Kentai's Films

Riki-Oh's Last Story

2012-01-29T15:15:00.001-05:00

Before I talk about the disc under review, I need to point out that I was lucky enough to catch a double feature of Yuen Woo-Ping's Drunken Tai Chi and Man Kei-Chin's The Eternal Evil of Asia. It was a fantastic experience on a lot of levels, and it's the first time I got to see a pair of "real" vintage 35mm Hong Kong prints, the former courtesy of The Alamo Drafthouse and the latter Grindhouse Releasing. Come as I have to loathe theaters and long as I might to throw every cent I can at Blu-ray for bringing the experience home, this night on the town reminds me that Blu-ray and 35mm are still completely different animals. It's nice to have that occasional reminder that film prints, despite their emulsion scarring and distorted audio sync and weird wet-gate printing mishaps, don't look like digitized monstrosities or pits of grainy analog death; in the right hands, even an ugly print can be beautiful. And boy, is that the only way to describe that Wong Jing produced B-picture...

It's with the flickering images of actual vintage Hong Kong prints fresh in my memory that I'd like to discuss Media Blasters' release of THE STORY OF RICKY/力王, better known to fans of over the top Japanese pop-culture as "Riki-Oh". Based on the somewhat snide Hokuto no Ken knock-off of the same name, the epic struggle between violence and common sense sits somewhere between Braindead, Cool Hand Luke and Fist of Fury, fusing extreme vengeance with absurd adolescent machismo as a marches into a privatized prison with a half-dozen bullets lodged in his chest to uses his super powered martial arts to take down corruption from the one place designed to correct it. Gorier than all of the 80s horror films put together, zanier than an episode of Tom and Jerry, and more action packed than your mom's ass, this is one of those films that you just biologically have to enjoy or you're broken, somehow. If after saturating yourself in the world of Ricky for 90 minutes you can somehow walk away and spout out something lame like "Sorry lad, but I didn't care for Story of Ricky... but have you seen Raise the Red Lantern? Jolly good show, that." is just the sort of thing you should get punched on the end of your dick for. I'm fucking serious; if you can't wallow in the film's shameless, ludicrous, and brilliant 12-year-old-with-a-red-market excess for the base and brilliant exploitation that it is, I fear that we can never actually be friends... and yeah, I do kind of like Raise the Red Lantern. But that fact becomes irrelevant when we're talking about movies where a dude punches through another dude and we're only like 6 minutes in.

Media Blasters has had a spotty record on Blu-ray, with some titles nearing perfection and others being an extended joke with a full retail price, including Versus and Burial Ground and that early, awful SD upscale of Ichi the Killer. but some of them, like those Queen's Blade and 12 Kingdoms sets, are actually pretty great! So, let's just see how The Story of Ricky turned out with a few--

Media Blasters and Fortune Star, working together...

Did you really expect anything better?

Media Blasters' claims this is a "New High Definition Tranfer". It's 'New' in that it's new to North America, but it's clearly the same materials that Fortune Star used for their remastered DVD back in 2008. And it's "High Definition" in the sense that... well, actually it's not. Not at all. It's a just straight up 480i-to-1080p upscale of a goddamn Digibeta. It's technically encoded at 1080p at a crazy-high bitrate that seems to never dip below 40 Mb/s, but it doesn't fucking matter. They're polishing silver on the Titanic here; the source material is borderline acceptable for a DVD, and by the dint of its crazy-huge filesize it doesn't have the compression issues an SD MPEG-2 stream has... but it's still an upscale. Of a film that Fortune Star did a brand new scan for just four years ago, so I don't want anyone to even postulate that the materials might have been "lost" in the interim. They're sitting in a vault in Hong Kong, and neither Fortune Star nor Media Blasters was willing to create a new print and have that transferred in HD. If you, dear friends, think any of these images look like they might be sourced from a scan with more than 525 analog lines of resolution, I honestly have nothing more to say.

To the discs credit, I guess it does lack the nasty, garish DVNR artifacts found on the Fortune Star DVD, and the audio is lossless all the way down the line. English and Cantonese are available in 5.1 and 2.0 options, with Mandarin getting only a 2.0 mix (presumably a dual-channel mono). English subtitles are removable, and I haven't bothered to check if there are any audio issues or subtitle gaffes; I assume everything's fine, but after 5 minutes of spot checking and realizing what a piece of shit I had on my hands, that was all I could stomach. As was true of the Fortune Star DVD before it, the film appears to be uncut, framed at 1.78 and given a reasonably consistent, neutral color timing without the heavy saturation push found on the Hong Kong Legends DVD of yesteryear. Contrast looks a little too hot for my tastes, but it's rarely to the point where the transfer looks offensive (or any moreso than it always does). There's some edge enhancement visible at all times, and it's made the low-resolution film grain stick out like a sore thumb, but with the only two noteworthy transfers this film has had being made by Fortune Star and Hong Kong Legends, this release will perhaps forever rank as the best looking and sounding release of The Story of Ricky... if only by default.

The cover promises a brand new roundtable discussion about Story of Ricky with the Hobo with a Shotgun crew - namely director Jason Eisener, producer Rob Cotteril and cinematographer Karim Hussain, but this feature is nowhere to be found on the disc - I opened every video file in Media Player Classic, just to make sure some dope didn't accidentally forget to link to it from the menu. Instead all we get is a 2 minute introduction in which Eisener talks about how much he loves the film whilst the cameraman (likely Hussain) punches him in the face. It's cute, I guess, but nothing to get excited for. You also get both English and Cantonese language trailers and a 20 minute interview with the film's protagonist Fan Siu Wong that's appeared on the Fortune Star DVD prior... I think this was recorded for the Hong Kong Legends UK DVD, but I'm honestly not certain. The Hong Kong Legends DVD has a legendarily informative commentary with Hong Kong film expert Bey Logan, and when Sirabella first started talking about this film a year ago he said he was going to license it from them... clearly that never happened, and never having bought that decade old UK import for myself, I'm disappointed on a solely personal level.

Bottom line here is painfully simple: THIS BLU-RAY SUCKS. I once more gave Media Blasters the benefit of the doubt after having called a few of their crumbier looking titles upscales without having seen the discs in full... I've apologized, and perhaps even repented for those knee-jerk reactions, and under the circumstances still don't think they were totally inappropriate. But this time, there is no sharp print damage of optical titles to sway my opinion, and the Downscale-Upscale test results haven't caused any notable differences at DVD resolution. (I've posted examples elsewhere, so why bother repeating myself?)

I'd honestly love for John Sirabella to show up and spout off a bunch of crap about how I don't know what I'm talking about, but I'm not convinced he has the stones to right now: He just fired 60% of his own staff and his distribution chain is so fucked after having pushed back the release date of virtually every single BD he's ever announced that you can't even buy Riki-Oh from Best Buy or Amazon! Media Blasters has dug its own mass grave, and while Sirabella's managed to crawl up the sides many times before, I honestly don't know what tricks up his sleeve he's got left. If this is his master plan, the company deserves to sell only a couple hundred copies of every title. They entered the Blu-ray market with a gnarly looking upscale in Ichi the Killer, and if they leave on a second SD sourced title I can't say I'll shed a single tear. This will be the last time I play the guineapig and buy a Media Blasters title without screencaps being available, and frankly any incentive I may have had to "support the industry" when this pile of dogshit is the respect we as consumers expect has all but evaporated.

I can occasionally forgive a fuckup - a dual channel mono that's supposed to be stereo, a few missing subtitles, a second or two of misplaced reel-change footage or what have you, depending upon the circumstances... but this? Hell no. Fuck you, John Sirabella. Fuck you and every day you've stumbled through this industry and survived when companies that actually gave a crap about films went by the wayside. This is a bag of bullshit with a $20 price tag, and you can't even use the "it'll never happen again, honest!" defense because you already did that over Ichi the Killer when you were talking about releasing Story of Ricky.

I'm through, guys. No more excuses, no more lies, and no more of my own hard-earned money lining your bank account. I've finally reached the point, after a decade of tepid support, that I actually want to see Media Blasters collapse upon itself. I'd honestly rather not have films that I love like Story of Ricky, Ichi the Killer and Urotsukidoji on Blu-ray than get the salty garbage you're slinging. If I purchase a new title it'll solely be in the hopes that my one purchase turns away 50 others so I can watch the vultures of irrelevance suck the marrow from your studios' very bones... not that you need me to ruin you at this point.

FUNimation Says We Can't Have Nice Things

2012-01-26T20:27:00.000-05:00

Vegeta can NEVER feel pretty!!

Via Anime News Network:

Flower Mound, TX – January 26, 2012- FUNimation Entertainment, has officially confirmed they have suspended production of all future planned Blu-ray releases of Dragon Ball Z including Level 2.1 scheduled to be released on March 27, 2012.

Blu-ray editions of Dragon Ball Z went into production based on fan demand, however due to technical challenges of restoring from the original film frame by frame, we are unable to continue these releases by way of this process. FUNimation will be re-evaluating the current process and researching more efficient methods of restoration.

Specific questions may be directed to : feedback@funimation.com

Actually, um, I've got a question: WHAT THE FUCK, GUYS!? Did you somehow just not realize that restoring film properly was a long, arduous and expensive pain in the ass? Did you not realize that releasing the first Blu-ray a month after the last of the Dragon Boxes would seem like a kick in the pills to the average consumer who's put up with your bullshit for all of these years? Or did you honestly expect the majority of consumers who even kinda give a shit to buy 18 separate volumes over the course of 5~7 years, knowing full well that smaller, similarly priced box sets were in the future?

Yes, I'm fucking mad and being a little unfair. That's what crazy fanboys do when you dick them around for years, finally treat them with some respect and then say "Ah, fuck this. Profit margins just aren't worth it." I bought Level 1.1 - I pre-ordered that goddamn thing! - despite owning all 7 Dragon Boxes. It's not like I'm finally catching up on something I put off for years, FUNimation already has over $300 dollars from me for this exact title and I'm still giving them more.

