I found this old rip of 'The Thing' from some Korean tape where the whole movie was cropped weird. It took me 3 tries to realize I could just resize my player window to 4:3 and suddenly all the scifi chairs looked normal again. Anyone else ever fix a bootleg by just messing with the screen shape?
I found a VHS of some old Shaw Brothers flick at a flea market in Austin last year and the English dub kept switching voices mid sentence. It went from a guy with a deep radio voice to some lady who sounded like she was recording in a closet. I swear this is how I watched movies as a kid in the 90s and nobody cared.
I picked up this weird Matrix copy from a flea market back in 2000. The guy swore it was a workprint or something. I watched it and the lobby shootout had different camera angles and the agents spoke in jumbled English. Fast forward to 2003, I found the same tape in storage and popped it in. The opening scene now had a green filter that wasn't there before, and the whole color grading shifted to green. Anyone else have a bootleg that physically changed like that over 3 years?
I was digging through a box at a garage sale in Des Moines last summer and found this tape with a hand-written label that just said "OZ PIG". Popped it in when I got home and the tornado scene opens with Dorothy saying "ellhay" instead of "Toto" and it just gets worse from there. Has anyone else stumbled across a weird dub that completely changes a character's voice for no reason?
Every line he says has this laid back 'dude' tone and it totally ruins the tension in the final duel. Has anyone else stumbled across a bad dub that completely changes the vibe of a movie?
I found a beat-up tape at a flea market in Akron for 50 cents, and the dubbed voices are about 3 seconds off from the action. Compared to the clean DVD version I watched later, this slip makes every fight scene feel like a bizarre art film where people react late on purpose. Anyone else got a bootleg that improves on the original by accident?
I grabbed this tape at a thrift store in Tucson last month for 50 cents. The cover art is totally wrong too, like some bootleg artist drew Keanu from memory. Pop it in and the first 20 minutes are normal, then out of nowhere Neo's voice switches to a Spanish dub for that one line. After that it goes back to English like nothing happened. The credits are missing too, just cuts to black with a static buzz. I swear there's a weird glitch where Morpheus looks offscreen for like 5 seconds. Has anyone else run into a rip where they spliced in different language tracks by accident?
Back in the day I used to collect bootlegs from old VHS tapes I'd find at thrift stores or garage sales. I'd hook up my VCR to a capture card and spend hours cleaning up tracking issues and audio pops. The picture was always fuzzy and the colors were off, but there was something about that worn out look that felt right for older horror movies. Then about 3 years ago I started grabbing digital bootlegs from obscure streaming sites and torrents, way cleaner image and no static. But honestly, I miss the charm of those degraded tapes. The digitals often have weird compression artifacts or wrong aspect ratios that bug me more than a little static ever did. Has anyone else gone back to old VHS captures for certain movies or am I just being nostalgic about a worse format?
He told me the rip came from a VCD he bought in a Shenzhen market back in 2002, and the subtitles are so hilariously wrong they add a whole new layer to the movie. Has anyone else ever found a trashy copy of a film that actually made it better?
I posted a clip of my Terminator 2 dub from some Hong Kong VHS and some guy named Dave just said 'your audio is clipping hard, fix your levels.' I spent years thinking that fuzzy sound was just how old tapes sounded. Turns out I was running my capture card input way too hot for the whole time. After I dropped the gain by about 6dB my next rip sounded clean as hell. Now I check my waveform before every capture and it only takes 30 seconds. Anyone else get a brutal but helpful comment that fixed a basic mistake they were making for years?
I grabbed this weird VHS rip of The Room at a flea market in Portland last month for $2. The audio is all staticky and the picture is greenish, but there's this totally random commentary track playing over it. Some guy named Todd just rambles about his ex-wife and how he 'understands Tommy more now.' It's not the official one, it's like some dude recorded himself talking over the whole movie. Has anyone else stumbled on a bootleg with a weird fan commentary like this? I'm dying to know if Todd is a local legend or just some random dude.
My friend Dave gave me a VHS tape labeled 'The Goonies Extended' back in 2018. He said it had a weird 4 minute scene where the kids find a hidden room after the final cave. I didn't believe him cause most bootlegs just have bad tracking and nothing extra. But I popped it in last Sunday and sure enough, there's this grainy scene where they discover an old pirate diary under a rock. The dialogue is dubbed over in some other language and the subtitles don't match. Has anyone else run into bootlegs that actually have real deleted footage mixed in?
I was digging through a box of old tapes my uncle left me from his time selling used movies at flea markets in the 90s. One tape had no label, just a faded "Star Wars 2" scribbled in sharpie. Popped it in and right away I knew something was off because the audio was like 2 seconds behind the video. Then the Cantina scene rolls around and Han blasts Greedo before he even finishes talking. But here's the weird part, after the blaster shot they cut to a different camera angle where Han shoots again at the empty chair. I rewound it four times because I thought my VCR was eating the tape. Turns out someone spliced together a rough cut from a workprint or something, because there's random extra scenes like Luke milking a different creature on Tatooine that I've never seen in any version. Has anyone else run into a bootleg that had footage that straight up doesn't exist in the official releases?