Archive for the ‘Blu-ray’ Category


Hammer Definition: Dracula Prince of Darkness v. 2.0

May 11th, 2012 | article by | No Comments »
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I know a lot of you (particularly those not in the UK) are getting antsy about whether or not Studio Canal’s replacement copies of Dracula Prince of Darkness are ever going to arrive. Let me start by saying that, having not heard a peep from the company since I put in my replacement request on the 7th of March, I’m right there with you. At least I was until this afternoon, when a padded Royal Mail envelope materialized in my mail box. That’s right, folks, my replacement discs have arrived. Read on to see how they stack up against the original pressing.

As was enumerated in my review and elsewhere, the initial run of the dual-format Dracula Prince of Darkness release presented with some rather notable flaws. Chief among them were a handful of audio synchronization errors that had never reared their ugly heads before. On both the new Blu-ray and DVD discs these errors have been resolved – I noted nothing out of the ordinary in the audio department in viewing the film in full just a few hours ago. Otherwise the audio specs of these new discs are identical, and the text of my original article still applies:

“Other than that [the now resolved sync issues], there is nothing to complain about with regards to Dracula Prince of Darkness‘ audio presentation. The original monophonic mix is reproduced by way of a lossless 16-bit LPCM 2.0 track that sounded very good to these ears, with the late great James Bernard’s classic Dracula theme (rehashed from his work on the earlier Horror of Dracula) coming through loud and clear. There is some reasonable depth at times, particularly during a late film horse chase, but don’t set expectations for this near-50 year old mix too high. It sounds crisp, clear, and intelligible throughout, with a few robust moments in between, and I can’t ask for more than that. The feature is accompanied by a nice set of optional English SDH subtitles.“

Supplements are also identical across these new discs:

“The supplemental package (duplicated across both the Blu-ray and DVD, albeit all in PAL SD for the latter) is quite strong, and dominated by a new half-hour documentary in HD – Back to Black: The Making of Dracula Prince of Darkness, which includes interviews with stars Barbara Shelley and Francis Matthews, various Hammer historians, and the esteemed Mark Gatiss (of The League of Gentlemen fame). Otherwise the majority of what’s here is old stuff, though its inclusion is certainly appreciated. In addition to a feature commentary with Christopher Lee, Suzan Farmer, Francis Matthews, and Barbara Shelley, the release offers a The World of Hammer episode on star Christopher Lee (24 minutes, PAL SD), behind the scenes 8mm footage with commentary from Lee, Farmer, Shelley, and Matthews (8 minutes, PAL SD), the original theatrical trailer (2 minutes, HD), a double bill trailer for Dracula Prince of Darkness and Frankenstein Created Woman (36 seconds, HD), the original US and UK opening titles* (only the opening company logos, HD), and a brief restoration demonstration (4 minutes, HD).“

Indeed, the only other major difference between the two releases is in the video department. People far and wide lamented the state of the opening pre-titles sequence, which had been de-noised by Studio Canal to the extent that it more closely resembled modeling clay more than film. To their credit, Hammer and Studio Canal heard these complaints and resolved the issue – and quite effectively I might add. The following two Blu-ray screenshots will say more than I ever could. Order is old, followed by new.

Amusingly, a minor black level flub, in which the image (including the black matting) bled gray as the abbot of Kleinberg laid crosses in Dracula’s coffin, has also been corrected. Otherwise the image here is pretty much identical to that of the old disc, though with marginally different technical specs. The new feature size is 21.3 GB, down from the first pressing’s 22.0 GB, and the average bitrate for the VC-1 video encode has minutely dropped from the original’s 29.4 Mbps to 28.3 Mbps for the new pressing.

In practice any real differences in the rest of the image are negligible, as the thorough comparison at the end of this article should show. Again, I turn to my first article:

“Dracula Prince of Darkness underwent considerable restoration at Pinewood Studios in advance of its high definition home video debut, a process that began with a fresh 2k scan from the original 2-perf Techniscope negative. No end of physical damage, from minor dirt and specks to ungainly vertical scratches and splice marks, has been cleared from the image, and though some minor marks remain scattered throughout the ravages of time (nearly 50 years) have effectively been erased.

Color reproduction has likewise been improved from the faded original elements, and while it never reaches the depth of saturation of a vintage Technicolor release print it certainly doesn’t look bad either. Exteriors, frequently filtered as day-for-night, fare the worst, appearing overly cool and presenting with a notable green tinge. Interior photography can appear quite lush by contrast, with warmer flesh tones all around, and that quintessential Kensington gore is remarkably vivid.

In addition to improving upon the color and contrast and restoring a great share of the damage the materials had accrued over four-and-a-half decades, Pinewood have regrettably opted to soften the substantial grain of the 2-perf Techniscope photography through an excessive application of digital noise reduction. … Grain is still evident in the background, though its well-defined edges have been softened away to no good end. Detail, particularly at the level of flesh or material texture, suffers as a result, though remains at more refined levels than SD video could support.

Though the numbers appear to show an acceptable technical backing for the feature I found them rather misleading, as the VC-1 video encode … just doesn’t support the visuals to the degree it should. The trouble here is artifacting, pure and simple, and while the image looks acceptable in motion a cursory examination reveals any number of ugly digital blemishes tinkering about in the background. Skies and interior walls prove particularly bothersome … and the acceptability of their rendering will depend directly on just how large a scale you intend to view the film.

Otherwise, the image is properly framed at 2.36:1 and presented in a universally accessible 1080p. While it never looks like film it does have some stronger moments on all fronts (like the close-up on Count Dracula’s bloodshot eyes), as the included screenshots should relate. Whether or not it is good enough for your personal taste will be a matter of just that, but it’s worth noting that this is likely as good as Dracula Prince of Darkness will look for some time.“

Despite some major improvements (the audio sync issues and awful DVNR that once plagued the pre-credits sequence were essential fixes, and I truly respect Studio Canal and Hammer for recalling the product to resolve them) my conclusions remain more or less the same. Dracula Prince of Darkness is still a flawed release, too much of whose potential went unrealized, but I’d say it’s “good enough” in the end. Not much of a recommendation, eh?

And for those who have yet to pick up the release, the version currently for sale at Amazon.co.uk should reflect the changes discussed here. Studio Canal recalled the original product, and the new pressing was officially released on April 30th.

The screenshots below offer exact frame matches across both the original Blu-ray pressing of Dracula Prince of Darkness and the revised Blu-ray disc. Order of shots is old, followed by new.

Blu-ray screenshots were taken as full resolution .png in Totem Movie Player, and compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 97% using the Image Magick command line tool.


The Sadist

May 10th, 2012 | article by | 1 Comment »
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released in 2010 by Johnny Legend
video: 1080p / 1.78:1 / B&W / Mpeg-4 AVC
 audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
subtitles: none
 discs: 1 x 25GB BD-R / 1 x DVD-R / All Region
supplements: Interview with Arch Hall Jr. by Ray Dennis Steckler, Arch Hall Jr. Video Songbook, Epilogue to The Sadist by Johnny Legend
The Sadist is available now through Amazon.com and Diabolik DVD.

Between Something Weird / Image Entertainment’s latest H. G. Lewis offering and Arrow Video’s long-delayed and predictably problematic treatment of Lamberto Bava’s Demons films, I’ve had about all I can take in the way of disappointing cult Blu-rays for this month. A pity, really, as I had sincerely hoped that at least one of those, if not both, would turn out all right. But if there’s one good thing about disappointment it’s that it can leave you open for the best kind of surprises, and Johnny Legend’s outwardly dubious high definition treatment of schlock icon Arch Hall Jr.’s one really good film is a surprise indeed.

Unlike the other two titles I mentioned, Legend’s The Sadist Blu-ray isn’t a new release at all. He first began offering this 2-disc Blu-ray / DVD combo online in 2010, and continues to give any sort of wide-release model amiss in favor of selling it himself, one copy at a time. Having been long devoted to the DVD issued by historian David Kalat’s All Day Entertainment in 1997 (most notable now for its feature commentary with The Sadist‘s renowned cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, and still available for those who missed out on it), it took me a while to work up the steam to give the Blu-ray a go – it was expensive after all, $29.95 plus shipping through most outlets. As is so often the case, however, my love of cinema ultimately overrode any good financial sense, and I finally broke down and ordered The Sadist Blu from Diabolik DVD on Friday. $30 was still a tough pill to swallow, but in retrospect I’m glad I did.

Before I get to the goods, it must be said that the outward impression of this Blu-ray doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.  The sleeve art is nicely designed, if a bit over-populated with glowing critical quotations (there are even more on the back), but has the deficiency of being physically too tall for the sleeve it inhabits and sticking out about half a centimeter beyond the cellophane. With regards to the case itself, this may be the first time I’ve ever received a Blu-ray in one that’s completely devoid of any sort of Blu-ray logo. I honestly don’t hold either of these things against the release (as quibbles go they are the very definition of minor), but some may find the next bit more difficult to stomach. Having been produced in too low a run to warrant the expense and effort of standard replication, The Sadist is presented on a single-layer 25GB BD-R as opposed to the pressed discs we’re all familiar with. As one Blu-ray.com forum member noted of it, “BD-arrrrgh!”

With all the above taken into account I found myself expecting the very worst from this release when the package arrived yesterday, and it was with no small amount of animosity that I removed it from its resealable plastic baggie to check out the disc proper. Thankfully I soon found my low expectations to be thoroughly and delightfully trounced. Who could ever have thought that Johnny Legend would succeed where mainstream labels like Arrow Video and Image Entertainment failed?

The cover for The Sadist notes that it is sourced from a “new high definition transfer from the original 35mm master print”, and while the “new” bit may be a little suspect (this is the same transfer that was sourced for Legend’s DVD edition after all) the rest is difficult to argue with. Legend presents The Sadist in full 1080p at the comfortable matted ratio of 1.78:1 (the case incorrectly lists a taller 1.66:1), and I was floored by the results. It must be noted that this is not sourced from a pristine print, but it is more pristine than I ever remember the film being. Damage is prevalent throughout, from dirt and specks to reel change markers and all manner of scratching, but I was undeterred. The Sadist looks demonstrably better here than it ever has before on video, and those familiar with just how bad the film has looked in the past will be thrilled.

Rarely lauded by this reviewer, the contrast on this disc may be its keenest attribute. Ace photographer Zsigmond has always been a master of contrast, and the delicious range of it in The Sadist‘s black and white visuals is captured beautifully, perfectly here. The image is suitably crisp and detailed for a film of this vintage and budget ($33,000!), and close-ups can look mighty impressive. Textures are also strong throughout, and the light, unobtrusive grain goes unperturbed by man, beast, or video filter – those who like myself are downright allergic to digital manipulation will find no such impediments here. The Sadist looks like film, pure and simple, and in motion improves handily over both All Day Entertainment’s 15-year old effort and Legend’s own DVD – this transfer would look lovely projected theatrically.

Those worried by the 25GB BD-R specification and what it could have meant for the technical proficiency of this release can rest easy. The Sadist occupies the disc all by itself with the exception of a rudimentary main menu (play film is the only option) and fares all the better for it, with a robust 20.8 GB alotted for the 92 minute film. The video is encoded in Mpeg-4 AVC at a strong average bitrate of 29.4 Mbps with peaks reaching as high as 35.0 Mbps. Compression artifacts are never an issue and the image held up well under even my admittedly excessive scrutinizing. If there’s one sticking point to the release it’s the audio which, as was the case with many of Warner’s early Blu-rays, is presented in lossy Dolby Digital only. That’s not to say that the 2.0 monophonic mix sounds bad by any means, a few unsightly bumps around the reel changes excepted, but I’d love to have heard Paul Sawtell and Bert Schefter’s wicked opening theme in lossless. There are no subtitles.

While The Sadist occupies the Blu-ray by itself, the release is far from supplement free. Included in the package is Legend’s original DVD from 2009 (also a burned disc, a single-layer DVD-R), which arrives with a 10 minute Arch Hall Jr. interview conducted and photographed by the late Ray Dennis Steckler (trailers for Arch’s films are mixed in here as well), a 20 minute Arch Hall Jr. video songbook featuring songs from his various films, and a very enthusiastic 10 minute “epilogue” to the film by Johnny Legend himself. The commentary with Vilmos Zsigmond was unfortunately not licensed for this release, and those interested in it will want to check out the old All Day Entertainment DVD.

The Sadist is both a bona fide American nightmare and a surprisingly great film, and it’s lost none of its potent gut-wrench potential in the last fifty years. This Blu-ray edition from Johnny Legend is an unlikely hit that rises above its perceived limitations and bests some of the bigger labels at their own game. Sure it’s expensive, but I’d rather pay more for something that gets things mostly right than pay less for more crap like this. The Sadist gets a wholehearted endorsement from me, and fans of the film are encouraged to indulge.

Screenshots were captured as native resolution .png in Totem Movie Player, then compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 97% using the ImageMagick command line tool.


A Demonic Lamberto Bava Double Feature

May 6th, 2012 | article by | 4 Comments »
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released April 30th, 2012 by Arrow Video
video: 1080p / 1.66:1 / Color / Mpeg-4 AVC
 audio: 16-bit LPCM 2.0 Mono (English, Italian)
subtitles: English SDH, English
 discs: 2 x single layer BD25 / Region B (locked)
supplements: Commentaries with director Lamberto Bava, SPFX artist Sergio Stivaleti and journalist Loris Curci on both films, Commentary with Bava, Stivaleti, star Geretta Geretta and composer Claudio Simonetti (on Demons only), five new featurettes (Dario’s Demonic Days, Defining an Era in Music, Creating Creature Carnage, Luigi Cozzi’s Top Italian Terrors and Bava to Bava), and liner notes by Calum Waddell
The Demons limited edition 2-disc Blu-ray Steelbook contains both Demons and Demons 2: The Nightmare Returns, and is available through Amazon UK.