Despite my exhausted and mildly pessimistic comments about being content to wait for "DBZ Level 2 Complete" in a box set, if I hadn't been in the process of switching jobs and moving cross-country, then yes, I probably would have bought Level 1.2 as well. (For the $25 it sells for, why the fuck wouldn't I?) I thought the work overall was a top notch effort hampered slightly by less than ideal film materials, and was impressed that FUNi had the insane courage to, if only not in so many words, come out and indirectly admit that 'okay, we know we fucked up in the past baby... but this time, it's for reals! PLEASE COME BACK, I LOVE YOU BABY AND I CAN CHANGE!!'

Too bad Fukunaga and his company wrote a mouth-check that their glittering wish-summoning balls just couldn't cash. FUNimation may have finally split the belly of their golden egg laying goose here, and if so, it's only the fans who loved those first two "Level X.Y" sets that will suffer. Will we see more Dragon Ball on Blu-ray? We'll see the end of "Kai", if nothing else... Z, I'm no longer certain of, save that the outcome from the now privately-owned company worth just shy of 25 million dollars isn't looking as rosy as I'd like it to.

Keep in mind we live in an age when Universal is using shitty masters for movies like Scarface and Jurassic Park, single feature length films that don't need half as much tender love and care as DBZ does. And people still buy them, myself included... we all talk a big game about boycotting this or skipping that, but do we really do that? Or do we just wait until it's on sale for $10, shrug, and say "Whatever, it's all we'll ever get anyway"? The home video market is slowly rotting away while the worms of digital distribution burst out of its corpse for us crows to feast upon, and as much as I may hate it, that's probably all we're going to get in about a decade. Niche releases without the support of new, blockbuster hits to fuel their catalog are either going to be shitty, or they aren't going to happen at all... struggling to present consumers with a gorgeous, competitively prices, and exhaustively presented product like this is what leads to labels either giving up all attempt at caring, or just giving up completely.

Much as it pains me to say it, FUNi really isn't at fault here: for all their bone-headed timing and trying to milk this release for about twice as many SKUs as they should have, the work was solid and the price was fair. This tragedy - and that's what it is, whether you like Gokuu or not - is that the one 80s cartoon title with just enough appeal to justify this sort of treatment isn't going to get it because nobody fucking bought it. If Dragon Ball Z can't "afford" a proper restoration past the first story arc, I'm not convinced any vintage animated TV series can... not on these shores, anyway.

Abandon all hope, yadda-yadda.

2012 Begins Not A Bang, But A Big Ol' WTF

2012-01-22T00:20:00.002-05:00

So at this point I'm moving into my new place bit by bit, replacing all the furniture and housewares and personal care products I'd grown to take for granted over the years. It's the little things, you know? Like dental floss and butter and KY jelly that you really miss when it's gone. Also, you miss guaranteed parking. Piss and balls, do I miss guaranteed parking...

I'm also working well over 40 hours a week at my new totally legit gig, and while I can't give up too many details, what I can say is this: I'm working day in and day out with video of all kinds both for big studios and fledgling independents, working on that wide variety of content in tandem with a lot of really awesome people. It's not at all a waste of the skills I've cultivated over the last few years, and best of all it focuses on the few areas of the film delivery industry I have a feeling are going to stick around for the next decade. I really can't thank them enough for having given me the opportunity to show them what I can do when given the chance, and I can say without the least bit of hesitation that I genuinely like my job. Between that, the missus and this bitchin' new one bedroom pad, I honestly don't think I could ask for too much more in life.

As I've said in the past I don't plan to give up the Kentai's Films and I hope to have a review for a title very near and dear to my heart ready in the next week or two, but for the moment my days are spent turning my empty apartment into a home. I can't even remember the last time I watched a movie, so don't fret that I haven't had time to write about 'em, either... I'll get back to that soon enough, I promise.

Now, what else has been going on in the last few weeks? Here are some of the more interesting highlights, at least from my point of view...

Megaupload: The owner was arrested in New Zeland as is being, last I read at least, extradited to these United States on the behalf of "copyright holders". I've mostly tried to avoid all of the SOPA/PIPA nonsense since it's all too vague and political for my tastes - but this is evidence that it doesn't fucking matter anyway; despite The Internet as we know it being policed solely by the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act - which, despite the name, isn't the fourth part of the Stieg Larsen trilogy...), that still, apparently, gives the US Government the right to destroy an entire web service and extradite said service's CEO despite the fact that the guys running the service aren't actually posting anything illegal themselves. We're already living in 1984, as you probably all suspected beneath your stylish foil doo rags, it was just a question of how long it took before Big Brother decided to openly cock-slap someone.

Also, there are websites that claim to be "The NEW Megaupload!" Don't trust it; at best it's some desperate scabs trying to rape your Paypal account before folding. At worst, it's the MPAA loggin' your IPs with the express purpose of buttfucking you for downloading a copy of goddamned A Dangerous Method you can't find in a theater anywhere nearby, and the newest episode of Family Guy you can watch for free on fucking Hulu anyway. This is a super big deal for everyone within earshot, and I'll just remind all friends of the Kentai Blog to do whatever they do safely and smartly; in other words don't put up links to full episodes for everyone to see, ya goddamn goofball.

Bandai Entertainment: Despite being profitable after some 15 years in the North American home video industry, their overlords at Bandai Co., Ltd in Japan crunched some beans and realized they were one of the three least profitable parts of the company umbrella. Unlike Geneon's closing a few years ago the licenses still exist for the time being... they just, uh, aren't going to press any more copies of anything. Whatever's out in the wild now is all there ever will be, so if you desperately need that Mobile Suit Gundam OO: The Movie Blu-ray or the The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi-chan DVD specials, this is probably the time to stockpile that stuff.

It's weird that I don't own many Bandai titles. Granted they've had all sorts of QC issues over the years, but when they gave a goddamn and weren't stiffed with 10 year old masters the results were typically pretty damned good. I have little doubt that FUNimation will pick their bones clean of the moderately-marketable marrow once those titles all lapse, so while I could see a S.A.V.E edition of Code Geass R2 being a thing down the line, I wouldn't get my hopes too high for ever seeing Dan-Doh! on DVD again.

Media Blasters: Down but not quite out, the regular mustache-twirling villain handling so many of Kentais most favorite Films has downsized from 15 regular employees to 6. This news came a day or two prior to them announcing several new licenses, but odds are those contracts have been in negotiations for far longer than the week between this little chestnut and, say, the announcement that Fushigi Yuugi and Gamera the Brave were on tap for an American re-release for the hundreds of people who already give a shit.

I have a very bittersweet reaction to all of this. I feel bad for the employees who have just gone from a regular paycheck to crossing their fingers and HOPING Sirabella calls them, someday, with a project he can't slap together on his own for a fraction of what their monthly salary might have been. It's a frustrating way to live, and it's exactly why I moved about 3,000 miles to be where I am today: stable, regular income. For those people, I feel bad. For the people calling the shots at Media Blasters and letting terrible product leave with their name all over it, I don't feel particularly poor in the slightest.

FUNimation vs ADV Films: Whoa, what? TEXAS BRAWL IN THE ANIME HALL!!

FUNimation bought themselves out from Navarre's thumb last year to the tune of $24 million, and is now suing ADV's former management over $8 million in debt they basically inherited from Sojitz, the Japanese company that gave ADV 30 titles which all later went to FUNimation once it became clear that ADV could no longer pay their bills. Once that happened, ADV kinda... well, it's complicated, but the short version is they sold off all of their assets (including their own, non-Sojitz related titles) below market value back to themselves and left ADV itself to die like an amputated limb. Sentai Filmworks, Section 23 and a host of their sublabels were basically "Neo ADV" - same folks and same business model, but with a fancy new logo! - but ADV as a company recently surfaced anew to try and sue Gainax over the rights to the live action Evangelion movie, so what's good for the honking and suing goose is, I suppose, good for the shell game playing gander.

What I find fascinating about this one is how the majority of the anime fandom in North America have basically said "Bad FUNi! How dare you bully our old friends and demand money they didn't originally owe you to start with?" FUNimation is suing for money that's a third of their current worth - it's not like ADV just owed them burgers and six pack or something. This is especially galling when you factor in that ADV's reply cites the statute of limitations as a reason not to pay! They aren't saying "Come on guy, you know we good!", they're admitting they owe the money but are claiming that it doesn't matter because they took to long to demand it. This all gets even more complicated by the fact that FUNi's demanding a trial by jury - something that's usually reserved for cases where the contracts are pretty flimsy to start with.

Smore Entertainment: Rhino Records just bought the rights to Galaxy Express 999 TV and Bo^7 and are promising a "complete" DVD release for each. How fucking awesome is that? I seriously thought it was some weird April Fools joke, but nah, it's legit: The US anime market has become such a wasteland devoid of profit that Toei would probably sell you the rights to Space Captain Harlock and Futari wa Precure for any miniscule percentage of actual sales, so long as you promised not to rape them after the meeting, too.

IFC: Promises the Feb. 14th Blu-ray release of The Human Centipede 2 [Full Sequence] will be the "Unrated Director's Cut". Keep in mind that the version cut by 3 minutes was never rated either, so while I'd certainly love to find uncensored penis-mutilation at my local Target, I'm not sure what to make of all this... guess we'll find out soon enough. It's not like we don't have uncut screeners and the like floating around already should anyone decide to check the film out before release.

I'm Alive... Mostly.

2012-01-13T21:30:00.000-05:00

Busy, but still breathing. Moved cross-country, started a new job doing what I like to do, and I think most of my shit made it in one piece enough to try and sell it off at local record stores for pennies on the dollar. Progress!

