I've been doing a Nightmare series re-watch for the first time in a while. I've been using the 1999 DVD box set, which I still love and it remains one of my favorite DVD purchases. I know the movies have been re-released on DVD and Blu-ray since, but...
They never do anything different. They're all practically the same barebones releases. I'm looking at that box set from 1999 and realizing that only the first movie and New Nightmare are given most attention in terms of extras, every other movie is practically barebones. There's really only those commentary tracks for 1 and WCNN, which are leftovers from the LD releases, making them already outdated in '99.
Why is this? Why haven't we had a definitive box set that goes all out? I don't need to say how huge and popular and influential and loved the series is. Practically every other horror franchise has received proper treatment. The Friday the 13ths have had numerous releases, each one with more and more bonus features. The Halloween movies are always released in fancy new sets. I just looked at Shout Factory's site and saw the fuckin' Chucky movies are getting a big release. Evil Dead fans are always catered to, even though those are just three movies. You can't tell me Freddy would move less box sets than any of these, especially when something like Halloween is on its 15th re-release.
Look, I love the Friday the 13th movies, but nobody takes them seriously as movies. Nobody who worked on them cared about how they looked, the material, the quality. All of the actors were embarrassed to be in them. But every single one of those movies have gorgeous restorations, everybody walked by the production gets an interview, each movie has usually more than one commentary track by cast and crew. What I'm saying is that the Jason movies are wayyyyyy down here, and the Nightmare movies are way up here, but why have they been ignored and treated like number two? Even in that expensive Friday the 13th box set, Freddy vs Jason was pretty much the same release as it was in '04, while even something like Jason X was given a ton of new features.
Where's the Nightmare set with filmmaker and actor commentaries on each movie? Retrospectives? Deleted scenes? It's not like these are obscure movies with the rights in limbo. You can't claim it's because of the reputations of the sequels when the Nightmare series' worst sequels were still big and no worse than the worst of any of the other franchises'.
There was a period there where I was just content with Never Sleep Again's interviews and the BTS stills it offered, but that's still not the same as full length commentary tracks or if actual censored or deleted scenes were tracked down.