It’s nigh impossible to overstate the massive cult potential represented by Demons and Demons 2: The Nightmare Returns, a pair of shameless horror-pop wet dreams that oozed their way onto mid-80s cinema screens courtesy of executive producer Dario Argento and director Lamberto Bava. The first is a deserved fan favorite, an irresistible and endlessly exploitable blend of excessive prosthetic gore and macho action motifs set to a pounding hard rock score featuring the likes of Billy Idol, Motley Crue, Saxon, and Go West. The second never reaches the same dizzying heights of genre excess, but keeps the entertainment level high with its pre-REC premise (an apartment building infested with devilish evil) and boundless schlock appeal. Slick and stylish and remarkably stupid, these are bloody brain-off escapism of the highest possible order. I love them both, and make no excuses for it.

That said, it should be no surprise that I’ve been following news of Arrow Video’s high definition treatments with the utmost anticipation, hoping against all hope that a label best known for top-flight packaging and a lamentable penchant for dropping the ball with regards to quality control would be capable of giving the Demons films the respect I felt they deserved. I received the label’s limited edition Steelbook (which combines both films in one glossy and blessedly flair-impaired package) just yesterday, and have been eagerly devouring its contents ever since. While my overall opinion of the release is quite positive – this is undeniably the best these films have ever looked on video – I was none-the-less frustrated to see Arrow fall so predictably short on the technical front. But we’ll get to that in a moment.

For now, the good stuff! While the vast majority of high definition Italian genre masters have been handled by the problematc LVR in Rome, Arrow Video have gone out of their way to see that the transfers for Demons and Demons 2: The Nightmare Returns were done properly. With no suitable HD materials available new from-the-negative restorations of both films were undertaken by the esteemed Cineteca Bologna in collaboration with L’Immagine Ritrovata, and the results are as good as could ever have been hoped for.

Demons features light black levels, but is otherwise a faultless effort. The 1080p transfer presents the film at its intended theatrical ratio of 1.66:1, and the overall quality of the thing is impossibly crisp and impossibly clean in comparison to what’s come before. Detail is very strong where Gianlorenzo Battaglia’s moody photography allows, and Sergio Stivaletti’s close-up effects takes look exceptional. Colors are vibrant, brightness is at the appropriate levels (whites run dreadfully hot in many of the LVR transfers), and, as can be too rarely said of Italian genre cinema in HD, there’s a fine legitimate film texture underlying the image. Damage is minimal both here and in Demons 2: The Nightmare Returns, though the latter begins with a disclaimer – a handful of takes in the film present with a conspicuous judder that’s baked right into the original negative, and was impossible to satisfactorily resolve digitally. Otherwise Demons 2 is similarly flawless, with the benefit of tighter black levels all around. I only wish that was the end of the story…

Hints of just what’s wrong with Arrow Video’s Blu-rays of Demons and Demons 2: The Nightmare Returns begin with the disc specs themselves (these are both single layer treatments), but even that can’t explain the depth of what’s wrong here. The sad fact of the matter is that no label mangles their properties at the authoring level so regularly, so willfully, as Arrow Video does. They dependably do less with acceptable average bitrates than I’d have thought possible, and unfortunately the average bitrates here are a sight lower than that. Demons fairs the best overall, though its video stream only occupies a distinctly low 12.2 GB on disc. The 89 minute feature is Mpeg-4 AVC encoded at a middling average video bitrate of 18.0 Mbps, and compression artifacts are plentiful. The milky blacks regularly split into swaths of blocking, and the integrity of the film texture is compromised throughout. The 91 minute Demons 2: The Nightmare Returns goes lower still, receiving an Mpeg-4 AVC encode at an average video bitrate of just 15.6 Mbps, and its compression problems are more prevalent for the trouble. While I didn’t feel that either film looked especially bad in motion (even as poorly encoded as they are, these transfers can look very strong), the encode issues were still obvious enough in playback to trip my irate critical triggers – looking at the image up close is as disappointing an experience as I’ve had in a while. At the prices Arrow is currently demanding for these discs (around $40 for this Steelbook edition and ~$27 each for the individual releases through their storefront) this is just unacceptable.

Audio will be a sticking point for some. The English dub track provided for Demons is, interestingly enough, the same that graced the film’s American release, which features different use of some musical cues and sound effects as well as a few altered lines (the majority of the dubbed dialogue is the same as that head in the more common European dub). More important for many is the fact that the track is monophonic only, which substantially limits the audible scope of a film originally released Dolby stereo. The English track is encoded well however, in lossless 16-bit LPCM, and though flatter than I’d have preferred it still sounds pretty good. Otherwise Arrow have included the original Italian audio in 2.0 stereo, and the difference in both fullness and overall fidelity is considerable (flipping between the two with headphones was revelatory). Again presented in lossless 16-bit LPCM, the Italian audio sounds very robust, particularly during the various rock numbers. Demons 2: The Nightmare Returns sounds to be monophonic on both fronts (at least to these ears – I noted no separation in my headphone tests of either track), and the lossless 16-bit LPCM English and Italian tracks are less disparate than on Demons. The English dub sounds less crisp, unnaturally bass-heavy and perhaps even a bit compressed, while the Italian sounds better refined all around. Arrow offers English (for the Italian track) and English SDH (for the English track) subtitles for both films, and will hear no complaints on that front from me.

Supplements are of Arrow’s usual variety, if not quite up to the quantity that have graced some of their other efforts. Demons arrives with two feature commentaries, one with director Lamberto Bava, effects man Sergio Stivaletti, and journalist Loris Curci, and another with Bava, Stivaletti, composer Claudio Simonetti, and star Geretta Geretta. The disc also comes with three new featurettes: Splatter Spaghetti Style – Luigi Cozzi’s Top Italian Terrors (11 minutes, HD), Defining an Era in Music – Claudio Simonetti on Demons (9 minutes, SD), and Dario’s Demon Days – Dario Argento Remembers Demons (10 minutes, HD). Demons 2: The Nightmare Returns receives another commentary, with Bava, Stivaletti, and Curci, as well as two new featurettes: Bava to Bava – A History of Italian Horror with Luigi Cozzi (16 minutes, SD) and Creating Creature Carnage with Stivaletti (20 minutes, SD). The limited edition Steelbook eschews many of the paper extras that are to be included with the individual releases (which are currently delayed due to printing troubles), but does come with a short booklet of notes by Calum Waddell. The individual LE releases will include a fold-out poster, the usual multiple cover options, as well as parts one and two of a newly produced Demons 3 comic.

The Blu-ray debuts of Demons and Demons 2: The Nightmare Returns have a lot of potential, far more than Arrow have typically allowed, but it’s a shame they’ve been bogged down by technical issues that might so easily have been remedied. I didn’t pay anywhere near retail for this limited edition release (hooray gift certificates!), and no more than I’m out of pocket I can live with the limitations, but the high asking price makes for a tough overall recommendation. If you can overlook the persistent compression troubles then there really is a lot to love here, and I think that’s as close to a recommendation as I’m going to get.

Demons intermission card

Judder in Demons 2

Demons

Demons 2: The Nightmare Returns

Screenshots were captured as full resolution .png in Totem Movie Player, then compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 97% using the ImageMagick command line tool.


Journey to the Center of the Earth

May 4th, 2012 | article by | 1 Comment »
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dir. Henry Levin
1959 / 20th Century Fox / 129′
written by Walter Reisch and Charles Brackett
from the novel by Jules Verne
director of photography Leo Tover
original music by Bernard Herrmann
 starring Pat Boone, James Mason, Arlene Dahl, Peter Ronson, Thayer David, Diane Baker, Alan Napier, Alan Caillou, and Gertrude the Duck
reviewed from a screener provided by Twilight Time
Journey to the Center of the Earth is out on limited edition Blu-ray from Twilight Time, and is available exclusively through ScreenArchives.com.

Jules Verne’s classic science fiction adventure novel Voyage au Centre de la Terre has been adapted many times for screens both large and small, most often quite badly, but despite some considerable liberties taken with the source material this big-budget adaptation from 20th Century Fox remains the best of the bunch. The (very) big brother to Irwin Allen’s lamentable yet lovable sci-fi fiasco The Lost World, Fox’s 1959 production of Journey to the Center of the Earth fills the CinemaScope screen with vivid color spectacle and A-list talent while one of Bernard Herrmann’s best fantasy scores rumbles forth in 4-track stereo. It remains a damn fine show more than half a century on, bolstered by an intelligent, often playful screenplay (from Charles The Lost Weekend Brackett and Walter Gaslight Reisch) that still holds up – it’s no surprise the film made a small mint upon release, and continues to generate royalty checks for its then-young star Pat Boone.

Though substantially altered in its details the narrative here is familiar enough: When the recently-knighted Professor Lindenbrook (James Mason, displaying the same charismatic misanthropy that would mark his performance in Kubrick’s Lolita) receives a celebratory paperweight – an unusually heavy chunk of igneous rock – from his star pupil Alec (Pat Boone, whose heart-throb appeal is plundered early and often), he suspects there’s more to the thing than meets the eye. A chance encounter with an overfed laboratory furnace reveals the suspicious rock’s secret – within lies a plumb-bob upon which is etched the last words of explorer Arne Saknussem, who therein claims to have reached the center of the Earth!

Thus is launched the Lindenbrook expedition, an effort by the Professor and his loyal underling (Boone is, amusingly, billed above Mason) to follow in Saknussem’s footsteps and reach the furthest recesses of the inner Earth. After joining forces with Madame Carla Göteborg (the lovely Arlene Dahl as the freshly widowed wife of a rival scientist), Icelandic strongman Hans (legitimate Icelander Peter Ronson), and his devoted duck Gertrude, the expedition makes its way down into an extinct volcanic crater and through the cavernous interior of the Earth, threatened all the while by hazardous geology, dinosaurs, and a devious heir to the Saknussem legacy who wishes to claim the center of the Earth as his own…

Journey to the Center of the Earth is a matinee-style programmer done in atypically grand style, and one of the few honestly BIG science fiction spectacles of its day (along with Forbidden Planet and the productions of George Pal). While some of the set design is suspect (director Henry Levin and director of photography Leo Tover keep those early cavern interiors dark with good reason) the overall scale of the thing, particularly when the ruins of Atlantis and the expansive mushroom forest make their appearances, and the caliber of the talent involved more than make up for it. Boone no doubt set his young idolaters’ hearts a-twitter, both with his early crooning and later clothing-impaired antics, but for me this has always been Mason’s show. The actor was arguably at the height of his potential here, with Hitchcock’s North By Northwest under his belt and Kubrick’s Lolita within sight, and had already proven his Verneian mettle as the quintessential Captain Nemo in Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea just a few years earlier. Perhaps more important than Mason alone is the convincing tit-for-tat relationship that develops between him and his co-star Arlene Dahl (one of Minneapolis’ own, for those of you locals reading) – this drama has always worked for me, even as a kid who was accustomed to patiently waiting out the “boring parts” to get to the sensational trappings.

Of course Journey to the Center of the Earth has sensational trappings in spades, including such suspense staples as the ledge walk (soon to be appropriated by Irwin Allen, who evidently thought it the epitome of screen thrills), the giant rolling boulder, and the collapsing rock bridge – this was one of the earlier big-budget efforts to co-opt such B-grade cliffhanger devices, before Lucas and Star Wars made the practice an industry standard. The special effects production is top-notch throughout, with the matte artist(s) proving especially deserving of commendation (the early vistas of Icelandic mountains and later revelation of a vast underground sea are both breathtaking stuff), though, as ever, there is at least one point of contention. Like One Million B.C. and the Flash Gordon serials before it, Journey to the Center of the Earth relied on the deservedly criticized slurpasaur technique to bring its various dinosaurs to life. In this case its a gaggle of rhinoceros iguanas and one rather irate tegu pulling monster duty, though at least the former are cast as morphologically similar Dimetrodons – in the annals of slurpasaur history they are easily some of the most convincing. Fox obviously deemed the monster efforts of Emil Kosa Jr., James B. Gordon and L. B. Abbott to be “good enough” in this respect, as the trio were tasked with the process again just a year later, for Irwin Allen’s The Lost World.

Slurpasaurs or no, Journey to the Center of the Earth‘s tremendous entertainment potential remains (there’s a reason the ScreenArchives servers crashed the day this film went up for pre-order, and it wasn’t just the promise of Pat Boone’s autograph!), and with a host of wonderful performances, a taught script, and superb production design on its side it stands firmly as one of the best of its genre. This is a film that’s captivated me since before I can rightly remember, and is more than worthy of recommendation if for that reason alone. See it!

I’ve owned Journey to the Center of the Earth on VHS, Laserdisc and DVD over the years, and as such I’ve looked forward the title’s debut in high definition with the utmost anticipation. I was not disappointed.

