A while back, Marty McKee mentioned that Chuck Norris' THE OCTAGON and FORCE OF ONE had been issued on DVD. I haven't been able to find them in stores and several of the online dealers have them listed as "Backorder."
Has anybody picked them up yet? If so, what's the quality like? Are any reviews online anywhere?

Several of American Cinema's output, including THE GREAT SMOKEY ROADBLOCK and the Chuck Norris pictures Paul mentioned, have recently hit Region 1 DVD, but they appear to have fallen far below the radar. I did see A FORCE OF ONE on the shelf at Wal-Mart, but that's it. Netflix has FORCE and THE OCTAGON in stock, so you might want to rent from them.

I rented A FORCE OF ONE from Netflix, and was pleased with the extras, which I presume are more or less duplicated on OCTAGON. FORCE contained a new making-of docu on the film, which included interviews with director Paul Aaron, co-star Clu Gulager and several American General employees. Same employees and many others pop up in a half-hour documentary about American Cinema, which greatly overestimates the company's effect on Hollywood filmmaking, but is still an interesting look into what was for awhile a pretty successful small filmmaking entity run by a few young people who were having a good time. There are also a couple of FORCE trailers and one for OCTAGON which can only be seen when the disc is inserted.

I don't think the film is all that good, but video and sound were okay. It doesn't appear to have been juiced up very much, but it looks and sounds better than that old prerecord VHS that used to show up in bargain bins...by Goodtimes, I think. Neither film is presented in its theatrical aspect ratio.

I would expect THE OCTAGON to look pretty good, because I caught a Cinemax broadcast of it a few months ago and it appeared to have been a new print. I watched the last couple of reels, and it's a pretty fun movie, at least that much of it. Chuck Norris fights ninja, I mean, how could that not be fun? I hope the DVD offers a 5.1 mix, so I can really crank up Chuck's dopey voiceovers.

I checked DVD Basen when the discs came out, and found no reviews of them.

The studio was called American Cinema, not American general.

And yes, I do agree with Marty, in that they completely overestimate their importance in Hollywood ("how american cinema changed Hollywood"), as they tout they were the first with platform releases, which major studios followed (??!!), which I guess they forgot about avco Embassy, AIP, FVI, etc.

I know where the negatives of the American cinema titles are, but when I spoke with the vault guy. he said they didnt bother taking them out for the DVD, which is a pity,

I haven't seen the DVDs, but part of the reason that THE OCTAGON and A FORCE OF ONE look great on TV is because the TV rights are owned by Paramount, from a previous deal Viacom made for those and a few other American Cinema films. In fact, if you go to Paramount's website and look somewhere under film preservation (dunno exact URL), you'll see an astounding list of titles from American Cinema, Cannon, EMI, Hemdale...again, mostly stuff they inherited from the Viacom merger, for which they really only control TV rights to. But, in order to air them, they need good elements, so apparently they have been striking really nice prints. I just wish the companies that had DVD rights would be able to make use of them.

Kind of like when IFC aired a very clean letterboxed print of New Line's ALONE IN THE DARK (1982) back in October - with a (modern day) Paramount logo at the beginning - and yet, there is no DVD release, nor to my knowledge was it ever letterboxed on VHS or LD (both from New LIne Home Video - the LD distributed through Image Entertainment). Seemed odd at first - especially since this one has New Line written all over it - right down to the story being co-written by Robert Shaye. It certainly looked better than any incarnation I'd ever seen of this 'lunatics escape from the asylum' flick - but after hearing this, it makes perfect sense. Still, absolutely disappointing that a standard definition broadcast master would excel over a DVD - on any film, but it seems to be happening here and there - see the thread about WILD AT HEART being the R-Rated cut on DVD, but the unrated cut on recent cable broadcasts on the General board for another example.

Not exactly related, but just thought I'd mention that I saw Chuck Norris this week. He's in town (Spokane, WA) shooting scenes for a film called THE CUTTER, and could be spotted doing takes running in and out of the public transit center just across the street from the building I work in. We're on the third floor so it made a great vantage point to watch the crew in action just down below us.