I'll do my best to get back into the swing of things, but I'll have substantially less free time than I did last year, so we'll have to wait and see how it all shakes out. On the plus size for the half-dozen of you who still give a shit, I'm going to hand the Kentai store off to someone else in the next couple weeks, so we should have some titles that are pretty much ready to go available soon.

To friends and fiends alike; it's damn good to be back.

Frightful Sellouts

2011-12-20T02:00:00.009-05:00

Yeah... this film has no other posters to speak of.

So I'm leaving... Thursday? Thursday. Packing like a madman. Blithering like an idiot. Had to share this before I pass out for a few fever-dream induced hours and continue on my maddening trial. Also, do you have any idea how many DVDs Kentai owns? 'Cause I hadn't taken much stock over the years. "Two big-ass Wal-Mart bookshelves with additional shelves stolen from a third full to bursting" should have been a sign that I was a very special episode of Hoarders in the making, but hey, I guess that's still cheaper than doing rock on a burnt mattress in an abandoned warehouse. (Wait, is it?)

But forget my insanity for a sec - let's talk about movies 'n' stuff. Screen Archives Entertainment has officially sold out of FRIGHT NIGHT. Proving once again that all the ferocious internet bluster in the world doesn't mean much; people buy what they love and ignore everything else. Glad I pre-ordered mine the day it was available and didn't miss out - looks great, sounds fine and the window closed less than one week after the "official" release date, which is probably the best Sony Pictures and Twilight Time could have hoped for. And now, just for everyone that was bitching and moaning about $35 shipped, eBay auctions are already getting bids at $50 minimum, and some of the buy-it-now copies are $250! Ah, collector's markets...

Of equal note is the fact that they evidently saved aside 100 copies for writer/director Tom Holland to autograph. Cool, right? Are they giving those out to the first 100 people who pre-ordered or randomly sending them out to lucky fans as a sign of good will? Fuck no! They're actually giving them away to anyone who orders $100 worth of Twilight Time DVD/Blu-ray titles for free. Now I get it, Fright Night is probably going to sell better than Stagecoach and The Roots of Heaven, but maybe some of those hold-outs will see this deal and break down anyway, right? It's a clever way to move more of their other titles, and sounds like a nifty little extra incentive... but they announced it AFTER the title was available for a week, all of the pre-orders had shipped, and they had already said that less than 500 copies remained.

All of those guys who actually pre-ordered Fright Night and showed their support a fucking month before it was ready to go? Y'know, all those assholes like you and me - the target goddamn consumer? Evidently we don't get the extra-cool shit, not unless we really, really want Rapture and The Egyptian and The Picnic for $35 a pop. That's just cold, man. Thanks for showing the people who crashed your shitty servers just to get their copy the day pre-orders went up where they can stick it, Twilight Time.

Merry Fucking Christmas, Dario Argento.

2011-12-19T01:34:00.006-05:00

Work-In-Progress Teaser for Dario Argento's DRACULA 3D

Yes, I really should be packing. No, I don't have time for this. But Jesus Fucking Christ, just look at this shit and tell me this didn't DEMAND 5 minutes of my busy schedule to address.

I want anyone who's ever had even the slightest shred of respect for il maestro del terrore, for Dario goddamn Argento, to look at this two and a half minutes of distilled cinematic pain and tell me there's anything left in him. Yeah yeah, it's not technically "finished" yet, but not even WETA's best is going to make this look any less shockingly retarded and sloppy. This is the sort of gateway to cinematic purgatory reserved for films like Highlander: The Source (Russian Director's Cut) and the live action Devilman - movies so appalling that the Surgeon General suggests they might actually give you cancer.

You remember when ol' Blue Eyes was singing in clubs for the last couple years of his life, forgetting the lyrics mid-song like some drunk asshole with a broken karaoke machine? You remember how sad you felt for him, and how you wish he'd just get a little place in Boca and live his last few years in quiet dignity as Frank Sinatra: The Legend, not the reality that he was an old man living borrowed time, acting out his classic shtick like some weird singing marionette? This new teaser is exactly the same thing for Dario Argento. What's worse is this is the teaser that producers are trying to use to sell the film to publishers; if this is what they're showing people to make them want to pay money for it, I shudder to think what the other two hours or so must be like.

As someone who doesn't hate Trauma, sat through The Card Player and left with a shrug and barely made it through Giallo in no less than three sittings with clenched fists and tears in my eyes... this is just pure shit. I actually want to give Rutger Hauer a big sympathy hug for having gone from something as amazing as Hobo with a Shotgun to... well, to this.

Dario Argento, as an asshole who's loved your films even when you only half deserved it, and was willing to look the other way when you slummed it up with crappy TV movies and actually sat through The Mother of Tears dubbed in Italian, wincing every three minutes, but stayed to the end because you were a God in your day... just stop. Please, for everyone, just stop making movies. The only thing you can do to your legacy now is stop tarnishing it any further. When Phantom of the Opera is no longer your worst film, we can no longer pretend than anything you made after Opera is even remotely good. Your work from 1990 onward has been middling, even at its best, but this teaser was just... God, I couldn't even watch it in one sitting. It's so bad I can't watch the fucking trailer without stopping to laugh and weep.

It's a Dracula movie and - I'm not making a word of this up - I JUST SAW A DUDE GET KILLED BY A GIANT PRAYING MANTIS. What. The. Fuck.

Anyway, it's time for me to pack more stuff. Just uh... yeah, Merry Fucking Christmas.

X-Mas And Beyond: A Temporary Hiatus for Kentai Films

2011-12-17T01:04:00.000-05:00

Hang on, I can almost see the future...

Do not be alarmed, friends. I haven't given up, and I'm not shutting the site down. But it's likely to go on hiatus for a little while. A few weeks, maybe longer? It depends on how long it takes to settle my affairs and get comfortable with something I can only describe as... well, it's basically a brand new life. A new part of the country, a new job, new friends to meet, things to learn, restaurants to explore, gangs to avoid... I think it's pretty good to be Kentai right now. It's exciting.

It's also a little terrifying - mostly because I literally need to travel a distance of what'd be the span of several countries on most continents in a little less than a month, complete with my wife, my mountain of useless shit, and my miniature lion and my wife's kitten I can't imagine will be thrilled about living in the back of a car for about a week. It's gonna be one hell of a Kentai Christmas on Route 66, that's about all I know for sure.

A happy one to you and yours, friends... I'll see you all on the other side.

Fright Night... For Real.

2011-12-10T21:13:00.025-05:00

Much controversy has surrounded the new Twilight Time release of the 1985 film FRIGHT NIGHT, and that's really a shame. The film itself is phenomenal, as most anyone familiar with 1980s horror films will attest, combining a legitimate retro-horror story built on the legacy of Hammer films from the 50s and 60s with a sense of dry wit that's been largely called a "horror comedy". A fairly normal teenager named Charley (William Ragsdale) notices that his new neighbor doesn't come out during the day, keeps a bitchin' coffin in his basement, and has seen women disappear into the house only to turn up as corpses on the news the next day. A casual fan of "Fright Night", the local TV station's monster movie theater hosted by the 'Legendary Vampire Killer' himself Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall), he quickly puts two and two together and enlists the help of his worried girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse) and socially inept friend "Evil Ed" (Stephen Geoffereys) to help stake the beast. Obviously they think he's flipped his lid, but there's still something about Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon) that just doesn't add up... the question is can they can do the math before the neighbors wind up taking a bite out of everyone on the block?

There's clearly a streak of dry humor from start to finish in Fright Night, but this isn't exactly cut from the same cloth as Return of the Living Dead or The Monster Squad; the humor is kept low key, a natural extension of the characters rather than a flat out rolling meta-commentary. (I'll say it again: Fuck you, Scream.) Despite not sharing nearly as much screen time as Charley and his friends, Chris Sarandon as the smarmy blood sucker with class to spare, and Roddy McDowall as the classic horror star turned washed-up cable presenter, a sort of poor man's Elvira mixed with the real life decline of Bela Lugosi, absolutely steal the show with performances that are just as heartfelt as they are genuinely funny - not by hamming it up or dropping bad puns, but by understanding what makes these archetypes tick and pushing them just far enough that they're amusingly over the top without degenerating into obvious parody. Neither of them are spitting out one liners, they just live these roles to the hilt and wallow in the great power and unique melancholy they require until there's nothing left to give. I understand why we focus on the dumb (but not entirely unpleasant) kids for most of the runtime, these two are the heart and soul of the flick, and it's an absolute joy watching them play completely opposite ends of the spectrum, one deadly, sexy and confident to a fault, the other a cowardly old has-been seemingly on the verge of waiting for death to put him out of his misery. The kids are all right, but these two carry so much genuine menace and pathos that they effectively anchor the silly teens into the darker adult world by proxy.

The film's rubber and corn syrup effects augmented with some impressive optically-printed animation have a unique vibe to them that was lost with the advent of digital special effects. It's not that these were "better" - just that there was a certain impact a rubber mask covered in glycerin had, not just on the actor actually in it, but on the actors around them. One of the film's best scenes is McDowall reacting in simultaneous horror and tempered sympathy as he watches a boy degenerate from a deadly wolf to a pathetic naked imp, a shell of his former self that continues to wither away, bit by bit, until only the frail, dying boy is left. It's rare to find an actor who can convey that much, that fusion of fear and pity, without making a sound to start with - but I'm sure it'd be even rarer to get him to react that way without being able to SEE the wretched creature whimpering and clawing at its wounds, trying to stay alive. The special effects don't look "real", exactly, but they do still look pretty goddamn cool. We may have finally perfected the prosthetic decapitation 30 years after Friday the 13th, to the point where it looks as real as any terrorist snuff video - but making it look awesome? That takes talent and imagination, something that throwing endless piles of money at a problem can dull over time.