If I’m not mistaken, Journey‘s negative was in too ragged a condition to be sourced for either DVD or Blu-ray, and as such the film had to be reconstituted from 35mm separations (essentially three individual black and white prints, each of which represents one color of the three-strip color process) for its more recent video transfers. Given the quality of the results, I’m glad 20th Century Fox went to all the trouble. It seems pertinent to get the worst out of the way first. Journey isn’t a spotless presentation by any means, and minor flecks and speckling are in evidence throughout. More bothersome is faint but notable vertical scratching to the right of frame center that persists for what appears to be an entire reel, from roughly 00:35:00 to 00:48:00 (see the first screenshot below, just above Alec’s shoulder). The anomaly is present in the 2003 Fox DVD of the film as well, but has become more noticeable with the increased resolution (it’s easy to miss unless hunted for on the DVD).

The issue of damage aside, it’s difficult to fault Journey‘s HD presentation for much of anything else – in 1080p this film can be quite stunning, and the improvement in-motion is substantial (gone forever is the modestly ghosty, video quality of the DVD). As I find myself saying so often of these older CinemaScope productions, detail doesn’t improve so much as the texture of the thing. This is another film that has thankfully been allowed to retain the physicality of that medium on Blu-ray, even if the grain isn’t so well rendered here as on The Egyptian or Picnic. Color reproduction is vivid and natural (this is perhaps the greatest benefit of working from separations), with robust saturation and sharp contrast that really puts past editions to shame. In purely technical terms this is another good showing for Twilight Time - Journey receives a typically strong Mpeg-4 AVC encode at an average video bitrate of 33.2 Mbps. The feature is spread comfortably over a dual layer BD50, and artifacting, if any, is negligible. Fans of the film should be very pleased.

Journey to the Center of the Earth receives a considerable bump in the audio department courtesy of a lovely lossless DTS-HD MA encode of the original 4-track stereo mix, and it should come as no surprise that Bernard Herrmann’s bass-heavy score, often muddled in past editions, sees the most benefit from it. The organs underlying the opening title theme are thunderous here, and as a former bass (and contrabass) clarinetist I was thrilled to finally be able to distinguish that instrument’s role in things as well. As is the norm for Twilight Time’s Fox-licensed titles, there are no subtitles available. Supplements offer Herrmann’s score as an isolated lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0 track, as well as the original American and Spanish trailers for the film (both SD). Packaging is of the company’s typically high standards, spearheaded by another wonderful essay from Julie Kirgo, and the disc is, again, fully functional, with non-generic chapter stops, pop-up menu and so on.

What else can I say? I love this film, and Twilight Time’s limited edition Blu-ray soundly bests what’s come before. This gets another easy recommendation from me.

Screenshots were captured as native resolution .png in Totem Movie Player, then compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 97% using the ImageMagick command line tool.


The Wizard of Gore / The Gore Gore Girls

May 2nd, 2012 | article by | 2 Comments »
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released May 1st, 2012
by Something Weird / Image Entertainment
video: 1080p / 1.78:1
 audio: DTS-HD MA 2.0 English
subtitles: none
 disc: dual layer BD50 / Region A
The Wizard of Gore / The Gore Gore Girls Blood-Drenched Double Feature Blu-ray is readily available through Amazon.com.

Something Weird and Image Entertainment simultaneously thrilled and disappointed long-time fans of exploitation icon Herschell Gordon Lewis with their The Blood Trilogy Blu-ray from last year. On the one hand the films had never looked better, but issues with improper matting (Color Me Blood Red and Two Thousand Maniacs were essentially vertically panned-and-scanned into an aspect ratio of 1.78:1) and compression (everything on the release, and there was a lot, was crammed onto a single BD50) undermined many of its positives. Even so, I was enthusiastic enough about that effort that I pre-ordered the labels’ second Lewis Blu-ray collection as soon as it was announced.

Before I get into the nitty-gritty of the thing, I should say that, as with The Blood Trilogy, I’m pleased enough with The Wizard of Gore / The Gore Gore Girls Blu-ray double feature to offer it a grudging recommendation – it certainly helps that it only ran me $11. Still, fans expecting any sort of improvement over the former release’s presentation should keep those expectations in check, as The Wizard of Gore / The Gore Gore Girls has plenty of troubles of its own.

First, bear with me while I offer a disgruntled note on dual layering. As you’ll see from the information I’ve listed at the head of this article, The Wizard of Gore / The Gore Gore Girls double feature is indeed housed on a dual layer BD50 – unfortunately that doesn’t tell the whole story. The release actually totals just 26.7 GB, meaning it occupies a hair more than half the total capacity offered by a 50 GB dual layer Blu-ray disc. For all practical purposes this is a dual layer disc in name only – the two features take up just 12.8 and 12.0 GB respectively, with measly average bitrates to match. In other words, Something Weird / Image have foot the bill for a dual layer Blu-ray disc and then not used the extra space they paid for. It’s akin to a publisher printing a 200 page book with 200 additional blank pages at the end, and really begs the question – Why bother?

With regards to the films, both The Wizard of Gore and The Gore Gore Girls are transferred from positive 35mm elements (the latter sporting the alternate title Blood Orgy). Damage is prevalent throughout both features, from minor spots and speckling to cue marks, persistent vertical scratching, and even the odd splice. For cheap drive-in fair like this, the elements for which no one thought to preserve until well after the fact, this kind of damage is to be expected, and it does nothing to detract from the quality (or lack thereof) of the films themselves. Otherwise the source prints could best be described as inconsistent, a fact due both to production limitations and age. Though color can vary considerably from shot to shot, contrast is generally strong – with regards to The Gore Gore Girls the contrast can actually be overbearing, but even this overly dark image remains a revelation in comparison to the blown-out SD transfers of before.

Speaking more specifically, The Wizard of Gore is easily the stronger presentation of the two. Presented in 1080p courtesy of a flat-matted 1.78:1 transfer (as opposed to the selectively matted Color Me Blood Red and Two Thousand Maniacs), Wizard looks perfectly acceptable, if far from earth-shattering, in its high definition debut. Despite Lewis’ own dubious understanding of the topic and the frequency of awkward compositions, the framing here looks comfortable for the most part. Some manner of grain suppression appears to have bee applied, though not to the point that all texture has been obliterated, and the image is free from the waxy quality that plagues more substantially DNR’d transfers. Color and contrast both improve appreciably over past SD editions (despite some variation in both the frequent reds are well saturated and appropriately bloody), but the big story here may be the detail. Regardless of the limitations of the materials (and a frequent lack of focus in the original photography) detail can really impress in places, particularly during the close-ups that mark Montag the Magnificent’s television act.

Unfortunately the space constraints levied upon The Wizard of Gore do take their toll, though thankfully not to the extent that they could and perhaps should have. The film is granted a (very) modest Mpeg-4 AVC encode at an average video bitrate of 14.7 Mbps, and though the image is passable overall minor artifacts (blocking in the grain and a bit of banding) can be found tinkering about in the background throughout. Still, I’ve seen much worse done with much more, and none of the encode limitations here were so obvious as to distract me during playback. Audio sounds precisely as one would imagine (flat, poorly mixed, and overall bad), though Something Weird / Image can’t be faulted for that. The Wizard of Gore gets a technically robust DTS-HD MA 2.0 treatment that precisely preserves every inch of its awfulness, and aside from the lack of subtitles (some fun could have been had with these given Montag’s bizarrely stilted line delivery – “Why, it’s nothing more than an i-LOOOOO-sion!”) I’ve no complaints on this front.

The presentation for The Gore Gore Girls is of substantially weaker stuff all around, even though the source element appears to have been of comparable quality to that for The Wizard of Gore. Presented in 1080p at a flat-matted ratio of 1.78:1, framing may be a bit more of a sticking point here than with the co-feature. The Gore Gore Girls features especially shoddy blocking and framing throughout, and while Lewis appears to have been loosely composing for widescreen matting (a quick look at an old open SD master reveals as much) the photography doesn’t look especially comfortable that way. Characters wander in and out of their proper spots, the camera tilts, and in more careless moments whole heads can be lopped off of Lewis’ subjects (and not in the way fans like). Regardless of how this may have been projected theatrically I’d argue that open matte 4:3 would have been the way to go with this video edition.

Framing is not the only problematic aspect of the presentation, however, as The Gore Gore Girls suffers from something until now absent from Something Weird’s Blu-ray efforts – excessive digital manipulation. Those looking for grain will find none here, though the insubstantial pretense of it can be glimpsed from time to time, and the image is so smooth in places as to appear more illustrated than photographed (see the shot above). Frequent edging indicates some attempts at artificial sharpening, but detail goes the way of the grain – fine details are practically nonexistent, and there’s nothing in the way of texture to be seen. Motion fairs poorly as well, and is riddled with blocky patterning.

With regards to the encode The Gore Gore Girls is technically stronger, Mpeg-4 AVC at an average video bitrate of 15.7 Mbps, but the limitations of the transfer prevent it from really benefiting. Aside from some blotchiness here and there artifacts are negligible, though with such a dearth of detail and texture it couldn’t have been that difficult for the encoder to keep track – the only thing that keeps this looking at all like film is the frequent unrestored damage. Still, the usual reviewer platitude applies. This looks better than the old DVD by quite a bit, but make of that what you will. The audio is again properly presented in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0, and while The Gore Gore Girls arguably sounds worse than The Wizard of Gore I doubt it should sound any better. As with The Wizard of Gore there are no subtitles.

The release offers a healthy spate of supplements, even if there’s nothing new in the mix. Both The Wizard of Gore and The Gore Gore Girls are accompanied by commentaries with producer / director Herschell Gordon Lewis, and a comprehensive video gallery of H.G. Lewis exploitation art is included as well. The bet supplement of the bunch may be the disc’s stack of trailers – aside from a preview for the recent documentary Godfather of Gore, you get trailers for Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs, Color Me Blood Red, The Alley Tramp, Goldilocks and the Three Bares, The Gruesome Twosome, She-Devils on Wheels, Something Weird, and The Wizard of Gore.

My temptation to recommend Herschell Gordon Lewis’ films grows exponentially with their awfulness, and both The Wizard of Gore and The Gore Gore Girls are downright terrible stuff – I love it! I just wish I could say the same for this Blu-ray from Something Weird / Image Entertainment. There are too many issues with the feature presentations for me to recommend it too wholeheartedly, though the price is right – this was worth the $11 I paid for it, if not much more. This is a decent if utterly unremarkable way to see these two Lewis shockers, and those looking for nothing more will likely be satisfied.

The Wizard of Gore

The Gore Gore Girls

Screenshots were captured as full resolution .png in Totem Movie Player, then compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 97% using the ImageMagick command line tool.


Murder Obsession

April 26th, 2012 | article by | 1 Comment »
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dir. Riccardo Freda
1981 / Dionysio Cinematografica / 97′
written by Riccardo Freda, Antonio Cesare Corti, Simon Mizrahi, and Fabio Piccioni
director of photography Christiano Pogany
original music by Franco Mannino
 starring Stefano Patrizi, Martine Brochard, Henri Garcin, Laura Gemser, John Richardson, Anita Strindberg, Silvia Dionisio, and Frabrizio Maroni
Murder Obsession is out on Blu-ray (reviewed here) and DVD from Raro Video USA, and is available through Amazon.com or Raro Video directly.

Co-produced by Italy and France as a means of cashing in on the popularity of the burgeoning American slasher, esteemed director Riccardo Freda’s last stand (he would be fired from his only subsequent directing job) is ultimately far, far stranger than its body count pedigree might suggest. A horror in the broadest since of the word, Murder Obsession bucks categorization by synthesizing practically every familiar genre motif imaginable into an unwieldy and confoundedly contrived cine-monstrosity that must be seen to be believed.

The plot, such as it can be described, concerns young actor Michael, who as a child murdered his famed conductor father after witnessing him beating his mother. Ostensibly cured of the violent impulses that drove him to kill, Michael grows into a seemingly normal human being and a successful film actor to boot. But when one of his roles calls for him to strangle his co-star he takes the stunt too far, nearly killing the poor woman instead. After the incident Michael begins to wonder whether his compulsion to kill has been cured or not, and finds himself compelled to visit his ailing mother and the family mansion where the original murder took place. His girlfriend and a few close friends join him for the trip, expecting a bit of deep-country high-life fun, and who can blame them – what could possibly go wrong on a vacation to the isolated Gothic family mansion of an admitted ex-murderer?

Dramatically Murder Obsession is only so interesting as its dull protagonist, a decidedly vacant Stefano Patrizi (The Cassandra Crossing), and its similarly disinterested writing (credited to four screenwriters, including director Freda himself) allows. This is slow, dry going for the first half hour or so, with no effort at all put into ratcheting suspense from the dynamite situation. With Michael appearing so indifferent about his own potential insanity and non-threatening besides, it’s difficult for the audience to buy him as anything but the film’s most obvious red-herring. His lack of conversational manners is amusing, at least – “In case you hadn’t heard, I killed my dad,” he blandly interjects at one point. The rest of the cast fair about as well, both in performance and scripting, from Sylvia Dionisio (Blood for Dracula) as Michael’s girlfriend and D’Amato muse Laura Gemser (Black Emanuelle) as his unfortunate co-star to John Richardson (Bava’s Black Sunday) as the obligatory creepy groundskeeper.

