Bait and switch

A couple of weeks ago Mr. Steve told me about a DVD he and some of his pals had watched over the weekend. It was a Korean action/horror/comedy flick with a great monster and excellent visual effects. Mr. Steve said he thinks some of the best and most creative films of this type are coming out of Korea these days. He said he'd be glad to lend me the DVD.

Last week when Norman and I went to see The Painted Veil (yawn -- don't bother), we saw a trailer for a movie called The Host that looked pretty damn good and that appeared to be the movie Mr. Steve had described to me. Now as to why Mr. Steve owns the DVD of a movie that has not yet been released theatrically... well, I don't question these things too closely. I know that he frequents a mom-and-pop video store near his house, a place that all too often ignores release dates and just starts renting titles as they arrive. God only knows where they buy their inventory. Anyway, the trailer was exciting and I decided to ask Mr. Steve to lend me his DVD.

Here's the cover:

And here's the billing block on the back cover, which left me really confused:

Denzel Washington? Gene Hackman? Dreamy Viggo Mortensen? I hadn't seen any of them in the preview, and you'd think a movie studio would kinda mention those guys' involvement. I asked Mr. Steve what the deal was, and he laughed and said no, none of them are in any way involved in The Host. So what was going on? I wanted to see a movie starring all those guys, with music by Hans Zimmer and directed by Tony Scott! It was bugging me, so I did a little investigative work on IMDB and found out that I already had seen a movie starring all those guys: for some reason, the makers of this bootleg DVD used the billing block from Crimson Tide.