Fright Night was hardly a gorefest though - it just drives home that almost unnervingly silly vibe the great cast and classy score by Brad Fidel have brought to life, infusing a fun but timeless story that's as much Rear Window as it is The Fearless Vampire Killers with a firm and unapolagetic identity as a 1985 production. It was a superficial and ridiculous decade, make no mistake, but this is one of those films you can point to and say "They don't make 'em like this anymore" - and you'd be absolutely right. Well, yes, they did make another Fright Night... but just watch the trailer for the original and then chase that down with the trailer for "Fright Night 3D". Different eras, different goals and so on. Writer/Director Tom Holland would combine horror and comedy to unique ends as well a few years later in the original Child's Play, but I tend to think that decent enough film doesn't stand up as well as Fright Night does, for a number of reasons. To be fair, though, with the massive franchise it somehow spawned it's impossible NOT to watch Child's Play in the 21st century and know for the entire first "mysterious" hour that the killer was really-- well, you know...

By comparison Fright Night is just as charming as it was in 1985, and I doubt the inclusion of either 3D or Collin Farrel have improved the 2011 version currently cluttering up six shelves at a Wal-Mart or Best Buy near you. I've not seen the remake and kind of doubt I ever will, but from a friend's account of it the 3D film has its own identity for a while, but falls back on scenes cribbed almost word-for-word in the last act. A shame that the script's largely different direction about hanging out with the wrong crowd and being unsure if the neighbor is a vampire or just a normal Las Vegas weirdo decided to give up the ghost in the 11th hour, since the more complex character arcs and shift away from suburbia sounded like they had some potential to at least create a completely different experience... but, back to the original under review.

The new Blu-ray transfer is, according to film restoraration expert Robert A. Harris, a 4K scan of a brand new interpositive. The original Dolby Stereo mix has been unfolded into a 5.1 DTS HD-MA (24-bit) lossless track, and while the 106 minute film has been squeezed onto a single layered Blu-ray, the the only included bonus features are a pair of vintage theatrical trailers and an isolated score (DTS HD-MA 2.0 16-bit), allowing for an adequate bitrate of 23 Mb/s for a film shot in scope, which means 25% of the screen is unmoving and thus easier to compress. Most of you know that I'd love to see 40 Mb/s as the standard for Blu-ray, but in the real world, studios want to save money and so long as the transfer looks decent, I don't see being a BD25 as an inherent negative... take a look at these caps and decide for yourself:

The last screenshot is about as bad as this disc ever gets; I wouldn't call that especially "bad", either. It's likely just a notch below reference and may not blow those of you with front projection setups away, but it's still a very good transfer. Anyone who's seen a few lower-budget 'scope films from this period should more or less know what to expect in terms of focus and grain, and that's exactly what you'll get with Fright Night. It looks very nice - nicer in motion than screenshots suggest, I think - and while Mr. Harris and I may disagree from time to time, he loved the crap out of it. If you trust neither of us, well... I honestly don't know what to tell you.

The audio is being called "front heavy", and that's not an unfair accusation - the film appears to be, essentially, a 5.1 upmix of the original Dolby Stereo track, leaning more towards a faithful recreation of the original sound mix on modern systems than any sort of extensive "from the stems" affair. I've decided to rip the 1.5 Mb/s "core" track and take a look at it as a WAV form to get a better idea of what this track is really made of - just because I *heart* you guys enough to do that sort of thing, even if I'm going to listen to the whole disc with a pair of middle-of-the-road headphones most of the time anyway.

The channels are, in descending order: Left, Right, Center, LFE, Surround Left and Surround Right. Forgive the almost Lovecraftian scroll bar - I had to patch two separate screenshots together to show the whole thing, is all. As you can see there is some basic separation between the left and right channels, but 90% of the sound is coming right out of the center, and the sub is barely there at all. I'm not chastising the mix at all - just saying what the waveform has already told you. It's a pretty basic stereo feature bumped up to an equally basic surround mix, but it's absolutely NOT a vintage Dolby Surround track - that would imply that the SL/SR channels are identical, and zero LFE presence. It's a new mix, and it doesn't sound bad to me... it just, sounds like a 26 year old low-budget horror film. Go figure.

Not to ride Sony's ass on this, but why aren't original mixes included more often by certain studios? I doubt the difference would be notable here, of all places, but it's the sort of thing I feel really should be standard on Blu-ray by now. Include a 7.1 mix and a dozen dubs, go for it - but don't forget to include the vintage theatrical mix while you're at it, you know?

You know what else you get? An 8 page booklet! Booklets are a rare treat these days, one I've grown to miss as Blu-ray has overtaken my DVD collection by storm, and there's a number of nice glossy photos and the original poster on the back, plus a sheet with production credits and special thanks. No chapter listing... but we'll talk about that in a second. There's also a lengthy essay on the film written by Julie Kirgo which is a nice touch unto itself, though I'll admit I'm not totally on board with her theory of Evil Ed being a subtext for closeted homosexuality. English language vampire mythology is literally rooted in homosexuality and later sadomasochism, and I viewed their brief relationship as that of one social pariah to another - not a suggestion that they share a homosexual bond, particularly when the entire last act is about Chris Sarandon fang-humping the life out of Amanda Bearse! (That said, I'm somehow totally not shocked that Marcy from Married... With Children is a lesbian. What, are you?) The passing implications between Sarandon and his ghoulish "roommate" (Jonathan Stark) as possible homosexuals actually works brilliantly as a cover story; who would suspect the pair of nondescript, cable-knit sweater wearing gays restoring a very special episode of This Old House as a pair of blood drinking prostitute murderers? Anyway, Kirgo's made her case and I'm grateful that she had plenty of nice things to say, and even some fun production anecdotes to share - such as McDowall's point of inspiration for his character, and it's not his namesakes! - even if I personally think some of it's a stretch.

You'll also find a link to Icons of Fright's "Unofficial" commentary tracks, which for legal reasons they couldn't put on the disc, but any clever S.O.B. with an iPod should really be able to download them and watch the commentary with the Blu-ray anyhow. Not an extra on the disc, unfortunately, but appreciated all the same. You also get a fun lil' fridge magnet - or, at least I did. A friend of mine wasn't so lucky, but as several others have reported getting one I assume it was just an isolated slip-up. As mentioned in brief, the only extras included on the disc are two vintage theatrical trailers - and curiously, they're cropped to 1.85:1, despite the film proper being in 2.40:1. They look a little worse for wear, but being duplicate elements and optically reframed besides, that's only natural. I honestly don't like it when they use the vintage trailer audio and re-cut the "restored" footage on top of it; I'd much rather see how nasty the film looked when it was marketed in the weeks before it came out, and you don't need to restore the trailers at all to give us a peek into that little sliver of the film's history.

The only thing I will shake my head over is the authoring of the disc itself. For one thing there's a main menu, but no pop-up menu. It's perplexing, perhaps just a bit annoying, but I've got all these unused buttons like "Audio" and "Subtitle" on my remote for a reason, and this is it. What's less forgivable are the fact that the chapter stops are placed at 10 minute intervals, like clockwork. I know chapter stops aren't the most important thing on ANY release, and yes, films are meant to be watched front to end anyhow, but... seriously? You guys are charging $30 for these discs and you can't take the ten minutes it'd take to put the chapters in natural scene breaks that have something to do with the movie? Even those low rent Echo Bridge assholes do that, and they squeeze four films onto a single BD50! It's a shame, since this is the first time in a long time where the back-end authoring of a disc has actually been the only major disappointment.

The authoring isn't the controversy, though; as I've mentioned before, Fright Night is only being made available through Twilight Time's parent company, Screen Archives Entertainment - though you can now purchase it through Amazon.com (from SAE as a third party seller, anyway). It's $29.98 plus about five bucks shipping, end of story. You can get similar 80s horror films on Blu-ray from Amazon and Best Buy for half that, sometimes even less - so why is Fright Night so expensive? There's been discussion raging on over this fact ever since the details were made public a few months ago, but the short version is middle-of-the-road catalog titles just don't sell well on Blu-ray, and studios like Sony make substantially less selling a few thousand copies of a $10 movie than they do selling a new movie at $25 that they've started to lose interest in them completely.

If you want to see great movies like Fright Night, The Rapture and Mysterious Island (among others) on Blu-ray, then don't think of Twilight Time as some perverted mutation of the home video market; see it as the future that deserving titles will get. Because without this more expensive limited edition model, there is no future on Blu-ray for these films. 25 years ago, Laserdisc served a niche audience that favored quality over convenience, and for those that are still willing to pay top dollar for high quality features, this could be the way the market swings towards in 2012. I admit that the price is higher than I'd like it to be, but Fright Night is a fantastic film. I'd rather pay $35 for this than the same price for three films I don't especially care for, but I know that everyone has their limits.

Rest assured that, if not the Best Blu-ray Ever, Fright Night' audio and video presentation is perfectly fine. It's a little dark, a little soft and sounds pretty front heavy, but anyone expecting something different must not have known what they were signing up for to start with. It looks and sounds the way I can only imagine Fright Night should, and if you've ever seen this on cable, DVD, or even a 35mm print, you've never seen it look or sound this good. If that's worth $35 to you, indulge. If not, hey, there's always Sony's DVD re-release... but I'm not even going to link to that. You know a contemporary classic like Fright Night deserves better.

Realism vs Moe: Round 3

2011-12-08T22:25:00.000-05:00

Realism (H.R. Giger's Li II)

萌え (Japanese erotic mangaka PIKU2N)

Hail To The King That Never Was

2011-12-07T23:28:00.010-05:00

The King That Never Was (2011 - Alternate Reality)

King Arthur and Robin Hood (2002 - Brendon Small)

Now I'm not implying that the former is a remake of the latter... but that's only because I don't think I need to. Having watched the whole of Alternate Reality's premier video I can't tell if I want to suck on the loaded end of a shotgun The Hills Have Eyes remake style or send these guys a cashier's check for every cent I have.