Fortunately for us director Freda and his collaborators seem to have lost all interest in what they had been doing at roughly the half hour mark, at which point Murder Obsession takes a sharp turn into the nonsensically bizarre and never really recovers. Groundskeeper Richardson stares blankly into the abyss as muddy footprints are left on the mansion’s floor by invisible feet. Gemser is nearly strangled to death – again. Girlfriend Dionisio lapses into a hysterical nightmare, in which she wanders endless tunnels full of screeching rubber bats and enormous spider webs and neath forest bows full of blood-dripping skulls before finding herself strapped to a sacrificial cross and embroiled in a Satanic ceremony that raises a giant and rape-hungry hell-spider from beyond. As familiar as I’ve become with the twists and turns that permeate Italian genre cinema I was honestly surprised by the sudden developments here. After thirty minutes of mind-grinding monotony I couldn’t help but wonder what right Murder Obsession suddenly had to kick ass.

While the giant and rape-hungry hell-spider from beyond is definitely the high point of the proceedings (and what a high!) Murder Obsession thankfully never again settles into its earlier groove, instead opting to channel the gialli of the decade before by way of the slashers that were in the process of transforming so many American drive-in screens into clearing houses for disposable teenagers. As Michael-and-company wander the mansion grounds a leather-gloved killer stalks them down, chewing through their bored and worthless humanity with a hunting knife, an axe, and, most dramatically, a chain saw. While the pretense of mystery is upheld throughout (practically everyone in the film owns leather gloves, inviting a bit of ‘whodunnit’ pondering) Murder Obsession doesn’t seem too concerned with it, and takes more pleasure in whittling down its cast to the point that the responsible party is obvious. In contrast to its early slog the latter two thirds of the story move at a fever pitch, as the film hemorrhages blood and sense on its way to a ludicrous conclusion that may just be cinema’s greatest bastardization of Michelangelo’s Pietà (those sensitive to sacrilege need not apply).

To say that Murder Obsession is a good film would be a gross overstatement, but it’s certainly different, and just the sort of strange, nonsense achievement that I’m happy to have cluttering up my video shelves. Still, a recommendation is tough. Those whose eyes twinkled and hearts leapt at the words giant rape-hungry hell-spider from beyond likely already know where they’re going to stand on this one, and I’ll not deter them from seeking it out. They must, for it is in their blood. The rest of you would probably do best to stick with more respectable genre diversions.

I’ve yet to cover The Fernando Di Leo Crime Collection, the only other Raro Video USA Blu-ray release I own and a real mixed bag in terms of both transfers and encodes. Murder Obsession (which was released to DVD by the same label just a few months ago as an English-only edition) marks a substantial improvement over that release in pretty much every regard – the quality of the film itself excepted.

Presented in 1080p at slightly pictureboxed 1.85:1, Murder Obsession looks pretty good if not quite right on Blu-ray from Raro. Though uncredited as such this is undoubtedly another of LVR’s transfer jobs, as it exhibits precisely the same qualities as those previously known to have been done by them. No, this transfer doesn’t look like film. There’s a somewhat smudgy and DVNR-ish quality to the motion of the image, and while there is plenty of noise to be found there is not a speck of identifiable film grain in evidence. All that aside Murder Obsession retains a certain capacity to impress, offering tight contrast and vivid color where the photography allows for it. There is suspicious softness in places, and an undeniable waxiness to the image at times, but there are also moments of robust detail that are indeed impressive. While I’ve no doubt that a proper transfer from a less problematic post house could have resulted in an overall better image, I’m not sure Murder Obsession really demands it. For home video this looks just fine, and I can’t say that I’m disappointed.

The technical backing really squandered the potential of Raro’s Di Leo collection (granting a piddly 14.8 Mbps average video bitrate to a classic like Milano Calibro 9 is just shameful), and the specifications here have thankfully been beefed up substantially. Murder Obsession is actually available in two separate Mpeg-4 AVC encodes, one for the 92 minute English language cut and another for the 97 minute Italian (each is culled from the same transfer). The shorter cut receives less support, an average bitrate of 21.6 Mbps, and looks a tad softer for the trouble, with more artifacts to be found amongst the transfer’s noise. The Italian cut is, by contrast, quite strong, with its average bitrate of 28.6 Mbps supporting the visuals very well. There are still minor artifacts lurking, but nothing that distracted me in motion. Audio for each version receives a lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0 encode, with the English sounding substantially rougher all around (it sounds to be sourced from tape). The Italian arrives with optional newly-translated English subtitles.

Aside from the bonus English cut of the film the rest of the supplements proved of little interest to this reviewer. The best of the bunch is a 10 minute interview with effects man Sergio Stivaletti, who cut his teeth assisting fx artist Angelo Mattei on the film. Otherwise there’s a longer (22′) interview with Claudio Simonetti on the music of genre cinema, and a shorter (8′) interview with director Gabriele Albanesi (Ubaldo Terzani Horror Show) on the subject of Riccardo Freda. Rounding out the disc is a (very) brief tape-sourced deleted scene and a list of Blu-ray credits. The package is wonderfully designed, from the disc menu up, and comes with an 11 page booklet featuring a synopsis, an essay on the film by Fangoria editor Chris Alexander, and a short biography of writer / director Riccardo Freda.

And that’s it, I think. Murder Obsession receives an imperfect, but perfectly acceptable release from Raro Video USA. At the low price it currently commands ($15.99 shipped from Raro directly, or a dollar more through Amazon) those interested in the film are encouraged to indulge.

The Blu-ray screenshots in this article were taken as full resolution .png in Totem Movie Player, then compressed to .jpg format at a quality setting of 97% using the ImageMagick command line tool. All screenshots are from the more robustly encoded Italian cut of the film.


The Hellstrom Chronicle

April 25th, 2012 | article by | No Comments »
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dir. Walon Green
1971 / Wolper Pictures / 90′
written by David Seltzer
original music by Lalo Schifrin
 starring Lawrence Pressman
The Hellstrom Chronicle is out on Blu-ray (reviewed here) and DVD through Olive Films.

“The Earth was created – not with the gentle caress of love, but with the brutal violence of rape…”

So begins The Hellstrom Chronicle, a strange variation on the nature-on-the-loose side of horror that unbelievably won the Academy Award (yes, that Academy Award) for Best Documentary in 1972. Though stuffed to the gills with breathtaking macrophotography the show is only marginally educational, and is less concerned with showcasing the wonders of nature than it is with filling theater seats with its flagrantly sensational, and entirely fictitious, trappings. Those who read that as negative criticism are sorely mistaken, however. The Hellstrom Chronicle is a National Geographic special by way of the killer bug pictures of the ’50s - Microcosmos meets Beginning of the End – and it’s a hell of a time.

The Hellstrom Chronicle is essentially a series of documentary vignettes – on the development and flight of butterflies, the lives of social insects like ants, bees, and termites, the mating ritual of the black widow spider, and so on – precisely photographed by the likes of Ferdinando Armati (Phenomena) and Ken Middleham (Phase IV, BUG, and Damnation Alley).

Where it goes so wonderfully astray is in the framing. The Hellstrom Chronicle is introduced and hosted by the eponymous Doctor (actually Lawrence Pressman, in one of the earliest roles of his ongoing screen career), who warns the audience from the start that he’s something of a heretic in his field. Like countless others, Dr. Hellstrom sees life on Earth as an unending struggle for survival, but his own emphasis on the field of entomology has led him to a startling conclusion. Man, plagued by the distractions of conscience, consciousness, and greed, is on an inevitable path towards self destruction, and once we’re done decimating ourselves with pollution and nuclear weapons and the blight of rationalism it’ll be the insects that rise from the rubble to take our place.

The film hits the usual post-Silent Spring high notes of its genre, lamenting the overabundance of pesticides as well as the dangers of nuclear proliferation, and while these points remain worthy of discussion some forty years on (the recently publicized link between pesticide use and the decline of bee populations is good evidence of this) The Hellstrom Chronicle‘s exploitative aims frequently undermine their significance. Each is pointed out as an example of human shortsightedness (fair enough), but with the ultimate aim of showing the superiority of insects, and the inevitability of their rise to power. The Hellstrom Chronicle isn’t really concerned with scaring it’s audience into changing things, though it certainly could have been. In the end it just wants to give them the creeps.

It doesn’t necessarily help things that Hellstrom dictates his chronicle with such nigh-hilarious earnest, of the sort that convinces audiences less of the believability of his findings than of the fact that he believes them. Pressman plays the role to the hilt, effortlessly toeing the line between mad genius and simple madness. Indeed, as the voice for screenwriter David Seltzer’s (The Omen) early pseudo-philosophical eco-horror ramblings Pressman’s talents prove downright indispensable – his Hellstrom is a consummate crank, but rarely an unlikable one. Seltzer would go on to pen another minor classic of the eco-horror subgenre, John Frankenheimer’s much maligned 1979 monster picture The Prophecy, in which mercury poisoning unleashes a score of giant animals and one very angry mutant bear in the forests of Maine.

Silly as it is, one can’t say that The Hellstrom Chronicle isn’t effective. The contrast producer and director Walon Green creates between the rudimentary Hellstrom sequences (themselves directed by Ed Spiegel) and the lavish macrophotography works precisely as it was intended to, and the experience he gained here no doubt aided him in his later documentaries (like 1979′s The Secret Life of Plants). Add to considerations the tremendous, eclectic score from the inimitable Lalo Schifrin (Bullitt, Dirty Harry, Cool Hand Luke) and The Hellstrom Chronicle becomes a one-of-a-kind slice schlock-art that I can’t help but recommend. See it!

Those few of us who have been patiently awaiting The Hellstrom Chronicle‘s arrival on digital home video would likely have been satisfied with a mere DVD – the film had previously only been available on VHS, and that is long since out of print. As such I was quite happily surprised when I found that it had been licensed by boutique outfit Olive Films for Blu-ray release as well. The Hellstrom Chronicle isn’t the sort of thing that will appeal to those looking to demo their home theater systems, but for those who have been craving more obscure library titles on the format this release may prove practically irresistible.

Working from a high definition master provided by Paramount Pictures, Olive Films present The Hellstrom Chronicle on Blu-ray in 1080p at a pillarboxed ratio of 1.33:1 (theatrical screenings would no doubt have been matted, but I appreciate having the open framing for the insect footage). Given the fact that the film is a low-budget 16mm documentary more than forty years old, the results are quite good. The framing footage featuring Lawrence Pressman looks as flat, gritty, and unimpressive as it always has, but the insect photography looks very nice indeed, with a reasonable level of detail and a rich, natural color. Little restorative work appears to have been done and minor damage is quite prevalent at times, but I didn’t find that a detraction to the experience. The film grain may have been softened a touch, but if so the results are not untoward – this looks much as I imagine The Hellstrom Chronicle should, and you’ll not find better for home viewing.

In terms of its technical specifications the disc is only a modest affair, but of acceptable stuff to support The Hellstrom Chronicle‘s visuals. The 9o minute film is granted a single layer Mpeg-4 AVC at a respectable average bitrate of 24.5 Mbps, and aside from some minor digital artifacts in the grain structure there’s very little left to complain about. Audio goes untouched by artificial up-mixing and is presented via a nice lossless DTS-HD MA 1.0 monophonic track. Pressman’s dialogue and narration sounds just like what it is – cheap post-dub recording – but the otherworldly sound effects and Schifrin’s phenomenal score really shine. There are no subtitles, SDH or otherwise.

As with other Olive Films releases from the Paramount catalogue The Hellstrom Chronicle arrives without supplements, though in this case I doubt we could have expected any even if the studio itself had done the work. Arguments against the perceived high price for these barebones editions have been made before, and will be made again. I’ll not bother with them here. The bottom line is that The Hellstrom Chronicle has never looked or sounded better on home video and in all likelihood never will, and  fans of the film should find it more than worth their while. Recommended.

The screenshots in this article were taken as full resolution .png in Totem Movie Player, then compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 97% using the ImageMagick command line tool.


Bite the Bullet

April 12th, 2012 | article by | 1 Comment »
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dir. Richard Brooks
1975 / Columbia Pictures / 132′
written by Richard Brooks
director of photography Harry Stradling Jr.
original music by Alex North
 starring Gene Hackman, James Coburn, Candice Bergen, Ben Johnson, Ian Bannen, Jan-Michael Vincent, Mario Arteaga, and Dabney Coleman
reviewed from a screener provided by Twilight Time
Bite the Bullet is out on limited edition Blu-ray from Twilight Time, and is available exclusively through ScreenArchives.com and their Amazon storefront.

If ever there were a film thematically befitting the Twilight Time label, Richard Brooks’ epic ode to a dying West is it. Like Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch before it 1975′s Bite the Bullet occupies a time and place of fading, in which the majesty and thrill of the old West is wrangled for cheap spectacle and circulation boosting by way of a turn of the century newspaper-financed 700 mile endurance horse race. With a $2,000 prize on the line, and substantially more bet on the side, the event brings out all types, from a aging cowboys and fresh young upstarts to a former prostitute and a pair of Teddy’s own Rough Riders, but as the miles drag on it becomes obvious that the contestant’s various personal stakes amount to a sight more than a stack of bills and a name in the paper.

Central to the story is the enigmatic Sam Clayton (Gene Hackman), a veteran of San Juan Hill who is hired as deliveryman for the paper’s champion horse, but fired from the team when his respect for the creatures leaves him late for the delivery. Initially wanting no part of a ‘gut-busting, back-twisting, man-killing goddamn race’ Clayton eventually signs on, leaving his own motivations unclear and joining the roster of fortune-hunters and glory-seekers as an independent. As the race winds on, one 100-mile stretch at a time, Clayton’s path intersects with those of the other contestants – including fellow Rough Rider Luke Matthews (James Coburn!), a gambler who has bet more than he can pay on his own chances, an Englishman (Ian Bannen) with a taste for American sport, and a Mexican (Mario Arteaga) with one mother of a tooth ache, the solution to which provides the film with its title.

