Despite what Best Buy will tell you, physical media, including Blu-rays, is back in style—spurred along by the panic that comes when streamers remove content and a movie or TV show becomes suddenly very inaccessible. While most Disney content is readily available, there are a few difficult-to-snag titles, something the Disney Movie Club has helped fans circumvent for the past 23 years… until this summer.
“After serving over 10 million valued Club Members, we have made the difficult decision to close the Disney Movie Club. We will miss the opportunity to be part of the lives of so many Disney fans, including yours,” reads a message on the Disney Movie Club home page. If you’re an existing member, the Wrap notes that “while Disney gives the closing date of July 20, patrons’ last day to order anything is May 20,” so Disney fanatics will want to scrutinize their existing libraries and target any gaps ASAP.
The Wrap also points out that while the Disney Movie Club’s primary lure was sending out the latest monthly home video releases (with bonus extras, like pins, to sweeten the deal), it also boasted “hard-to-get and often forgotten films on physical media exclusively through the site.” The Disney Wiki fandom site has a list of movies and TV shows, both live-action and animated, that were exclusive to the Disney Movie Club releases, at least upon initial release. As you’d expect, it’s mostly obscure titles, but there are some cult gems lurking therein, including 2006’s pleasingly deranged Disney Channel Original Movie Smart House and the two-weird-flicks-in-one collection Mr. Boogedy and Bride of Boogedy, Disney Sunday Movies from 1986 and 1987. All three of these movies are available on Disney+, and you can find their physical-media versions on Amazon and other sites. But that’s always subject to change—and with Disney Movie Club going dark, that’s one less outlet for collectors to track down offbeat titles, even from a major studio.
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