There's only two possibilities I can come to: They're either brilliant satirists who have created the ultimate piece of Wizardcore Metal strictly for the lulz, or they're the first recorded example of walking, rocking, sentient brain tumors and actually think this is the single greatest thing ever.

Keep in mind that I'm the asshole who just spent ten bucks on the new sequel to Welcome to my Nightmare and wasn't sure what a Lady Gaga was until about a year ago, so I'm probably not the best guy to judge anyone's musical taste - but it bothers me slightly that I'm not immediately sure if these guys are just fucking with us or not. I guess The Beastie Boys made a career out of their satire being misconstrued as earnest hip-hop, so maybe these goofballs are on to something here?

Cannibalized Masters

2011-12-05T23:51:00.003-05:00

I'm totally serious. It's half man, half bear... and half pig!

Ian Jane over at Rock! Shock! Pop! has done assholes like myself a big favor by reviewing the new French Blu-ray of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, and has a full review on the actual content as well as plenty more "pretty" pictures. Anyone with more than a passing interest (or who's considering lunging for the Amazon.fr order page) should give it a look.

Here's the Reader's Digest version: 1080i transfer with no lossless audio, "PAL HD" menus, and the only new extras are an interview with film critic Julien Seveon, and a 22 minute panel with Deodato at a convention, both in French with no subtitles. As for the good news, such as it is, the disc is region free, doesn't have forced subtitles and there's no censor cuts, so if you're ever so inclined you can officially watch that coati get throat-fucked with cold steel in 1080 as often as you like.

If (like me) you watch everything on a PS3 you're still up a creek on this one thanks to the menus being 1080i50Hz, but that transfer is such an underwhelming pile of fuck I can't say I'm all that upset about it. I love the crap out of it and all, but I just gave one copy away and I've still got two more sitting on the shelf! I'm not going to spend a dime on this movie again until I'm given good reason to, and a middling HD transfer that might be even worse than the crumby Shameless Blu-ray is simply not it. Grindhouse Releasing and Red Shirt Productions are both apparently hard at work on an all-new Blu-ray release for sometime in 2012. Under the circumstances, and knowing they created their own transfer for DVD (even IF that ended in mixed results), I'm more than happy to wait this one out.

Oh yeah: Ian doesn't mention wither or not The Road To Hell in-film documentary is complete, but since I've yet to see that footage pulled from anything that didn't look like VHS, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume it's not.

Meet Me At The Echo Bridge Quad

2011-12-04T00:31:00.006-05:00

WHY DO I KEEP DOING DUMB THINGS?!

Yeah, yeah I know... here I am being part of the problem, supporting the absolute bottom of the bargain barrel release instead of throwing all of my money at "respectable" presentations to ensure that the market pulls towards quality over price. Buying crappy releases ensures that we'll only get more crappy crap in return, and the only way to turn it around is to support the niche players who still give a shit - these are tenants I've spoken of for years now, and they remain just as true now as they always have. I haven't given up on the cause... I'm just having a poor white trash moment. Going to Wal-Mart to buy milk and cat litter can do that to any man, damn it!

Besides, I've got my Fright Night pre-order in, I recently bought Intruder straight from Synapse Films, I can't even fucking REMEMBER how much money I spent on movies during that caffeine and Mastercard fueled Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping spree, and I just put in $225 worth of pre-orders to satisfy my Puella Magi Madoka Magica addiction. I'm dead fucking serious: 12 episodes with CDs, booklets and some paper trinkets for $224.94. The entire Blu-ray industry can blow me because it's already got all of my money, and the only way I could possibly put more back into it was if I started buying movies I actively didn't like.

I mean come on, it was $10. TEN BUCKS for From Dusk 'Till Dawn, it's substantially less respectable direct to DVD sequel, its equally - if perhaps even more loathed? - direct to DVD prequel, AND the feature length Full Tilt Boogie documentary. How can you possibly beat that deal with a stick?

And what could Echo Bridge do to make this dream team of low price and high content possibly fall apart? I'm glad you asked, sir! Best known as the company that creates half of the DVDs you find in Wal-Mart's $5 bins, they were quickly derided - often solely on principle - for using whatever crumby HD masters Miramax gave them, with very little being done on their part to improve the situation. Not that I imagine the audience for Dimension "classics" like The Crow 2: City of Angels and Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Meyers were expecting lavish collector's editions to start with, but it would have been nice if, say, Dracula 2000 had been framed properly or if Children of the Corn 3: Urban Harvest had been given an IVTC so it was presented at 1080p.

Another troubling aspect is that they'll do separate encodes for stand-alone features and double features. When From Dusk 'Till Dawn was released on a single Blu-ray by itself, the bitrate was about 25% higher than it was for the Double Feature disc which included Scott "Intruder" Spiegel's sequel. Why? Because the Double Feature Echo Bridge discs were actually squeezing two feature length films onto a single BD25! Two movies, one layer... obviously something has to give, and when your stand alone releases have nothing in the way of bonus features or alternate language tracks, bitrate is about all that's left. With that horrifying knowledge in mind I just had to see first-hand how awful these Quad Feature discs really were..

From Dusk 'Till Dawn (1:47:49 - 14.6 GB)

1080p AVC - 15 Mb/s + 24-bit 5.1 DTS-HD MA

FDTD2: Texas Blood Money (1:28:06 - 8.2 GB)

1080p AVC - 14 Mb/s + 24-bit 2.0 DTS-HD MA

FDTD3: The Hangman's Daughter (1:33:00 - 11.0 GB)

1080p AVC - 14 Mb/s + 16-bit 5.1 DTS-HD MA

Full Tilt Boogie (1:40:30 - 11.5 GB)

1080p AVC - 11.5 Mb/s + 24-bit 2.0 DTS-HD MA

Based on reviews kicking around for the "From Dusk 'Till Dawn Double Feature" Blu-ray, the movie files present on the Quad Feature are identical. What's interesting is that reviewers almost universally praised the transfer of the first film and called the second one of the worst available on Blu-ray, but as you can see the video bitrate is nearly identical - the main reason the second film is so much smaller is because of its crumby stereo mix! Who knew? What's really fascinating is that all four films look completely different from a compression standpoint...

From Dusk 'Till Dawn looks... well it's passable, if not actually good. There's some obvious compression artifacts that love to crop up during especially grainy or fast moving shots, but it's only a minor annoyance compared to what I had expected going in. It looks considerably better than the average HDTV broadcast or a Netflix HD stream, and having owned that Dimension Collector's Edition DVD for longer than I can remember, words can't properly express what a massive upgrade this transfer is over that non-anamorphic turd. It could certainly look better, but try as I might, I just can't get that upset about what I'm seeing. Remember: Low Expectations = High Payoff!

Texas Blood Money, however, are my worst nightmares realized. The bitrate is only a slight step down, but if you were to walk in on this sucker playing you'd probably think this was just a crumby DVD-R size HDTV rip - not a mass market Blu-ray. It looks like absolute shit, but why it looks so much worse than the other two 35mm sourced feature films on the disc, I really can't say... all I can do is chalk it up to poor encoder implementation, 'cause seriously, even at low bitrates like this the image shouldn't look that ridiculously pixelated. I think I actually feel embarrassed for Echo Bridge over this one - and I actually gave them money for this fucking thing!

The Hangman's Daughter is an interesting compromise. Compression artifacts are rarely an issue, but the film is in a state of extreme soft focus seemingly from start to finish, so there isn't much in the way of mathematical complexity to choke on. I don't know off hand if we're seeing a transfer that's been intentionally defocused before compression to avoid ugly block artifacting or if this was a stylistic choice by the film's director to start with, but in either case the final results are infinitely more watchable. Except, of course, when you get the occasionally dreadful CG element that looks like it was sourced from a BOB deinterlaced Digibeta... but that's neither here nor there, I guess.

And as for Full Tilt Boogie... well, it looks good enough. We're talking about a documentary that's a combination of feature quality 35mm, fly-on-the-wall 16mm blown up footage, and even analog video printed to film! It looks like asshole on a variety of levels, but it's mostly just talking heads and extreme grain to start with, so despite being the "worst" transfer in terms of raw bitrate and quantizer issues, it's also the least offensive part of the set to have those sorts of issues to begin with. It's essentially a bonus feature, yeah? The fact that it's even from a legitimate HD source was a surprise, so the fact that it was lowballed in the bitrate department isn't going to keep me up at night.

At the end of the day, we're talking about 6 and a half hours of HD content on a single BD50 complete with lossless audio, with not a scrap of disc space being wasted. It's goddamn ridiculous, and this really isn't where I want to see the format turn to... and yet, here I am buying it anyway. Just because it's ten fucking dollars. For that price, the quality is acceptable; it's not something I want to see become the norm, clearly, but if this is where Miramax's endless catalog titles are going to go, I won't very lose much sleep over it.

Does From Dusk 'Till Dawn deserve better? Of course! And for what it's worth it's already got better releases in Canada, Japan, The United Kingdom, and likely other corners of the world I'm not paying quite as much attention to. Though the moniker has never been applied to it (and never will be), From Dusk 'Till Dawn was essentially the trial run in Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse double feature, something I still consider the best 3 hours and change in a theater to be released in the 21st century. It's a legitimately great piece of genre-fusion entertainment, funny and smart when it needs to but never at the cost of being a viscerally satisfying joyride. I'm deeply disappointed that I even have to import if I want a Blu-ray release that has any actual bonus content, considering the material is already held by Miramax - but that's just the name of the game when the studios simply stop caring about their back catalog and hand it over to a third party that manages to care even less. Sales are in the toilet, and our friends at the Weinstein Company (or at least those they've contracted to do their dirty work) are smart enough to know that people will buy movies, even amazingly shitty movies, when you can grab four of them for less than the cost of the pizza you'll devour while you watch them.