Bite the Bullet‘s under-celebrated director Richard Brooks had already proven himself on such contemporary classics as Elmer Gantry, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Professionals and In Cold Blood by the time the 1970′s rolled around, and his work here is typically excellent. The events surrounding the race are purported with documentary precision, while the race itself is granted an almost mythic significance through a few deliciously calculated flourishes and a deft, spare usage of overcranking. The latter makes an indelible mark midway through the film, presenting one ambitious young rider’s futile effort to achieve his goal (to catch up to the front runner even as his own horse dies of exhaustion) with a nightmarish efficacy.

As important to his capacities as a director are Brooks’ considerable – and proven – talents as a writer (Brooks pulled double duty on the four films mentioned above, earning an Oscar nod in each instance and ultimately winning for Elmer Gantry), and his screenplay for Bite the Bullet is sharp and incisive stuff, both in its dialogue and its characterizations. From an early scene of Clayton saving a young colt to a stirring turn by Ben Johnson (The Wild Bunch) as the nameless Mister, an elderly cowboy who reaches the end of his line in as eloquent a fashion as has ever been seen on film, Bite the Bullet is positively alive with poignant humanity, making it more an epic of character than of action (though there’s certainly some of that as well). The quality of the film’s writing is only made more impressive once the circumstances of it are known – as elucidated in Julie Kirgo’s typically fine essay, Brooks wrote much of the screenplay on the go, with the substantial cast initially working from a 20-page treatment. As such it was not uncommon for the actors to receive their lines just the night before shooting of a scene began!

It all works out, someway somehow, and the only real mistake of the picture – an impromptu bear attack rendered laughable by the mercifully brief appearance of a woefully inadequate man-in-suit – is a fleeting one. Amusingly, the film’s ace photographer Harry Stradling Jr. (1776, Little Big Man) would find himself embroiled in bear antics far more bizarre just a few years later, when he filmed John Frankenheimer’s oddball mutant monster picture Prophecy. While I’m unsure of how contemporary audiences received the film, it certainly played well to critics of the time. Bite the Bullet would go on to earn two Oscar nods, for its exceptional sound design and for Alex North’s (Dragonslayer) jaunty genre score, but lose on both counts to a little film called Jaws.

Don’t let the ruddy Columbia logo at the start of this one fool you, as Bite the Bullet is another worthy addition to the ever-growing pantheon of quality Sony Pictures restorations. This is a tremendous looking show, lensed in 35mm Panavision and granted a rustic, somewhat desaturated palette that’s perfectly in keeping with the subject matter. Contrast is deep and detail strong throughout the feature, and damage is kept to a minimum – a few specks are noticeable here or there, but little else. The natural texture, a finer grain than one might find in anamorphic productions from just a decade before, is properly retained – this is another digital transfer that looks and feels like film. Sony’s restoration team have again left me with no room to complain.

The same might be said of Twilight Time, who have mastered their release to the robust specifications that have become their norm. Bite the Bullet‘s 2.35:1 1080p image receives a healthy Mpeg-4 AVC encode at an average bitrate of 33.2 Mbps – the feature and audio are spread comfortably over a dual layer BD50, occupying a hair under 40 GB all told. Artifacting is again of no concern, proving so negligible as to go unnoticed by this reviewer, and the textures of the image (both those photographed and inherent to the medium itself) are precisely rendered. This is a very strong presentation, well in advance of SD capabilities, and another fine addition to Twilight Time’s limited edition series.

Blu-ray screenshots were captured as full resolution .png in Totem Movie Player, then compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 97% using the Image Magick command line tool.

If the IMDB is to be believed, then Bite the Bullet was originally a monophonic show (certainly nothing strange for a film produced in the middle seventies). Twilight Time’s Blu-ray edition presents only a remixed 5.1 surround option, albeit one that sounds very good in lossless DTS-HD MA. While it’s a pity that the Academy Award-nominated original mix goes unrepresented, I’m hard pressed to complain about the results here. Effects are rich and sound of the appropriate vintage (I’d never seen the film until now, so any alterations thereof are lost on me), and Alex North’s stereo-recorded score is utterly brilliant. As expected of Twilight Time’s Sony-licensed releases, a set of optional English SDH subtitles is included.

Supplements are as expected, and nothing more. Alex North’s score is represented beautifully by way of its own isolated lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo track, while an original theatrical trailer (HD) rounds out the on-disc content. This is a fully-functional disc (another new norm for Twilight Time, and welcome), complete with 11 non-generic chapter stops and an easily accessible pop-up menu. The package itself is wonderfully designed, and a major improvement over the awful generic look of Sony’s earlier (and pan-and-scanned) DVD, and is rounded off with the keen liner notes mentioned earlier in this review – the licenses to the films themselves excepted, author Julie Kirgo may well be Twilight Time’s most valuable asset.

Mark Bite the Bullet down as another film I’d likely never have taken the time to see had Twilight Time not intervened – for allowing me to see it for the first time in such a splendid edition I really can’t thank the label enough. The film is a wonderful achievement on its own terms, worth watching if only as a showcase for Richard Brooks’ superior screenwriting, and Twilight Time’s limited edition Blu-ray does it proper justice to say the least. Both get an easy recommendation from me.


New to Blu: Désirée + Bell, Book and Candle

April 9th, 2012 | article by | No Comments »
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This week’s for playing catch-up here at Wtf-Film, where I’ve been effectively useless for the past many days thanks to a particularly nasty season of allergies. Much to my disgrace I’ve as yet been unable to even cover Twilight Time’s fine Blu-ray issue of the equally fine Bite the Bullet, released alongside Demetrius and the Gladiators last month, even though the label’s latest round of limited editions has already arrived!

As such, here’s a quick peak at the Twilight Time’s two latest Blu-ray releases - Désirée, from 20th Century Fox in 1954, and Bell, Book and Candle, from Columbia in 1958 – to tide you over until your humble host can sweat out the full reviews. As always, these are available exclusively through ScreenArchives.com and their Amazon storefront, and are reviewed from screeners graciously provided by Twilight Time.

Those disappointed with the overall fidelity of last month’s Demetrius and the Gladiators can rest easy with Twilight Time’s latest offering from Fox – the studio’s restoration of Désirée, lavishly produced in extra-wide 2.55:1 CinemaScope and DeLuxe color, is up to the same high standards set by Sony’s Picnic and Fox’s own The Egyptian. The film’s vintage anamorphic lensing (and some intentional diffusion besides) doesn’t lend itself to particularly sharp visuals, but the texture of it is quite impressive. Damage is minimal and, aside from the comparatively ragged DeLuxe transitions, this is a magnificent looking and naturally film-like presentation. Twilight Time seem to have standardized their technical approach to Blu-ray, but with the sort of specs that should be standardized rather than the corner-cutting measures that are all too frequent in the industry. The 1080p Mpeg-4 AVC image is encoded at a robust average bitrate of 33.2 Mbps, and artifacts are of no issue. Audio is strong and accurate to the original release, presented in DTS-HD MA 4.0 stereo, though as usual for TT’s Fox catalog releases there are no subtitles. Supplements are limited to an excellent isolated score track (in DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo), an original theatrical trailer (HD), and another essential set of liner notes by Julie Kirgo.

Sony’s recent restorations have all been at the top of their class and Bell, Book and Candle is no exception. The flat 1.85:1 image is every bit as precise as should be expected, with an appropriate level of detail, strong contrast, and an exceptionally rendered layer of film grain. Greens and reds show most prominently in Bell‘s Technicolor design, and are wonderfully saturated. The technical specs for the image are identical to those for Désirée - 1080p Mpeg-4 AVC-encoded at an average bitrate of 33.2 Mbps, and artifacts are so negligible as to go unnoticed. Audio is an unadorned DTS-HD MA 1.0 monophonic track that sounds very strong to these ears, and yes, optional English SDH subtitles are included. Supplements are a bit more robust this go around, and in addition to the expected isolated score (in DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo - George Duning’s score for this film is lovely stuff, and essential listening), theatrical trailer (HD), and booklet of liner notes by Julie Kirgo, the release also features two brief documentary subjects – Bewitched, Bothered and Beautiful (10 minutes, SD) and Reflections in the Middle of the Night (15 minutes, SD).

Those of you who have been following my other Twilight Time reviews know what to expect of the label by now – Désirée and Bell, Book and Candle are well in keeping with the sort of quality the label has come to be known for, and make for a wonderful start to their second year in business.

The Blu-ray screenshots for this article were gathered by the means that has become standard for this site – full resolution .png images were captured in Totem Movie Player, and compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 97% using the ImageMagick command line tool.


A Trip to the Moon – in color

March 29th, 2012 | article by | 4 Comments »
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The color restoration of A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la Lune) is available as a limited edition 2-disc (Blu-ray/DVD) Steelbook from Flicker Alley, and can also be purchased through Amazon.com.

Note (4/2/2012): In addition to the missing narration It has been noted by one person (both at the Blu-ray.com forums and in a comment to this article) that the Robert Israel score is out of sync on the black and white version of the film, but this is most certainly not the case on my Blu-ray. The sync is just fine in my copy, including the punctuation of the gun firing, the landing on the moon, and so on. The same has reported sync issues with The Astronomer’s Dream, a problem my disc is free from as well.

As a film, A Trip to the Moon should need no introduction. Arguably the best of the longer form stories to emerge from pioneer Georges Méliès’ prolific turn-of-the-century dream factory, A Trip to the Moon is both one of the earliest of literary adaptations for the screen (freely skimmed from Jules Verne’s 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon, as well as a contemporary stage production of the same, and H.G. Well’s The First Men in the Moon from 1901) and a proving ground for early on-screen special effects. Starring Méliès himself as a bearded professor, the 13 minute adventure concerns a group of astronomers and the fantastic things they encounter after being shot to the Moon in a massive shell. Told with thrilling momentum and boundless imagination, A Trip to the Moon still enchants as pure cinema even as it celebrates its one hundred and tenth year.

It’s impossible to overstate the amount of time and effort that went into restoring this color edition of A Trip to the Moon (the film was one of many that was made available both in original black and white and elaborate hand-colored editions), a process that stretched from 1999 to the premiere of the finished restoration at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. A labor of love elaborated upon at length in the 2011 documentary The Extraordinary Voyage (which is included in this dual format release), this hand-colored edition was painstakingly pieced together from a badly decomposed Spanish print (the reel was essentially a solidified puck when it arrived at the facilities of France’s Lobster Films) with its missing pieces compiled from the complete sections of various black and white prints. Even for such a brief film, no more than a few handfuls of shots all told, it was a truly monumental undertaking.

As exemplified by the comparison above, taken from The Extraordinary Voyage, the end result is impressive indeed – particularly when the extreme age and impossibly corrupted quality of the only available hand-colored source are taken into account. A Trip to the Moon has been given life anew, and the brazenly artificial color plays well into the similarly unbelievable design of the film itself.

Previously noted for their releases of such silent classics as Abel Gance’s La Roue and their DVD collections of Méliès’ short films, niche label Flicker Alley have now made the color restoration of A Trip to the Moon available for home consumption by way of an elegant limited edition Steelbook containing both Blu-ray and DVD presentations of the film and The Extraordinary Voyage.

Of all the classic cinema to make its way to Blu-ray thus far this may well be of the most historical importance, and Flicker Alley have done well by it in the video department. A Trip to the Moon is presented in both restored color and black and white here (1080p for each), and looks quite good in both instances. The color version flickers, shakes, and worse at times, but likely represents the best that could ever be expected from the materials at hand (that a near-solid chunk of century-old celluloid could be made watchable at all is, for lack of better words, miraculous). The black and white is similarly imperfect but improves upon the color version in terms of contrast and clarity. As with the color version I find it impossible to complain. A Trip to the Moon looks better in both editions than I’ve ever seen it look, allowing me to spot some details I’d never noticed before (like the outlandish faces made at points by the cast), and the texture of the more precise black and white edition is tremendous.

Both versions of A Trip to the Moon, The Extraordinary Voyage, and all of the disc’s supplements are housed on a single layer BD25 with reasonable success. The Mpeg-4 AVC-encoded video is set to an average bitrate of 17.6 Mbps throughout, but the image goes generally unperturbed by the digital artifacts expected from such a low figure. Zooming in revealed some minor blocking in the film texture, but nothing that distracted from my viewing. While I’d have appreciated higher average bitrates and a push to dual layer, what Flicker Alley have provided is perfectly satisfactory.

Blu-ray screenshots were taken as full resolution .png in Totem Movie Player, and compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 97% using the ImageMagick command line tool.

The one downfall of the presentation, strictly with regards to the color restoration, is the audio selection. As was no doubt contractually stipulated when Flicker Alley licensed the restoration for distribution, the only audio option for this version of the film is a new soundtrack composed by the French duo Air (presented in lossless DTS-HD 5.1). Derivative of a variety of popular artists and rarely, if ever, appropriate for the material in question, Air’s music is distracting at best and downright awful at worst.

