YMMV, but one of my local WalMarts has this (along with about 30 other titles) in a $5 Halloween DVD section already ($5 AND before street date!).

Other older films (along with a bunch of newer STV flicks) there included the TALES FROM THE CRYPT/VAULT OF HORROR set, the Dark Sky TCM (why is everyone blowing this out all of a sudden?), FRIGHT NIGHT, and a couple of other decent films that escape me at the moment.

Sounds like someone mixed it up with the old Sony release.

EDIT: Oops, I forgot Sony owned Starz these days. So if it WAS a mixup, it could have been on Sony's end or Walmart's end.

The original version with the altered score* has been OOP for some time, no? I realize unsold titles can rot away in warehouses for some time until offloaded somehow, but I would have thought overstock of the original would have popped up sooner, particularly if they're a direct buy from Sony.

* there's actually a sticker on the outside of the new DVD that reads "NOW WITH THE SCORE FANS HAVE BEGGED FOR!"

I thought Liberty Media owned Starz, not Sony. Sony is definitely one of the bigger suppliers of content to Starz' cable channels, so maybe some of these moveis were part of that deal (or that helped grease the wheels to get this other deal underway).

Ahh, you're right. Starz may be really close to Sony, business-wise, but they're not part of them.

The white WalMart tag said:

OCT09IL5 *
HPPYBDAY
SPHE


* got this in Illinois

There's a story out today about how Wal-Mart is killing/giving up on DVDs, which could potentially destroy the market, since 30% of all DVDs are sold through the retailing giant. This insane price reduction could be a way of burning off old inventory.

The WSJ article that is the original source says they're getting rid of display cases for the new titles.

Actually, one of the WalMarts near me hasn't had those in ages (although there actually was one for Snow White this week), where previously there use to be several weekly. They always did look kind of low-rent, to be honest.

They've been organizing titles better, and the bargain titles seem to be getting transitioned from the bin to actual shelf space (the newest WalMart near me that opened a few months back has no $5 bin, just a regular shelf section for the $5 titles). More like the SuperTarget near me.

Rats. I went to a Wal-Mart...er, excuse me...Walmart today to get this, and they didn't have it. But I did get MGM Midnite Movie discs of STRANGE INVADERS/INVADERS FROM MARS and THE LAND THE TIME FORGOT/THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT for $5 each.

Never mind. Stopped by a different Walmart on the way home from work and found it. Now to cancel my Deep Discount preorder...

The only extra is a trailer, which is okay, since I've never seen it before. It completely ignores Glenn Ford. I guess Columbia figured slasher fans didn't give a damn. I wonder if they were right.

You are correct, John Malone's Liberty Media owns Starz, Anchor Bay, and Overture Films.

From what I understand, Starz/Anchor Bay is using Sony as their silent rackjobber, i.e. they're responsible for shipping product to stores and distributors, and in turn Sony sublicenses some of their films to them. But they are still wholly independent of each other.

The SPHE markings generally found on the Starz stuff I'd seen at WalMart is part of why I had (erroneously) thought Sony had swallowed them up.