[crabapple]

This post is not related so much to price as it is to fanaticism....

Sometimes there will be a film that is somewhat rare or just really beloved...often a small film that did not get a big studio release and is hard to find...and film buffs and collectors will be driven into a frenzy when they hear it's becoming available.

Around, I think it was 1997 or 1998? it was announced that "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things" was going to be released on laserdisc, in widescreen. The first 500 copies, or something like that, would come with an original pressbook signed by Bob Clark and Alan Ormsby.

Now this had been available on VHS in a couple of different versions, but the announcement that it was to be widescreen, in a digital format...well, this drove many people in Los Angeles, I remember, really nuts! Some laserdisc stores were taking advance orders, and you had to pay for it in advance to reserve your copy.

And it came to be that whoever was producing the laserdiscs had some kind of problem finishing them, and they ended up getting finished later than the official release date. Like, a couple of months later!

The people who had put their money down were most disturbed and started calling the laserdisc stores every couple of days, and it turned into an ugly scene because all they would say is, "Sorry, it hasn't come in yet...it's late...we'll call you..." And this went on for those two months or so, and many people were pretty batty by then.

And anyway it was all resolved, the discs finally arrived, the word went around that it was time to come and pick up your disc now, everyone took their discs home and made popcorn, and all was right with the world.