The black and white version of A Trip to the Moon has its own audio troubles, though they’re blessedly of a more temporary nature. Due to a production error, the primary audio selection for the black and white feature – the original orchestral score by Roger Israel accompanied by the original English narration written by Méliès – does not actually include the narration. Flicker Alley have have been quick to address the issue and will be mastering new Blu-ray discs to resolve it (the DVD is unaffected). These discs will be sent out by request to customers who have purchased the package. You’ll find the “Disc Replacement Form” linked in towards the bottom of the company’s A Trip to the Moon page. Two other audio options are also included for the black and white feature – a ‘troupe of actors’ voicing various characters to piano accompaniment by Frederick Hodges, and lone Frederick Hodges piano accompaniment. The latter two options are presented in 16-bit LPCM 2.0, while the defective primary track is Dolby Digital 2.0 – each sounded just fine to these ears, missing narration notwithstanding. There are no subtitles.

Addendum 05/07/2012: Flicker Alley’s replacement Blu-ray disc arrived earlier today, and a quick look shows the narration is now present for the Black and White version (though some have complained that the Robert Israel score is out of sync, neither of my now two Blu-ray copies have that issue). In terms of overall specs the new disc appears identical to the original, and our with regards to the rest of the presentation still stand.

The supplemental package for the release is quite strong, though the primary supplement is arguably more a co-feature. The Extraordinary Voyage, a 66-minute documentary that tracks the ups and downs of George Méliès’ brief cinematic career and relates the details of the restoration of A Trip to the Moon, premiered alongside Méliès’ film at Cannes 2011 and it’s lovely to have here for home viewing. The documentary was produced in HD and is presented as such on this Blu-ray, with audio presented in DTS-HD 5.1. Far less interesting is a 10-minute interview with Air (HD, 16-bit LPCM 2.0) on their dubious contribution, in French with English subtitles.

Flicker Alley have also included two thematically appropriate films from Méliès. The first, and best, is The Astronomer’s Dream, a delightfully eccentric 3-minute piece that has a bearded astronomer tormented by both a devil and a gigantic carnivorous moon. Originally produced in 1898, The Astronomer’s Dream may be the oldest thing yet to hit Blu-ray. The second film, 1907′s The Eclipse: Courtship of the Sun and Moon, is indicative of Méliès in his waning years. Longer at 10 minutes, but not to any good purpose, the film has a professor and his students observing the eponymous Eclipse and other celestial phenomena. Both films are presented in 1080p HD, but are upscaled from standard definition transfers and present with the expected video artifacts (ghosting, aliasing). Despite this The Astronomer’s Dream looks perfectly presentable, while The Eclipse shows more of its SD video roots. Audio for each (musical accompaniment only) is presented in 16-bit LPCM 2.0.

The Astronomer's Dream

The Eclipse: Courtship of the Sun and Moon

Though the Steelbook phenomenon has never really caught on in the US, even those who dislike the format will have a hard time decrying Flicker Alley’s beautiful work. The G2 (standard Blu-ray packaging height) Steelbook comfortably houses both the Blu-ray and DVD as well as a booklet of film stills and notes excerpted from Gilles Duval and Séverine Wemaere’s book A Trip to the Moon Back in Color. The wonderful cover is based upon an illustration by Méliès himself, and ranks as one of the more attractive packaging designs I’ve ever encountered.

Flicker Alley’s Blu-ray / DVD issue of A Trip to the Moon isn’t perfect, but its many positives more than make up for its few shortcomings (the biggest of which – the missing narration on the black and white version – is in the process of being resolved). I’ve had the release pre-ordered since I first learned of it in mid-January, and even after two and a half months of anticipation I wasn’t disappointed. Méliès in HD may not be a necessary fixture on the average home video shelf (though it should be!), but if you have even a passing interest in cinema history then you owe it to yourself to pick this one up. Recommended.

The color restoration of A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la Lune) is available as a limited edition 2-disc (Blu-ray/DVD) Steelbook from Flicker Alley, and can also be purchased through Amazon.com.


Demetrius and the Gladiators

March 27th, 2012 | article by | No Comments »
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dir. Delmer Daves
1954 / 20th Century Fox / 102′
written by Philip Dunne
director of photography Milton R. Krasner
origianl music by Franz Waxman
starring Victor Mature, Susan Hayward, Michael Rennie, Debra Paget, Anne Bancroft, Jay Robinson, Barry Jones, and William Marshall
reviewed from a screener provided by Twilight Time
Demetrius and the Gladiators is available on Blu-ray from Twilight Time in a limited edition of 3000, and is offered exclusively through Screen Archives Entertainment and their Amazon storefront.

Pushed into production before The Robe had even wrapped by producers content with the likelihood of that film’s success but not with the thought of wasting its expensive dressings, the 1954 sequel Demetrius and the Gladiators is understandably a bit smaller and less refined than its epic progenitor, but that doesn’t keep it from being gobs more fun. Ostensibly a religious drama about the ebb and flow of one (very) early Christian’s faith in Caligula’s Rome, Demetrius punctuates its piety with hearty helpings of good old-fashioned violent spectacle – ‘gladiators’ isn’t in the title for nothing.

Demetrius and the Gladiators finds The Robe‘s eponymous artifact – the robe worn by Christ to Calvary - in the protective custody of that titular Demetrius (Victor Mature reprising his role from the previous film) while its chief protector, the apostle Peter (Michael Rennie in another carry-over role), is away on urgent church business. Unfortunately for Demetrius the increasingly mad Roman emperor Caligula (returning player Jay Robinson in a delightfully outrageous turn) wants the robe for himself, convinced that it possesses a power that will render him literally divine. It isn’t long before the Praetorian guard are knocking at Demetrius’ door, and when a scuffle with them turns violent the devout ex-slave finds himself involuntarily inducted into Strabo’s (Ernest Borgnine!) gladiatorial academy and destined for combat in the Emperor’s private arena. There he captures the fertile imagination of Messalina (Susan Hayward as a Code-friendly variation on the nymphomaniacal third wife of future Roman emperor Claudius), who finds perverse gratification in forcing the good Christian to fight against man and beast.

Demetrius’ devotion to peace and good will doesn’t last long, however. The presumed death of his potter girlfriend Lucia (Debra Paget, The Ten Commandments) at the hand of a fellow gladiator soon has the pectoral hunk renouncing his faith and slaughtering his co-combatants wholesale, much to the delight of Caligula and his Praetorian guard, who appoint him to their ranks as a tribune, as well as Messalina, with whom Demetrius begins an affair. Meanwhile Caligula goes madder, hallucinating that the gods are walking his palace’s halls and becoming increasingly paranoid of plots (both real and imagined) against him…

Limited to just a handful of admittedly gargantuan sets and over and done with in a sight less than two hours Demetrius and the Gladiators really can’t help but feel on the small side compared to its mega-produced big brother The Robe, but it’s a distinction that ultimately works in the film’s favor. Focusing on just a few of that previous film’s surviving players and adding but a handful more, Philip Dunne’s capable screenplay works perfectly well as entertainment even as its ramshackle contrivance becomes increasingly obvious. The obligatory religious dramatics are more a means to an end than anything else, and leave poor Demetrius to seem more than a little the flake – one moment he’s ready to die for his beliefs, the next he’s tearing through Caligula’s private arena with a sword in each hand. The degree of Demetrius’ faith seems wholly dependent on the fate of his girlfriend here – an odd turn to be sure for a character whose Christianity was previously affirmed by no less than witnessing the crucifixion first hand, but it does get the action moving towards the arena, an essential development for a film whose credits spell out THE GLADIATORS at a scale considerably larger than that granted its eponymous hero.

The Hays Code may have put the kibosh on any possibility of overt blood and gore, but Demetrius and the Gladiators still offers audiences plenty of lavish arena-bound action. The show-stopper, despite the obviousness of its artifice, may be Demetrius’ first go in the arena when, after surviving a round with the King of Cartoons (a young William Marshall as Glycon), Caligula orders that the tigers be loosed upon him. A skillful blend of composite effects and stunts with trained animals make the sequence a real thrill, even when the tigers inevitably end up appearing more friendly than threatening. With skilled stuntmen and fencing instructor Jean Heramans (Scaramouche) at his disposal, all-purpose director Delmer Daves (Dark Passage, 3:10 to Yuma) proves himself more than adept in delivering Demetrius‘ big-screen action set pieces. Though essentially bloodless (Demetrius typically finishes off his opponents by bopping them on the helmet, complete with a sanitized, meatless sound effect) the choreography and set-ups are quite good, particularly when Demetrius is in his revenge-fueled dual-bladed frenzy.

Demetrius and the Gladiators is rarely great film making, but it is never less than good enough. The wonderfully erratic work of Jay Robinson, whose Caligula slithers about his palace with cool, reptilian menace, and the bosom-heaving performance of Susan Hayward, tempting enough despite being but a shadow of the notorious historical Messalina, help to elevate the show beyond the cash-in ambitions of its producers, while the much maligned Wtf-Film favorite Victor Mature seems well at home in yet another religious epic (following his turns in Samson and Delilah, Androcles and the Lion, and The Robe). This is good stuff, provided you don’t take it too seriously, and essential viewing for sword and sandal buffs.

Whether due to deficiencies in the available source materials, the age of the HD transfer, or both, Demetrius and the Gladiators looks substantially weaker in its Blu-ray debut than either its predecessor The Robe or the impossibly vibrant The Egyptian - Fox’s other lavish CinemaScope religious epic from 1954. The presence of a variety of damage, ranging from minor dust and debris to larger blemishes and even a few nasty vertical scratches, indicates that at the very least Demetrius hasn’t been treated to the same level of restoration Fox has bestowed upon those other films. As such Demetrius offers perhaps the weakest HD video presentation yet for niche label Twilight Time, but I still found it an imminently watchable disc and easily the superior of past editions.

Presented at the appropriate extra-wide 2.55:1 aspect ratio, the 1080p transfer has a lower level of detail than even the limitations of early CinemaScope lenses can explain – a factor compounded by an especially course, unrefined grain structure (just compare the grain in the screenshots here to that of the DeLuxe CinemaScope The Egyptian or the Technicolor CinemaScope Picnic). While contrast is strong color saturation rarely follows suit, falling short of the sort of lushness Demetrius‘ original Technicolor prints would have exported and often lending the film a dusty, subdued appearance – the image also appears unnaturally dark and overly red to these eyes. Even with all that in mind the presentation still thoroughly trounces that of the older DVD edition (released a decade ago), and the imperfect image is free of any undue digital manipulations. Twilight Time provide their typically strong technical backing as well. The video is Mpeg-4 AVC-encoded at a healthy average bitrate of 33.2 Mbps, and the relatively short feature (at least by epic standards) stretches comfortably into dual layer territory.

Blu-ray screenshots were captured as full resolution .png in Totem Movie Player, and compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 97% using the ImageMagick command line tool.

Far less troublesome is the audio, which presents Demetrius and the Gladiators‘ original 4-track surround mix in lossless DTS-HD MA. The separation here is notable, and obviously intended for BIG theatrical projection – even the dialogue makes full use of the track’s right, left, and center channels. While the dialogue and sound effect sound as strong as can be expected from the vintage mix it’s Franz Waxman’s exhilarating score (which also incorporates themes adapted from Alfred Newman’s score for The Robe) that really wows. Waxman’s compositions are as essential Demetrius‘s epic style as its enormous sets and color CinemaScope photography, and I found his heroic opening melody bouncing about in my brain long after the imagery had faded. The only drawback on the audio front is, again, a lack of optional English subtitles. Fox’s own editions always come with a mix of them, and that they aren’t even providing Twilight Time with an SDH track is a crying shame.

Supplements are light, as expected (and advertised), with an original trailer (in SD) providing the only video extra. The only other supplement is of excellent stuff, however – Franz Waxman’s score, included as an isolated DTS-HD MA 2.0 track. The Film Score Monthly CD issue of the same is long out of print, and the importance of its addition here should not be understated. Twilight Time’s typically excellent packaging (which amusingly reverses the trend of giving the word “GLADIATORS” dominance over the name of the film’s hero) is again highlighted by a liner essay from the esteemed Julie Kirgo, who clearly has a ball discussing the film even screenwriter Philip Dunne labelled a “harebrained adventure”.

Demetrius and the Gladiators may be a harebrained adventure, but it wouldn’t have retained a quarter of its substantial appeal if it were anything else. Though loaded with compulsory attempts at evoking the pious gravitas of its predecessor Demetrius is ultimately all about seeing its eponymous hero break as many commandments as his test-of-faith (and the Code) will allow, and while the final product may never reach the dizzying heights of vintage DeMille-ian excess (Sign of the Cross this isn’t) it still offers plenty of that indelible old-Hollywood spectacle. For their part Twilight Time have offered another solid Blu-ray treatment, even if the HD materials leave something to be desired. Recommended, if for the keen lossless audio options alone.


Blu vs. Blu: Night of the Living Dead

March 21st, 2012 | article by | 3 Comments »
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A couple of notes before starting. Firstly, this is strictly to be a comparison of the two most readily available Blu-ray editions for George A. Romero’s 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead - a film that’s been scaring the hell out of me since I was in grade school. For those interested in my thoughts on the film itself, this article should do the trick.

Second, I had hoped to cover the domestic Forgotten Films Blu-ray release of the film as well, but the $17+shipping asking price at Amazon is just too rich for my blood given a company with zero reputation and a product that is almost destined to fall below my standards (even for a low budget horror nearly 45 years old). If anyone out there has a copy they wouldn’t mind lending out for a few days I’d be happy to include coverage of it here. Otherwise I’ll post about it when I get around to it, but given the money I already have tied up in pre-orders that’s not likely to be anytime soon.