There's nothing WRONG with the From Dusk 'Till Dawn Multi-Feature Quad Blu-ray. It's a bargain bin release that promises several hours of High Definition schlocky fun for next to nothing, and delivers as promised. You can't just order crab and then be upset you didn't get lobster. It doesn't look perfect, but after reminding myself that I've spent just as much much on Blacksploitation or Kung Fu films that were literally 3 chewed-up VHS tapes recorded onto a single layered DVD, I stopped being so damn ornery about the whole thing. It is what it is - no more, and no less. But what does all of this imply for All of Those Shitty Hellraiser Sequels, The American Edits of Project A and Armor of God, or God help you, This 'Wes Craven Presents' Monstrosity? Based on what I've seen here, these Multi-Feature discs are probably "good enough". They're never going to knock your socks off, but if you need a fix of B-movie magic that won't break the bank, they're sure to leave you adequately satisfied.

Just do the whole industry a favor and buy a better Blu-ray next time. The fewer labels we see needlessly squeezing 3 hours on a BD25 layer, the better.

Magi Puella Pre-Order Clincher

2011-12-03T22:47:00.002-05:00

Well. There goes all of MY money for 2012!

Australia Can Eat Shit!

2011-12-03T18:09:00.003-05:00

The Australian Classification Review Board has officially BANNED THE UNCUT VERSION of Tom Six's The Human Centipede 2 [Full Sequence]. Monster Films was shocked enough that the Australian Classification Board (formerly the OFLC) passed the film as R18+ without ordering any cuts, but the ACRB can legally usurp the ACB's decision and choose to ban a film, even when a prior government agency has said it wasn't obscene.

What the hell is wrong with Australia? Who has a tax-payer funded board who's sole purpose is to decide what is and isn't appropriate for any given audience, and THEN have a second rung of assholes who decide if the first board actually did their fucking job? After the same group did the very same thing TO A CUT VERSION OF A SERBIAN FILM I can't say I'm surprised this is the outcome, but why have a secondary branch who's sole purpose is to bow to outside pressure? The ACRB don't spend each and every day rating films, they literally just wait for someone to complain loud enough and then decide wither or not they agree with the ACB's professional decision!

Australia, I don't hate you. You've given us awesome things like the platypus, Mel Gibson, pizza with barbecue sauce, the electric drill and The Loved Ones (the latter of which couldn't exist without the former). A dear friend of mine will soon enough be an Aussie by marriage, and I'm glad someone made her happy - even if all of her new relatives speak in such a way that I'll forever assume they, just occasionally, wrestle the shit out of crocodiles. But none of that changes the fact that YOUR RATINGS SYSTEM IS COMPLETELY FUCKTARDED. I know I'm getting way too upset about a film that isn't even all that good, but it's the principle of the thing that just chaps my ass! We're back to waiting, literally just hoping that Japan, Austria, The Netherlands or who knows where to give us sweet, unmolested centipede rape.

If anyone needs me, I'll be in the angry dome.

Fight The 3D Future

2011-12-02T11:09:00.006-05:00

Upon its 2000 Japanese release, Kinji FUKUSAKU's adaptation of Koushin TAKAMI's science fiction novel BATTLE ROYALE/バトル・ロワイアル was equally reviled and profitable. With the mounting controversy surrounding a large studio production - by Japanese standards, anyway - in which 42 teenagers are selected to kill each other off until only one remains, a special screening was held for Japanese parliament who predictably decried the film as "crude" and "tasteless". The film went on to make over six times its budget back, and was quickly licensed to virtually every foreign nation... except North America, which led to ridiculous rumors that it had somehow been banned in the USA! Certainly there was some truth to Toei wanting to insure the film against being sued for any "harm" it might cause the public - this is a country where people who spill coffee on themselves win big settlements, after all - Anchor Bay's 2010 announcement that they owned the film stateside more or less put to rest any doubt as to why the film had been ignored in North America: Toei was greedy, and it took ten years of mellowing for the price to drop to a point where any sane label in America was willing to play ball on their terms.

The plot probably doesn't need to be spelled out to anyone within earshot, but just in case: In a future where social and economic crisis have left Japan in shambles, the paranoid government creates a bloody spectacle to distract the public. Once a year, a high school class is randomly selected to participate in the Battle Royale - an event in which the entire class is given 72 hours to slaughter one another until only one is left standing. Should more than one person survives or if anyone's caught trying to cheat, they'll be murdered remotely by the explosive collars strapped to their necks. The grand prize is simple: A chance to go home, live their life, and be grateful for the chance to grow up to be a functional adult, and not one of the rabble rousing kids that have doomed this once great country.

If you're having trouble buying any of this, it's worth noting that in the original novel, history was rewritten so that the Axis Powers won WWII, and the BR ACT is just a grim authoritative way to instill fear and obedience in an entire generation of children. The film wisely fast-forwards through pretty much all of this to get to the part where the kids start decapitating each other, but it changes the context of the story into one of Japan's bitter resentment towards the youth, seeking revenge on them for living the easy lives they couldn't have and still rebelling against the system.

Kinji Fukusaku: My kind of OG.

It all sounds pretty absurd at face value, but the story's focus isn't on the over the top premise; it's on the individual students, and how teenagers given a bag of survival gear and kicked out to battle with their friends would react to those horrific and war-like circumstances. Who would band together for safety, and who would manipulate casual frenemies to stab each other in the back? Would young love beat out the need to survive, and how quick are best friends willing to turn on each other once their trust has been strained? While invariably some of the characters are shafted by the film's 114 minute runtime, it takes every opportunity to try and pick apart the violent and confusing nature of mankind through the eyes of those who are old enough to know what's right and wrong, but not old enough to know how to be rational and overturn their dire circumstances. It's Lord of the Flies by way of Beyond Thunderdome, and worst of all it was made for a target audience who has the same developing and inexperienced emotional maturity as the characters themselves. Fukusaku, a man with nearly 40 years experience in the film industry when he took directorial duties for Battle Royale, was so upset by the film's realistic and rampant violence earning it an R-15 rating that he petitioned the EIRIN for the less restrictive PG-12. He argued that the film's message was specifically intended to be seen by teenagers.

This act of unusual ballsy protest from a prominent and respectable director - one who made quite a name for himself in the early 1970s with the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series - turned the public eye towards pundits who used Battle Royale, a fictional program set in a future that could almost never exist, as proof that the EIRIN's independant doling of film ratings wasn't enough - that government control and censorship was the only way to ensure that minors wouldn't be willfully corrupted by acts of violence and sex flickering at 24 frames per second on the silver screen. Fukusaku withdrew his appeals, essentially saying that censorship should never have to be a government issue, and promptly told everyone who disliked the movie what he thought of them by shooting several brand new sequences for the 2001 "Special Version" of Battle Royale, which was given a second theatrical release with a bold R-15 certificate added to the new opening title sequence, and a year later announced what would eventually be the 71 year old director's final film: BATTLE ROYALE II, eventually succumbing to cancer on location and leaving the final directoral duties to his assistand director - his son, Kenta Fukusaku.

When Arrow Video released Battle Royale on a region-free Blu-ray set in 2010, I was immediately let down by the final product. The transfer's hazy focus, dull contrast, and utter lack of fine grain left me assuming the worst, and having watched both the original 2000 Theatrical Cut and the 2001 Special Version (incorrectly called a "Director's Cut" on all UK releases), I'm willing to admit I made a mistake. Last year I put my balls on the line and said, with a straight face, "This shit looks upscaled". Though I'd say it again if it weren't for the razor sharp optical credits and occasional high frequency speckling of print damage, I now know I was wrong. Upscaled or not though, the important thing to take from my suspicion is that the Arrow Video Blu-ray release of Battle Royale looks like shit. I wouldn't be surprised if some of this is down to Arrow's usual mediocre encoding, but most of the blame here is on the dated, decade old HDCAM tape that Toei provided in the first place.

Arrow Video, doing what they do best.

At least Arrow got most everything else right: Virtually every bonus feature known to exist is either included on the Blu-rays themselves as upscaled 720p videos, or crammed on a third PAL DVD. Lossless 2.0 and 5.1 audio, with no English dub and generally improved English subtitles. Two extra digipak's bearing gifts were included in the box, and among the bonus pack-ins were a thick ass production booklet, an all new English language comic adaptation of the story, a fold-out poster, a set of glossy postcards, and even a certificate of authenticity just to convince the whole goddamn world that Arrow was the classiest purveyor of B-movie sleaze anywhere on the planet. It's an impressive monster of a box set, I'll give them that, and while I remain disappointed over the video quality I can't fault them for producing a stunning presentation otherwise.

Pre-orders for the box set were so strong that Arrow Video doubled the number from 5,000 to 10,000 - a move that held surprising importance, because once the box set was sold out, Arrow Video's "standard" release was replaced with a Region B locked version with much less in the way of bonus swag! In perhaps a painful stroke of irony the Limited Edition PAL DVD is out of stock, but you can still buy THE LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY for the retail price of £39.99($61.75 + postage) straight from Arrow Video themselves.

Oh right, did I mention that right around the same time Arrow Video was preparing the first ever Battle Royale Blu-ray, this happened? 'Cause it's kind of important.

When the news of "Battle Royale 3D" hitting Japanese Blu-ray this past summer came to light, I wasn't sure what to think. On the one hand, the digital nature of the production all but guaranteed that a remaster was in order. On the other hand, the trailer suggested that some brand new digital elements would be added to push into the audience's gaping face as they stare bug-eyed from behind their pair of plastic glasses just to force the "3D Effect" where there was never meant to be one. For those so inclined, Anchor Bay has threatened to release Battle Royale 3D in North American theaters sometime next year... but we'll see how excited y'all are about that once we're finished with the comparison.

