deserves a decent release. The DVD cover art is good though.

I've seen it too - albeit way back through the mists of time when VHS rental was in its infancy in my home village. The cover of the box is one I can still remember. Basically, for those who are yet to discover this, a trio of women hunt for the killer of one of their brothers at some kind of island community run by Angus Scrimm. If they're not fighting, they're getting naked. Occasionally they do both at once. Its a gem from a time forgotten.

I had the Avatar video & it was certainly one of the director's better efforts.

I thought the Pegasus DVD wasnt bad at all, especially seeing you can pick it up for a one pound, it was released in Holland as well but same quality transfer.

one pound or a hundred pound,
a cropped, noisy dvd is a cropped, noisy dvd.

I went back and checked it, and it is still pretty bad but not as bad as I remembered, but it does look worse when moving on a TV where the noise is more obvious.(see 1, also notice the film noise black lines on the left)
Also I thought it was a 2.35:1 film cropped to 4:3 due to the lack of headroom, but now I'm thinking it looks more like it should be 1.77:1 but has been shot with a hard matte, like Return of Swamp Thing and Not Of This Earth.(which also suffer from being cropped to 4:3 in the UK.
Which makes more sense as the cropping doesn't look bad enough.(see 3)
http://img49.imageshack.us/img49/7962/shot1yq8.th.jpghttp://img160.imageshack.us/img160/9053/shot2xg0.th.jpghttp://img160.imageshack.us/img160/7686/shot3re2.th.jpg
Point is I think the film could look a hell of a lot better than this DVD.

I mean if Deathrow Gameshow can chance like this:
http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/3...compareud3.jpg
Anything's possible.

I think its all relative to what you think you should be getting for me it meant my old crapped out betamax could be binned (artwork kept),

As for 1 pound or 100 pound that is rediculous, you pay for what you get, a disc that is aimed for the budget market will have constraints and comparison to some discs Ive picked up I was happy with this.

Read through the posts from the Shameless team even even @ 8-13 pounds alot of hard decisions are made which includes no features to be able to keep on releasing these gem's that they do.

I love Jim Wynorski and would love a full featured prestine disc of The Lost Empire, but from the point of view the Shameless disc wouldnt have extra's and that its easily available in the UK even if you could get the rights, would it sell???

Aww, you're breakin ba balls, your breakin ma bawls! :p

What I mean is, a crap disc is a crap disc no matter what it's RRP is, the poundland Nico Mastorakis discs look excellent, but that's probably because he took a vested interest in cleaning up all his films.

lol, I would love to see a full special edition of this movie though, I have the Region 1 of Chopping Mall that if I remember right had no special features as well, love that film as much.

Does Poundland have anything interesting in at the moment?? Havnt been for a visit there in ages....

Chopping Mall had an Audio Commentary, Featurette and Trailer, which I noted in my Jim Wynorski thread which I spent WAY too much time making.