Third, this article may become a bit more involved than my usual Blu-ray coverage, and to prevent any confusion as to which edition I’m discussing the discs will be referred to, in bold, by the name of the company that released them: Network and Optimum for the two Blu-rays, and with reference to past DVD editions, Dimension (40th Anniversary Edition) and Elite (Millennium Edition).

Now, onto the details of the two discs to be reviewed:

Optimum Home Entertainment
UK / BD-25 / 01:35:52
video: 1080p / 4:3 / black and white
audio: English / DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono
no subtitles / Region B-locked
supplement: One for the Fire documentary
available for purchase through Amazon UK
Network
UK / BD-25 / 01:35:12
video: 1080p / 4:3 / black and white
audio: English / 16-bit LPCM 2.0 Mono
no subtitles / All Region Compatible
supplemnt: Original Trailer (HD)
available for purchase through Amazon UK

 

First things first – let’s talk about sources. The Optimum Blu-ray of Night of the Living Dead is sourced from the very same high definition master that was struck for Dimension‘s 40th Anniversary Edition DVD in 2008 (the Elite Millennium Edition DVD, by contrast, was authored from the SD master that company had originally prepared for Laserdisc and VHS issue in the 1990s). The 2008 master is sourced from the original 35mm negatives, as was the earlier Elite master. The 2008 master used by Optimum has also been sourced for Blu-ray releases in Japan, France, Spain and elsewhere.

The Network Blu-ray, by contrast, is sourced from a new proprietary HD master struck from a 35mm theatrical release print, and features a super-imposed credit for Movielab (one of the producers of prints for the film’s initial theatrical runs) in the opening titles. No other disc that I’m aware of is sourced from Network‘s master. Interestingly, though both the Optimum and Network editions are framed at the proper 1.33:1, the latter offers substantially more information on all sides of the frame in comparison to the former. This appears to be a result of zooming of the Dimension master at the transfer level (that company’s DVD is framed in the same manner), and is not indicative of manipulation on Optimum‘s part.

For those familiar with the Dimension DVD’s precise presentation (tight framing aside), the Optimum Blu-ray offers much the same, only with the expected uptick in clarity and detail. Textures are quite impressive, from the wood grain in the comparison above to the thread patterns of clothes and furniture to the subtle details of human flesh (un-dead and otherwise). Damage is at low levels throughout, though the minor scratches and speckling of the source elements are more readily noticeable in this HD iteration. Contrast is at healthy levels throughout, with a nice array of gray tones, with only a bit of posterization here and there to distract. A fine grain is in evidence throughout, and soundly rendered by the Mpeg-4 AVC video encode (at an average bitrate of 20.6 Mbps). The image maintains its filmic quality even on close inspection (zooming in 3-4x) with negligible encoding artifacts. Most importantly, Optimum‘s presentation is fully uncut, running just under 96 minutes with no missing footage (save for the final shot, but more on that in a moment).

Network‘s presentation is another beast all together, but I’m not totally averse to it. I grew up watching Night of the Living Dead from copies sourced from the same blown-out Movielab-produced theatrical elements as are utilized here, so the presentation tickles the nostalgic corners of my brain in the best of ways. This applies especially to the film’s unsettling closing credits sequence, which is rendered here just as it was theatrically (with the unfortunate omission of the final “The End” closing card). In all three of the other editions referenced here, and all of the other editions sourced from those same transfers, the zoomed-in still of a lit torch fades to black, before either cutting or fading to the final shot of the bonfire. The Dimension transfer gets things particularly wrong on this front, fading into this final shot a second or more later than it should. The Network transfer preserves the theatrical ending, with the screen flaring white as the torch still is “lit” and cutting to the shot of the bonfire lighting.

  

Still, one can’t let nostalgia get in the way of objectivity, and with the exception of the closing editing and the correct framing Network‘s presentation is, by virtue of its source alone, the inferior of Optimum‘s. Detail and textures remain at higher levels than SD can muster, but are mitigated by the blown-out contrast of the Movielab source print. The shadows are frightfully intense, and light areas of the frame can really blaze – fine detail is frequently lost to both. To be fair, this is exactly as I recall these theatrical prints looking, but for consumers of modern HD transfers, which typically harvest from the OCN, interpositive, or internegative, this appearance may come as quite a shock. Damage is considerable, from dust, dirt, and speckling to prominent vertical scratching (both black and white, meaning that at least some of this was printed right in). There is even some persistent emulsion bubbling towards the top center of the frame, further evidence of just how much care (not much) was taken by Movielab in minting the print to begin with.

This biggest issue with Network‘s presentation, however, is the amount of footage that’s missing (a little more than half a minute). Some of it amounts to a few frames lost to splices here and there, as at the end of the opening “An Image Ten Production” credit, though more substantial losses are also evident (a long shot of the truck driving through the zombie horde is cut quite short), particularly around the reel changes (as is the case with the late-film dialogue scene concerning Barbara’s crashed car, which is missing several lines). These Movielab prints have always been splicy, and I’d wager that most if not all of the ones that still exist are now incomplete, but it wouldn’t have been that much trouble to restore the more substantial losses from alternative sources. Indeed, I suspect Network may well have compounded the issue by removing some of the more excessively damaged frames outright – there’s not a reel change marker or splice to be seen, but the footage associated with them also appears to be gone.

Grain is at low levels, either by virtue of the multi-generation source or mitigation efforts on the part of Network, but the end result didn’t appear overly waxy or digital to these eyes (as is often the case with their HD masters of The Prisoner television series). Unfortunately the Mpeg-4 AVC video encode is of lesser stuff than Optimum‘s, and while the bitrate is only slightly lower (19.6 Mbps on average) artifacting is much more noticeable. It’s not to the point that it ever really distracted from my viewings, but it is there, and the larger you screen the disc the more obvious it will be.

Note: The screenshot comparison for this article is rather big, so I’ve opted to move it to the end of the text instead of its usual place here.

With regards to audio, the Optimum release is mastered from the better source and, as should be expected, sounds quite good in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0 monophonic English. Dialogue has always been pretty flat throughout this film, a limitation of the original production, but the looped library music has some nice punch at times. Network‘s edition sounds better than I expected in 16-bit LPCM 2.0 monophonic English, but is hindered by the limitations of both the production and the multi-generational source print. The loop score can still sound strong at times, but the track is thinner overall, and the pop and crackle expected of old theatrical prints can be heard at times. That said, the phasing issues that have plagued past Network audio restorations (Things to Come, The Prisoner) are blessedly absent. Neither disc offers subtitles, SDH or otherwise.

Neither release offers much of anything on the supplemental front either. Die-hard Night of the Living Dead fans no doubt already own the feature-length One For the Fire documentary, which was produced for the Dimension DVD in 2008 and amounts to the whole of the Optimum supplemental package. Network eschews anything substantial, but does offer a fresh 1080p transfer of the very rough, very high contrast theatrical trailer for the film. Network may win over on the packaging front, with an awesome original cover design and a style-consistent chapter listing on the interior side of the insert, but Optimum earn props for sticking by the excellent original poster work (They Won’t Stay Dead!). In terms of price each is quite affordable, with the the cost of import to the US (through Amazon UK) running roughly $15 for the Optimum Blu-ray and a slightly lower $13 for the more rustic Network, standard shipping included, at the time of this writing.

In the end I suspect it’s regional playback limitations that will decide for most of you – the Optimum is locked to Region B, while the Network is all-region compatible. For the rest I present the screenshot comparison below. For my part, I bought both, and am happy with each on their own merits. Anything beyond that is up to your personal preferences.

Blu-ray screenshots were taken as full 1920×1080 resolution .png in Totem Movie Player, and compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 97% using the ImageMagick command line tool.

Optimum Home Entertainment Blu-ray | Network Blu-ray

Select the appropriate cover below to purchase the respective edition:

 


Hammer Definition: Dracula Prince of Darkness

March 10th, 2012 | article by | 1 Comment »
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It’s safe to say that the Hammer faithful (myself included) were all around thrilled when Quatermass and the Pit arrived on Blu-ray from Optimum as one of the best catalog releases of recent memory, and those same faithful were no doubt hoping for more of the same from the re-branded Studio Canal’s double-play issue of Terrance Fischer’s Dracula Prince of Darkness - released last week in Region B and readily available through Amazon.co.uk (NOTE: Amazon UK appear to have pulled their listing  entirely for the time being, while the British Video Association currently lists the release as “Pulled from Schedule”. I assume the disc has been recalled due to the widely reported audio problems). Unfortunately it was not to be. That’s not to say Dracula Prince of Darkness is a total disaster, but it’s certainly a major disappointment.

On the positive side of things Dracula Prince of Darkness underwent considerable restoration at Pinewood Studios in advance of its high definition home video debut, a process that began with a fresh 2k scan from the original 2-perf Techniscope negative. No end of physical damage, from minor dirt and specks to ungainly vertical scratches and splice marks, has been cleared from the image, and though some minor marks remain scattered throughout the ravages of time (nearly 50 years) have effectively been erased.

Color reproduction has likewise been improved from the faded original elements, and while it never reaches the depth of saturation of a vintage Technicolor release print it certainly doesn’t look bad either. Exteriors, frequently filtered as day-for-night, fare the worst, appearing overly cool and presenting with a notable green tinge. Interior photography can appear quite lush by contrast, with warmer flesh tones all around, and that quintessential Kensington gore is remarkably vivid. While I’d have preferred more of a boost in contrast the black levels here look quite accurate with one notable exception – a brief snippet beginning at 01:16:20 in which the image fades strangely flat, even in the letterboxing, for a few seconds (just for the duration of that one shot). I’ve included a sample below, and the difference should be obvious when compared to the other screenshots provided.

In addition to improving upon the color and contrast and restoring a great share of the damage the materials had accrued over four-and-a-half decades, Pinewood have regrettably opted to soften the substantial grain of the 2-perf Techniscope photography through an excessive application of digital noise reduction. It’s the film’s pre-credits sequence, footage from Fischer’s earlier Horror of Dracula framed in billowing fog, that shows this manipulation the most, having been scrubbed of any hint of finer detail or palpable film texture. While the rest of the film improves markedly from there, the over-application of DNR remains readily apparent. Grain is still evident in the background, though its well-defined edges have been softened away to no good end. Detail, particularly at the level of flesh or material texture, suffers as a result, though remains at more refined levels than SD video could support.

Though the numbers appear to show an acceptable technical backing for the feature I found them rather misleading, as the VC-1 video encode (at a perfectly sound average bitrate of 29.4 Mbps) just doesn’t support the visuals to the degree it should. The trouble here is artifacting, pure and simple, and while the image looks acceptable in motion a cursory examination reveals any number of ugly digital blemishes tinkering about in the background. Skies and interior walls prove particularly bothersome – take a look at the room behind vampire Shelley in screenshot number 013 for a prime example – and the acceptability of their rendering will depend directly on just how large a scale you intend to view the film.

Otherwise, the image is properly framed at 2.36:1 and presented in a universally accessible 1080p. While it never looks like film it does have some stronger moments on all fronts (like the close-up on Count Dracula’s bloodshot eyes), as the included screenshots should relate. Whether or not it is good enough for your personal taste will be a matter of just that, but it’s worth noting that this is likely as good as Dracula Prince of Darkness will look for some time.

Blu-ray screenshots were taken as full resolution 1920×1080 .png in Totem Movie Player, and compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 97% using the Image Magick command line tool.

Comparison DVD screenshots were captured as full resolution .png in VLC Media Player, and compressed to .jpg using the same technique as above. In the case of the upscaled samples, DVD screenshots were upscaled to 1920×1080 resolution in GIMP, saved to .png at the highest quality settings, then compressed to .jpg using the method previously described.

The below three sets of screenshots directly compare the Blu-ray and DVD editions included in this double-play package. Both are sourced from the same high definition restoration, though the superiority of the high def iteration (particularly with regards to detail and breadth of color) should be obvious. DVD screenshots have been included both at native and upscaled 1920×1080 resolution for sake of comparison. DVD images (native, then upscaled) appear first, followed by the Blu-ray. Frame matches are exact.

Additional Blu-ray Screenshots:

Initial pressings of Dracula Prince of Darkness - both DVD and Blu-ray – present with a few notable audio synchronization errors, beginning with the pre-credits montage of Peter Cushing doing battle with Christopher Lee. I would make more of this, but Studio Canal has already announced a replacement program that should effectively settle the issue. I’ve already put in for my replacement discs, and will update this review when they arrive.

Other than that, there is nothing to complain about with regards to Dracula Prince of Darkness‘ audio presentation. The original monophonic mix is reproduced by way of a lossless 16-bit LPCM 2.0 track that sounded very good to these ears, with the late great James Bernard’s classic Dracula theme (rehashed from his work on the earlier Horror of Dracula) coming through loud and clear. There is some reasonable depth at times, particularly during a late film horse chase, but don’t set expectations for this near-50 year old mix too high. It sound crisp, clear, and intelligible throughout, with a few robust moments in between, and I can’t ask for more than that. The feature is accompanied by a nice set of optional English SDH subtitles.

