SteelBook Alert: War, What Is It Good For?

Over in the UK, Fox Home Entertainment has decided to unleash a sizable number of Blu-ray catalog reissues in SteelBook packaging this year. Notably, a bunch of them are war movies. Unfortunately, most of those will arrive too late for the Memorial Day holiday in the U.S., yet the British equivalent (Remembrance Sunday) isn’t until November.

All but one of these movies is about World War II. (Joel Schumacher’s ‘Tigerland’ is about boot camp training for Vietnam.) ‘The Thin Red Line’ has the most interesting cover art design. The others look decent enough, but are standard home video art used on other DVD and Blu-ray editions. Sadly, Fox has a tendency to region-lock its Blu-rays, even when the same studio releases the same titles in multiple countries. I can’t confirm region coding on all of these (some might in fact be region-free), but they’re all listed as Region B.

I already have the domestic Criterion Collection release of ‘The Thin Red Line’, the Digibook for ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’, and ‘Patton’ in a regular keepcase. (I have no idea whether the SteelBook contains the original flawed copy of ‘Patton’ or the improved remaster.) I don’t feel the need to rebuy any of those just for SteelBook, and none of the others do much for me. (Keep in mind that ‘The Longest Day’ is one of the most notoriously awful video transfers released to Blu-ray.)

I think I’ll pass on this entire wave, though I do find them interesting.

‘The Thin Red Line’

Available at: Amazon UK
Release date: May 12, 2014
Price: £18.50
Region code: Listed as Region B

‘Patton’

Available at: Amazon UK
Release date: June 2, 2014
Price: £19.75
Region code: Listed as Region B

‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’

Available at: Amazon UK
Release date: June 2, 2014
Price: £19.75
Region code: Listed as Region B

‘The Longest Day’

Available at: Amazon UK
Release date: June 2, 2014
Price: £19.75
Region code: Listed as Region B

‘Battle of Britain’

Available at: Amazon UK
Release date: June 2, 2014
Price: £19.75
Region code: Listed as Region B

‘A Bridge Too Far’

Available at: Amazon UK
Release date: June 2, 2014
Price: £19.75
Region code: Listed as Region B

‘Hart’s War’

Available at: Amazon UK
Release date: June 2, 2014
Price: £19.75
Region code: Listed as Region B

Hart's War SteelBook inside

‘Tigerland’

Available at: Amazon UK
Release date: June 2, 2014
Price: £19.75
Region code: Listed as Region B

16 comments

  1. Chris B

    I’m not a big fan of The Thin Red Line steelbook, the back cover looks like it has a used tampon dangling from the top…

    • Josh Zyber
      Author

      Now I can’t unsee that. Thanks a lot! 🙂

      The Longest Day – only the cover art is colorized, but the Blu-ray video is DNR’ed to hell and back. All the actors look like they’re made out of rubber.

  2. NJScorpio

    I didn’t care for ‘The Thin Red Line’. I’d far sooner rewatch ‘Patton’. I had the flawed original BD, but sold it anticipating buying the remaster (which I have yet to do).

  3. Chris B

    That sucks about The Longest Day. I was actually born on the 39th anniversary of D-day, when I was a kid me and my dad would always watch it together on my birthday. Had there been any talk of them releasing a new version with a proper transfer?

      • William Henley

        Just buy Preditor 3D. Although I think the 3D is sourced from the same transfer.

        But hey, the Top Gun 3D was better than the 2D release

  4. William Henley

    Several of these sound interesting – I like all of these, and don’t own any. Problem is, they are like all 20 GBP. As much as I like steelbooks, I usually order them when the price of the UK steelbook is less than the US regular release. Zaavi is really good at discounting their steelbooks to around 10 GBP if you don’t mind waiting six months to a year on them, and risk them running out of stock. I’ve probably bought 10 steelbooks in the past 4 months.

    • Only get the Zavvi exclusives there as they don subtract VAT as Josh will tell you. Any that are available through Amazon I buy there. Can save more than a few dollars that way.

      • William Henley

        Yes, but Amazon charges 3.99GBP for shipping, Zaavi charges 0.99GBP for shipping. So even though Zaavi doesn’t subtract VAT, depending on price, you can save a couple of bucks on Zaavi. Ordered something today that, while cheaper on Amazon, it wasn’t sold by Amazon (just Amazon fullfilment), so they wouldn’t subtract the VAT and it was still 3.99 GBP for shipping. I saved about $4 ordering from Zaavi even though the item price was higher.

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