Having performed an exhaustive and, might I add, emotionally painful comparison between the original 2000 cut from Arrow and the 2010 "3D" cut from Toei, I've come to the conclusion that I had every right to be suspicious about Arrow's HD transfer, it not entirely for the right reasons: Battle Royale 3D proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that the Arrow Blu-ray isn't even CLOSE to the level of fidelity the original camera negative was capable of... unfortunately, it's also found a whole bunch of brand new ways to fuck up the experience beyond compare.

Battle Royale 2D (Arrow Video) TOP

Battle Royale 3D (Toei Video) BOTTOM

"I don't understand this... I don't understand any of it!" - Shuya Nanahara

Man, where to even begin? First off, the "3D" cut is a reworked version of the longer Special Version - thankfully minus that eye-rollingly stupid "Reqiuem" reel at the end - which I don't consider to be the stronger of the two cuts, but whatever - that's the Arrow Video version I compared all of this to. Contrast has been manipulated to the point of pretty severe white clipping, but the original transfer was so dark I think it's still a fairly acceptable compromise. Flesh tones are vibrant and lifelike, and blacks look reasonably solid... sometimes, anyway. Detail is improved more often than not, and film grain - though never completely unmolested - peeks through for most of the first half of the film, and the underlying resolution on display has increased DRAMATICALLY for it. While Battle Royale's dated 2D master only offers a marginal improvement over the resolution DVD is capable of, Battle Royale 3D is, in many ways, akin to seeing the film for the first time. You can actually read the numbers on calendar posted on the boys wall under the open window, and even count the number of teeth on Kitano's zipper! When Battle Royale 3D is at its best, the Arrow Video Blu-ray really does look like a faded NTSC upscale by comparison...

Unfortunately, it's not all roses and bloodshed. From the scene where the terrifying teacher - played by Takeshi "Beat" Kitano (ironically named Kitnao, even in the original novel!) storms in on the recently captured classmates, the entire film is treated to what could be the single most horrifying DVNR I have ever seen in my life. I'm not exaggerating - check out the scene of Kitano writing on the chalkboard and you can see a half-dozen ghosted doubles of his arm in the process!

Things can go awry on a scene-by-scene basis, too. As you can see with the delectably sadistic Chiaki Kuriyama jogging, a heavy golden haze filter has been added to a number of scenes to help establish them as being flashbacks. Not that the film was always 100% clear when it was flashing back, but that was kind of the point; the scene with Kuriyama starts off as a pleasant bit of deja vu, and then ends when she reaches up to rub sweat from her neck and feels the cold metal collar around her jugular - waking her from her innocent memories, and reminding her that the game isn't over. The effect is uncomfortably reminiscent to the bloom filter found on Ghost in the Shell 2.0, and it just looks... cheesy. It isn't the worst thing about BR3D - hell, I wish it was! - but it proves how dramatically different the two versions look, even when nothing especially heinous is going on.

And then, of course, there's all this bullshit.

Let's just not talk about these and say we did?

While I'm a bit perplexed by Hollywood's mass adoption of 3D as a way to milk audiences even harder than usual, I'm not completely against it. Films ranging from schlocky, goofy crap like Friday the 13th Part 3D and Comin' At Ya! to legitimately good modern titles like Immortals and Coraline make a use for the technology that immerses the viewer in a way that the same material in 2D simply can't match. It's a whole new frontier using 3D as a dramatic device, and I applaud any director who can shoot a film in 3D and use it as a part of the fabric of the experience instead of just an excuse to throw things at the cameras. I mean fuck, for all the complaining people do about Avatar being an Xbox 360 styled remake of Ferngully: The Last Rainforest (and it totally is), at least Cameron proved that the visual experience can be used to put you in another world entirely. Despite gimmicky history that 3D brings with it, the technology can completely immerse the viewer - to heighten the experience at a fundamental level, and put them in the shoes of the protagonist. For a film that begs them to put themselves in an unthinkable situation - one as invasive and as unsettling as Battle Royale - the potential was there to really make something special out of it.

Sadly, BATTLE ROYALE 3D is the absolute worst sort of abuse of technology. It's tried to take an already good film and make it seem "relevant" by re-releasing it with the latest digital tools in the forefront, but it's only succeeded in making the actual film worse by association, proving the detractors right that the only value 3D has to offer is ridiculous gimmicks being tossed at the viewer's eyeballs. The 2010 3D cut of the film is a fucking joke, and I can't even say it's improved the viewing experience; it's increased resolution has finally proven what a crumby piece of work the Arrow Video Blu-ray was, but I don't think anyone had very much to say in its defense to start with. If you're feeling horribly masochistic and are capable of laughing (instead of wincing) at the obnoxious new CG elements, Toei sells it for ￥7800/$100.12, and of course the release is in Japanese without any English subtitles.

Despite the blurry and faded nature of the Arrow Video Blu-ray box set, it remains the best way to see this film... even if that's more through a lack of notable competition rather than it being particularly good. Anchor Bay announced that they'll be releasing Battle Royale in 2012 to piggyback on the new movie version of "The Hunger Games" in March, an adaptation of an American Sci-Fi novella series that bears an uncanny resemblance to Fukusaku's film. Maybe Anchor Bay will treat the film right and give the original 2000 version the HD restoration it so desperately needs, but if all they wind up offering is the 3D cut, wave it in front of their faces until they're annoyed and then tell them to shove it right back up Toei's ass where it belongs.

Deader By Dawn

2011-11-30T08:44:00.001-05:00

Oh, silly Turkey! Fright Night and The Keep

are not proper poster elements of Evil Dead II...

By now, all of you reading this probably own the Lionsgate 25th anniversary edition of Sam Raimi's EVIL DEAD II. A fusion of extreme gore fueled terror and Three Stooges shenanigans, it easily ranks as one of the top five splatstick horror comedies ever made, and single handedly catapulted Bruce Campbell from "that one pussy who survives in the first Evil Dead flick" to the constantly abused one-liner quipping B-movie icon we know and love today... and wish would stop directing. What? We're all thinking it, damn it!

Certainly Sam Raimi's prior The Evil Dead had a streak of black humor, but there's no doubt in my mind that the film was primarily - as the staff themselves snuck into the end credits - a "grueling terror" film with much of the schlockier moments emerging from the ineptitude that's bound to happen when even talented college kids are tackling their first feature film. Perhaps sensing that the film's sillier elements were its strongest, the sequel embraces them fully, going so far that any pretenses it may have had of being a serious fright film are, quite literally, lopped off at the wrist and then hidden under a dust bin and weighted with a copy of A Farewell to Arms. Though hardly the first gruesome horror-comedy of the modern age - Day of the Dead, An American Werewolf in London, and Basket Case all beat Raimi to the punch of making the graphic violence so over the top it became an intentional joke - it's still easily one of the best fusions of graphic violence and vaudevillian yucks, with only awe-inspiring masterpieces like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, Re-Animator, Braindead, Kakugo no Susume or the entire combined Troma catalog even threatening to topple it as reigning champion.

Original Trailer - Now available in Nth-Gen Vision!

It's at times been accused of remaking the first film, but in reality it only summarizes Shelly's demise because Raimi couldn't legally access footage from his own earlier film. It ranks as some of the most ridiculous make-up effects in the KNB EFX Group's history, but that's not a complaint; the whole film's purpose is to use the tropes of the 70s horror film to make the audience laugh, not scream, so Raimi's on set calls of "bring in the muppet!" couldn't have been any more spot on. The film is an absolute success as dragging the original Evil Dead film's legacy of tree rape and brutal dismemberment through the lens of Tom and Jerry (with substantially more viscera).

This entire film franchise has had more fucking video releases than any one man should legally be allowed to keep track of. So ignoring numerous VHS, Laserdisc and import releases, we've been treated to no less than FOUR noteworthy home video editions in the last decade or so:

* Anchor Bay's 2000 DVD (Digitally Mastered by THX)

- This DVD was also available in a limited edition oversize tin. Goddamn, Anchor Bay...

* Anchor Bay's 2005 "Book of the Dead 2" Divimax DVD

- This comes packaged in a rubber replica of The Necronomicon. It screams!

* Anchor Bay's 2007 Divimax Blu-ray

- Same master as the 2005 Book of the Dead 2 DVD. Uh-oh.

* Lionsgate's 2011 25th Anniversary Blu-ray

- The version we'll look at today.

Now let's not mince words on this one: The 2000 "THX DVD" was a phenomenal presentation for a DVD release. Color timing was spot on, there was nothing in the way of offensive digital manipulation, and the correct 1.85:1 framing left the inclusion of the 4:3 open-matte version slightly redundant - but kudos for slapping it on there anyway. Compression wasn't ideal due to bitrates under 5 Mb/s, but it was still a reference release ten years ago.

Now direct your attention to THIS COMPARISON between the 2000 "THX DVD" and the 2005 "Book of the Dead 2" DVD. Notice anything wrong? Like the textures in the background missing in the first shot, or Bruce's face becoming a faded waxy mask in the third? These are the unfortunate side effects of digital noise and grain removal tools. Mrs. Kentai, being the awesome lady that she is, bought me the overpriced squishy BOTD2 edition, only for me to usurp her thoughtful gift months later with the THX DVD, once I found it for peanuts in a bargain bin. Yes, it was that disappointing... worse yet, it was one of Anchor Bay's "Divimax" titles, the name they gave to their HD restoration process, so when they announced a Blu-ray in 2007, I think everyone within ear shot expected the worst... and man, we got it. The initial Anchor Bay Blu-ray was such a smeared, washed out, and thoroughly rotten affair that the THX DVD is - in many ways - a less awful way to experience the film. Yes, I realize what I've just said: the 480i THX DVD was preferable to the 1080p Blu-ray, for the mere fact that at least the DVD's shortcomings weren't enhancements added by an overzealous attempt to "fix" a mid '80s splatter film by removing the grain and pumping up the gamma to 'brighten up' the intentionally dark film.