Though the feature presentation is problematic the supplemental package (duplicated across both the Blu-ray and DVD, albeit all in PAL SD for the latter) is quite strong, and dominated by a new half-hour documentary in HD – Back to Black: The Making of Dracula Prince of Darkness, which includes interviews with stars Barbara Shelley and Francis Matthews, various Hammer historians, and the esteemed Mark Gatiss (of The League of Gentlemen fame). Otherwise the majority of what’s here is old stuff, though its inclusion is certainly appreciated. In addition to a feature commentary with Christopher Lee, Suzan Farmer, Francis Matthews, and Barbara Shelley, the release offers a The World of Hammer episode on star Christopher Lee (24 minutes, PAL SD), behind the scenes 8mm footage with commentary from Lee, Farmer, Shelley, and Matthews (8 minutes, PAL SD), the original theatrical trailer (2 minutes, HD), a double bill trailer for Dracula Prince of Darkness and Frankenstein Created Woman (36 seconds, HD), the original US and UK opening titles* (only the opening company logos, HD), and a brief restoration demonstration (4 minutes, HD).

A robust slate of supplemental content and one of the best cover designs I’ve ever seen (I was amused to no end to find one of the censor stamps placed dead-center of Barbara Shelley’s cleavage) can’t hide the fact that the Dracula Prince of Darkness Blu-ray / DVD double-play offers a seriously flawed feature presentation. That said, it’s still the best the film has ever looked on video, though its level of acceptability will be up to the personal preferences of the fans. For me it does the job, if only just (and I think even that’s giving it more leeway than I honestly should). Here’s hoping that the restorations of The Reptile and The Plague of the Zombies are handled more responsibly.

*For the feature the UK opening company titles were digitally recreated (and quite well). The supplements feature the original UK opening company titles as sourced from a very rough 35mm theatrical print.


Dracula Prince of Darkness-star Christopher Lee, with producer Anthony Nelson Keys. Taken from the on-disc documentary Back to Black.

I thought we were an autonomous collective…

March 8th, 2012 | article by | No Comments »
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No film review to be seen here, kids, just my thoughts on the long-awaited Sony Pictures blu-ray of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, released Tuesday and presently available everywhere worth shopping (if you’re feeling especially charitable Amazon does swing a decent commission Wtf-Film’s way). For the moment I’ll not bother with the usual is-it or isn’t-it worth the upgrade arguments. Suffice to say, do you know how you can tell this release is a king?

Unlike the larger part of what I cover here I’ve actually had the opportunity to see Monty Python and the Holy Grail on the big screen, and from a well-maintained 35mm print to boot. This latest home video iteration compares to that screening very favorably, improving upon it a few steps in terms of clarity and cleanliness while preserving the crude aesthetic inherent to the production.

Presented at a spacious 1.66:1, noticeably more open than past domestic editions and in keeping with how the film would have been projected in its native England, Grail looks as splendid as I imagine possible in its high definition debut. The quality of the photography varies dramatically from scene to scene and often shot to shot – some of the footage (the scene with “a famous historian” for example) looks no better than blown-up 16mm, or worse, though there are certainly some lovelier moments about. Likewise, grain has always been on the heavier side for the production, which was filmed largely on location and with natural light. For its part Sony’s transfer has captured it all, and with precision to spare – those who know how the film should look will be thrilled.

Per the norm for recent Sony restorations, the excessive grain goes unperturbed by excessive digital video noise reduction while detail is allowed to fend for itself (I’m still surprised at how prevalent edge enhancement is on HD video, and Sony is to be commended for avoiding the practice). The end result is an image that looks wholly natural on those terms, and with healthy color and contrast to match. The video is Mpeg-4 AVC encoded at a slightly depressed average bitrate of 25.0 Mbps, but I’m hard pressed to find quarrel with it. Any encoding deficiencies were so negligible as to go unnoticed in my normal viewing, and I noted nothing at all untoward in my usual up-close inspection.

Given the problems that crop up in Sony’s earlier Monty Python’s Life of Brian (in which the grain frequently seems to suspend itself over the image to no good end) I was very pleased to see how Monty Python and the Holy Grail presented on Blu-ray. This looks exactly as it should, and I can’t ask for more.

Screenshots were taken as full resolution 1920×1080 .png in Totem Movie Player, and compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 97% using the Image Magick command line tool.

Audio receives a considerable boost courtesy of a lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 English surround mix that’s honestly just too robust for this viewer, though it was lovely to hear the film’s soundtrack sounding so good after all these years. There’s some decent separation and I didn’t notice any obnoxious new foley work, but I suspect I’ll rely on the more familiar old monophonic mix (unfortunately only provided in lossy Dolby Digital 2.0) in future viewings. This all region disc comes with a decent array of dub options – French, Japanese, and Portuguese (all in lossy Dolby Digital 5.1) – and a host of optional subtitles – English, English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Thai. While I’d have appreciated a lossless monophonic encode a la Twilight Time’s releases from the Sony catalog I’m hard-pressed to find any genuine complaints here.

Supplements carry over quite a bit, though not all, of what was included with the 2-disc Special Edition DVD package from 2001. You get two feature commentary tracks (one with co-directors Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam, the other with stars Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and John Cleese), The Quest for the Holy Grail Locations (47 minutes, SD), LEGO Knights of the Round Table (1:43, SD), two subtitled scenes from the Japanese Version (8 minutes, SD), How to Use Your Coconuts (3 minutes, SD), BBC Film Night (17 minutes, SD), the US re-release trailer from 2001 (3 minutes, HD), a cast directory photo gallery, previews for other releases (including Not the Messiah: He’s a Very Naughty Boy), and Blu-ray production credits. New to the mix, and by far the most exciting, are two collections of unused material – Lost Animation (12 minutes, HD) introduced at length by Terry Gilliam, and Outtakes & Extended Scenes  (18 minutes, HD) introduced by Terry Jones. Less useful, at least for this Linux-faithful PC devotee, is The Holy Book of Days Second Screen option, an iPad app that’s supposed to sync with your Blu-ray player and offer all manner of behind the scenes stuff. This went untested in my viewing, for obvious reasons, and I can’t see myself shelling out $400-$500 for the privilege any time soon. The disc is BD-Live enabled, which netted me adverts for The Smurfs and The Zookeeper (*shudder*) though not much else.

The exclusivity of The Holy Book of Days Second Screen thingamajig is disappointing, but I’ll live. Ultimately this is all about the presentation of the film itself, and on that count Sony have scored big. Add to that the previously unseen HD outtakes and unused animation and you have a Blu-ray release that’s worth every penny of the less-than-$16 most retailers are asking for it. Highly recommended!


Twilight Time: Swamp Water

March 1st, 2012 | article by | No Comments »
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Swamp Water is available on Blu-ray from Twilight Time in a limited edition of 3000, and is offered exclusively through Screen Archives Entertainment and their Amazon storefront.

Dana Andrews goes looking for Trouble (with a capital “T”) and finds it deep in the Okefenokee in 1941′s Swamp Water, expat director Jean Renoir’s first American film and his only for Darryl F. Zanuck’s 20th Century Fox. When his appropriately-named hound goes missing in the 440-thousand acre swampland Ben (Andrews, looking uncharacteristically youthful in the second year of his career) makes up his mind to find him. What he tracks down instead is wrongly-convicted murderer Tom Keefer (Walter Brennan), scrounging a living for himself in the Okefenokee five years after his escape from the law.

Though at first confrontational, Ben soon strikes up an unlikely alliance with Keefer, and takes to trapping in the Okefenokee as a means of supporting himself and Keefer’s daughter Julie (a wonderful, feral Anne Baxter), whom Ben takes to courting after falling out of favor with town belle Mabel (Virginia Gilmore, who would co-star with Andrews in the following year’s Berlin Correspondent). It isn’t long, however, before his attention to Julie and trapping success in the swamp lead the townspeople to suspect that Ben is in cahoots with the murderer-on-the-run, and when Ben fails to tell them of his whereabouts (after a bit of backwoods waterboarding) he finds himself ostracized by all but his kindly stepmother Mrs. Hannah (Mary Howard) and rough-edged father Thursday (Walter Huston).

Adapted by Dudley Nichols (Stagecoach) from Vereen Bell’s eponymous tale of small-town injustice, Swamp Water is ripe with studio influence (from the casting of Ford stock players like Brennan, John Carradine, and Russell Simpson to the post-production concoction of a conventionally happy Hollywood ending) yet manages, in spite of it all, to remain uniquely Renoir’s. The film is marked by his long, uninterrupted takes and fluid photographic direction (dual DP’s J. Peverell Marley, House of Wax, and Lucien Ballard, True Grit, lens the show beautifully), and his location shooting in the Okefenokee Swamp, limited by Zanuck to just a handful of crew and star Dana Andrews, takes on a fantastical and mythic quality. As the philosophical Keefer ruminates, “Living alone in this swamp is just like living on another star.” Indeed, Swamp Water presents its star location in a manner that’s appropriately other-worldly, rendering small and insignificant the human characters who dare wander among its ancient mangroves and treacherous peat bogs.

In line with its mythical presentation (its borders are grimly marked by a submerged cross topped with a human skull) the primordial landscape pulls double duty as both a purgatory for the unjustly hunted Tom Keefer and a hell for those ultimately discovered to have committed the murder for which he was convicted. When the real murderers show themselves, intent on stopping Ben and Keefer before they can share the truth with rotund Sheriff McKane (Friar Tuck himself, the great Eugene Pallette), the swamp rises as a formidable deliverer of cosmic justice, devouring one of the guilty men outright. The other, in a satisfying twist of fate, is condemned to troll its cottonmouth and gator-infested wilds forever with the knowledge that nothing but a hangman’s noose awaits them on the outside.

Beyond its central tale of cold injustice and righteous retribution, Swamp Water also offers its share of enduring human developments. Huston is as fantastic as ever as Thursday, evolving from a hard-hearted authority figure, determined to keep his head-strong (or as he says, “butt-headed”) son under his thumb, into a caring, understanding father when Ben is really put in harm’s way. The beautiful Anne Baxter blossoms as Julie, shedding the skin of a ragged social outcast with a moonlit dance both joyous and elegant, and made all the more so by contrast to the awkwardness that came before. Walter Brennan bolsters the fantastical undertone of the piece in rising from the sure-death of a cottonmouth bite, rendering Ben’s funeral arrangements blessedly unnecessary. Consequently, Ben’s eulogy (necessary or not) makes for one of the film’s most sincere and touching moments. “I ain’t gonna hold nothing against him, Lord, not even his trying to steal old Trouble. So if you want to go easy on him for killing Jim Collins it’ll be alright with me.”

Swamp Water has been released in numerous other territories on DVD, but this limited edition Blu-ray from Twilight Time (just 3,000 pressed, the norm for the label) marks its domestic premiere on digital video. There aren’t nearly enough of these classic Academy ratio black and white productions out in high definition for my tastes, but Twilight Time’s presentation of Swamp Water (sourced from the latest 20th Century Fox restoration of the film) can stand toe-to-toe with the best of them.

The worst that can be said for the film as presented here is that it sometimes shows its age (can it really be 71 years?), presenting with mostly frame-specific specs and scratches, but occasionally leaving a few more persistent vertical lines to contend with. That said, this is an absolutely beautiful transfer, with as fine a clarity of detail as can be expected of the production and pitch-perfect contrast throughout. There’s a fine layer of grain in evidence, and rendered well enough that it holds its own even at excessive magnification (with the image zoomed in 4-5x its native resolution). That one-of-a-kind 35mm allure is alive and well here, and makes for a tremendously satisfying viewing.

With just the 90 minute feature and its accompanying audio tracks to contend with Swamp Water only occupies a single layer BD-25, but this proves to be more than enough. The 1080p 1.33:1-framed image receives a healthy Mpeg-4 AVC encode at an average bitrate of 29.4 Mbps, and the results are impossible to argue with. Encoding flaws, if any, are so negligible as to go unnoticed, and I suspect the image could be presented theatrically without issue. This is another reference level presentation from Twilight Time and 20th Century Fox, and it just doesn’t get any better than that.

Screenshots were captured as full 1920×1080 resolution .png in Totem Movie Player, and compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 97% using the ImageMagick command line tool.

Audio is presented in lossless DTS-HD MA 1.0 monophonic, and while it doesn’t impress so much as the visuals of the film it sounds perfectly accurate to the original recording. Sound effects and dialogue are clear as a bell – the odd element out is, strangely enough, the score from David Buttolph, which presents with a notable warble at times. The disc’s only supplement, an isolated score track in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0, does not present with this issue, and sounds very good given the age of the recordings (pre-cue noise, like band members coughing and the cue number being read, has been delightfully retained in some cases). Unfortunately there are no subtitles, making it clear again that Sony are providing sub tracks for these Twilight Time discs while Fox are, for whatever reason, not.

Swamp Water is another fully-functional Blu-ray disc, complete with non-generic chapter stops (12 of them) and a pop-up menu accessible during feature playback. In terms of design this may be my favorite yet of Twilight Time’s releases, with a superb cover illustration that reflects the film’s indelible first shot. Julie Kirgo’s liner notes again prove indispensable. Several insightful quotes from Renoir himself are included, along with some lovely behind-the-scenes production stills of the director at work with his top-flight cast.

What can I say, I loved Swamp Water, from its ominous opening shot straight through to its somewhat dubious conclusion. Huston, Andrews, Baxter, and Brennan are each in top form, and Renoir’s touch is unmistakable. There’s very, very little to complain about with Twilight Time’s Blu-ray presentation, which ranks as one of my favorite classic film releases of the year thus far. Highly recommended!


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