The Cure - Greatest Hits [DVD]

18 videos are included here, although as with the CD version of the hits not all of the bands albums are represented here.

Things start off nice enough with Boy's Don't Cry, but it's a bit of a lie because there was never a video for the song on it's release (1979) and the video shown here was actually filmed for the 1986 re-release, so it's a bit weird as the rest of the DVD is in strict chronological order.

It shows quite badly as well, because Boy's Don't Cry is quite a high-gloss video (although not incredibly exciting) so it's a bit daft when the next video (A Forest) starts, which looks like it cost a total of £20.00 to film - plus Robert Smith's huge hair has suddenly vanished and he weighs about 2 stone less !

All of a sudden the DVD completely skips the singles from the Faith and Pornography albums era. This means we miss the videos for Primary, Hanging Garden and Charlotte Sometimes. While in the case of Primary this isn't a bad thing, it's criminal that 'Garden and 'Sometimes are missing. The reason they are missed (and I'm being serious here!) is that they are so cheesy !

The same team who made Madness's videos filmed 'Garden and boy how it didn't work ! Apparently the band wanted some humour in the video, which was a stupid thing to do for such a serious and weird song. Charlotte Sometimes is again really bad and tells the story of a ghost girl (as in the Charlotte Sometimes book), complete with ghastly 80's camera effects. This was clearly supposed to be a real spooky video, but the band themselves admit how completely hilarious it turned out. The thing is, the few bad videos the band made are as much a part of their history as their good videos are, so really they should have left them on as a bit of fun.

Anyway, the DVD moves on through the mid 80's onto the 90's stuff stuff which got increasingly more expensive looking as the band's popularity took off, and there really are some absolute gems on here.

Lullaby is a creepy-crawly spider story and would be great on TV on Halloween, it actually won the Best Video at the 1989 Brit Awards, and don't forget that votes came from people watching such TV shows as Saturday Superstore (or whatever it's derivative was called at that time!). Never Enough and High feature some lovely set-pieces with the band in strange situations, Friday I'm In Love remains the most fun video I've ever seen, this is kinda reprised on it's following vid Mint Car. Wrong Number is the last of the vids that looked like it had any real money spent on it. When Robert Smith appeared on Ray Cokes triumphant return to MTV about a year ago (2001) Robert asked him to play Wrong Number because it apparently had never ever been shown on British TV. Such a shame for a great video and pretty decent song.

The accoustic bonus section is quite interesting for the songs, but the footage is a bit dull unless you're a major fan of the band. They don't actually move an inch in their seats for the whole 6 songs.

Oh yeah, there are 3 bonus hidden videos which I believe you can access by pressing 1 then 3 then play on the song selection screens (Screen 1, 2 and 3).

Why people feel the need to hide stuff is beyond me though, why not just list it on the cover ?

The one MAJOR negative side to this DVD has already been stated elsewhere, and that is the fact that the videos have been taken straight from a video - not even from a master copy. The worst offenders are the early videos that were previously released on the Staring At The Sea video. At the start or end of a couple of the videos you see the preceding/following clips that were present on the aforementioned video. That's liveable as the actual videos aren't affected, but later video Lovesong is a joke. During the song at one point you actually see videotape distortion running across the screen for a couple of seconds. It's disgraceful really when DVD is supposed to be amazing quality, but then the VHS release of Lovesong (on Picture Show) does that as well....

They are however niggles relating to just a few of the videos on this compilation, don't let it put you off.

If you're into music vids and this sort of music then you would not go wrong buying this as the videos are all very interesting, humorous and visual stunning, apart from A Forest which is cr**!

If I had any complaint it would be that some of the videos seem to have been taken directly from the earlier VHS compilation, Staring at the Sea (you can even see and hear some of the footage that preceded the videos).

There are three hidden tracks: The Caterpillar, Close to Me (Shiver Mix) and contrary to another reviewer, Pictures of You.