So here we are in 2011. Once again, Evil Dead II has a new home video release. I'm glad to say that I am never, ever going to feel compelled to buy it again. And I fucking mean it this time.

Let's start with the new 2K transfer and see the results compared with the Divimax Blu-ray, courtesy of those cool cats at Caps-A-Holic: HOLY SHIT, THAT'S AN IMPROVEMENT!! Honestly, there's perhaps never been a more literal example of a Blu-ray wiping its digital ass with the prior HD release. The difference between this and the Anchor Bay BD - forget any DVDs you're hoarding! - is simply night and day. Just look at the pretty pictures, take your time and enjoy the view. Thankfully, there isn't much dour to say: Levels look natural and film-like, without any major clipping or black crush. Bitrates are through the roof and compression artifacts or banding are a total non-issue. There's very minor specs through the print, but none of it's especially distracting or even noteworthy - you'll know you're looking at 35mm, and it suggests that they've done very little to scrub the print clean. In the scheme of things it looks damn good, and in my eyes, Evil Dead 2: The 25th Anniversary Edition deserved no less.

That said, I do suspect that there's been a thin layer of noise reduction applied here - or maybe a similar temporal process (stabilization? deflicker?) that's slightly dulled the grain structure, giving the texture of the film itself a slightly hazy look in motion - not so much in stills, which isn't a bad thing. We also have the following quote from Michael Felsher, the Blu-ray's executive producer on the matter, which doesn't do much dissuade my opinions:

"I'll admit its hard for me to be objective in some ways, but having just viewed the new transfer of EVIL DEAD II for the first time, I have to say this lays to waste any version of the film you've ever seen before. Lionsgate really stepped up to the plate for this one. Deep rich colors, natural healthy film grain, sparing use of noise reduction, and practically blemish free. This is the first time the original negative was used to create a home video transfer for this title, and it shows!"

It does indeed, sir. Having seen a number of recent Lionsgate BD titles (The Crow and Pulp Fiction spring to mind) I'm starting to think this minor level of filtering is just standard practice for their encoder? What with every effort made to ensure that the new HD master is as high quality as possible, it'd be odd to apply even a minor pass of noise reduction - unless that minor temporal smoothing is just what their AVC encoder tends to do? The film's reliance on dim lighting, soft focus and optical effects meant it was never going to look razor sharp to start with, so this is less me complaining about the disc looking bad, and more me scratching my head and wondering why it looks that way. It doesn't have obvious static grain or temporal smearing, so perhaps this is all in my head? At the very least, the Audio Video Science forum is full of other people who are seeing the exact same thing, so if I am crazy it's one of those weird mass-hysterias where dozens of unrelated people are going crazy at the exact same time.

If you're on the fence here, don't read too much into this technical niggling I'm doing. Just like the Rurouni Kenshin Blu-rays I spoke of earlier this year, I don't think the disc looks "poor" - far from it! If I made it a habit of doling out numbers for discs this'd probably be in the High 8s, while that earlier Anchor Bay atrocity would rot somewhere in the 4s. It ain't bad, that's for sure. It's just a little odd looking, and I wish I could put my finger on why.

That said, I'm not nearly as impressed by the audio. Don't misunderstand, I have little doubt that the all new 24-bit DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is a reasonably accurate recreation of the theatrical experience, but with added clarity and some largely warranted directionality. Despite being released in 1987 and Dolby Stereo having more or less become the worldwide standard in theaters, the original mix for Evil Dead II seems to have been a vanilla mono track, and it's low-budget origins show through to a fault with this slightly dull, unimpressive sounding track. There's substantially less background hiss on the new Blu-ray than there was of the 2005 DVD, but I think Anchor Bay's earlier surround mix pumped everything - music, dialog and sound effects - to the point of booming homogeneity, and as such things like the switch in levels from on set dialog to post-dubbing ("Workshed!" springs to mind.) became all the more noticeable on Blu-ray. There's nothing wrong with the remix that I could spot, it just shows off the seams in the original sound design in a way no previous digital release has. As is so often the case with vintage independent horror films it doesn't sound very good, objectively speaking... it just kind of sounds like Evil Dead II, and that's how it'll always sound. There's no original mono track for comparison, but there wasn't for any of the prior DVD/BD releases of the film either, so whatever.

The star attraction in the Bonus Features department is the all new Swallowed Souls: The Making of Evil Dead II, a 98 minute making-of feature produced by Red Shirt Pictures that runs 14 minutes longer than the actual film(!), with talking heads from virtually everyone involved in the making of the movie - well you know, except for Sam goddamn Raimi, which seems just a little weird. Despite having literally gone right back into splatstick territory after having finished his Spider-Man trilogy and having both overseen the new HD transfers and recorded a new commentary for The Evil Dead, his presence is sorely lacking on these new bonus features and he has yet to have been mentioned once in reference to the transfer work. It's a little strange that he'd show so much affection for The Evil Dead and then wash his hands of the sequel a year later,

Now don't get me wrong, I love me some Evil Dead II and it's nice to see it get a polished and focused behind-the-scenes documentary after years of random on-set photos with some lacking-in-narration context. But somehow this all seems just a little... excessive. Maybe with Sam on tap, it wouldn't seem that way? I'll watch the damn thing, make no mistake, it just strikes me as a little over the top. There's also 30 minutes of KNB behind-the-scenes camcorder footage including deleted scenes once only available on shoddy gray-area bootleg tapes, which is pretty goddamn awesome. Also, 8 minutes of location scouting. Not to be a ponce to Red Shirt for their dedication or anything, but do people actually like these things? I always try to watch them, being an OCD crazy person and all that, but I can't remember not being bored out of my skull with any of these clips that are always "Here's a building. 25 years ago, it looked like this. Now it's... basically the same except, except it's got nicer green roof tiles and there's a Taco Bell next to it instead of a gas station." I'm sure this one's as good as any other, but is there really a demand for them?

The extras train hasn't pulled into the station quite yet: We also get Anchor Bay's old "Behind the Screams" and "The Gore The Merrier" DVD featurettes, and of course the LD Sam Raimi/Bruce Campbell commentary track, the original theatrical trailer and a host of still galleries. Seriously, the only reason you might have to hang on to your THX DVD is the 4:3 open-matte version, but unlike the original Evil Dead, nobody has ever really questioned ED2's 1.85:1 aspect ratio as being the ideal way to see the film. The old 4:3 print certainly has more vertical information, but that doesn't by default mean any of that information is vital to the framing.

If there was one real purists complaint to be leveled at this release, it'd likely be the lack of a pair of wires, scrubbed back to the beyond through digital magic - one of them yanking Bruce Campbell out of a shattering windshield, and another rocketing a rubber eye out of Ted Raimi's skull into someone's screaming mouth. These minor alterations were actually on the BOTD2 'Divimax' master as well, so we can only assume they're something Raimi himself has requested. He's had a hand in fussing around with the Evil Dead trilogy on multiple occasions in the last ten years - removing a crew member here, or a spotlight there - but they've always been fairly inoffensive, technical gaffes. Don't worry, Ted Raimi's stop-motion transformation into a skeletal ghoul hasn't been replaced with CGI or anything! If you want to see the wire sticking out of the bottom of the flying eyeball you'll have to hang onto your THX DVD, but I really can't say I'm all that irked about it personally.

The 25th Anniversary Blu-ray is literally selling for less than twelve bucks everywhere. Amazon, Wal-Mart, Deep Discount, your mom's house and so on. It's "Region A" locked for those that need to know that sort of thing, and comes in a typical blue keepcase. Don't bother waiting for the 30th Anniversary, Evil Dead II isn't going to get any better or cheaper than this. If you like the flick - heck, even if you hate it - there's little reason to hold back or wait for anything better to come along. Lionsgate has done the film proud, and I can safely retire every single prior release forever. Groovy.

Cut A Centipede In Half

2011-11-27T17:23:00.001-05:00

Having had a brief look at the UK home video edit of HUMAN CENTIPEDE 2 [FULL SEQUENCE], I can confirm that - though still heavily cut by the BBFC for its "18" Certificate - there's at least two sequences present on the British version not available on the North American "On Demand" cut. Don't go reaching for your Mastercards so fast, boys - while it includes some footgae not available locally, that comes at the cost of over 30 cuts when compared to the US version, and there are actually jump cuts in BOTH of the "extended" UK scenes, so it's not as if cobbling the two versions together would recreate the uncut version anyway.

Without anything more solid at hand, here's the runtimes of the two versions floating around, minus warnings and dead space at the end of the credits of the former:

ON-DEMAND VERSION: 1:27:33

UK BLU-RAY VERSION: 1:27:51

The BBFC website says that the original, rejected version ran 1:26:50 - but that was on video, which in the UK implies a PAL runtime that's about 4% shorter than its theatrical incarnation would be. All we know for sure anymore is that the UK DVD is two and a half minutes shorter than its submitted length - roughly 2:37 shorter on Blu-ray. With that in mind we can assume that the complete, uncensored, 24fps runtime for the film is between 90 and 91 minutes - don't forget that runtimes are fickle bastards if studio logos or dead space at the end of the credits are included, so it's difficult to say anything conclusively without having an uncut version on hand to compare everything with... all I know for sure at this point is that the UK version restores two sequences not present on the On-Demand version, while the On-Demand version has numerous sequences cut from the UK version.

To make matters even more frustrating, there appears to be an alternate take to smooth over the big scene missing from the On-Demand cut! Without too many blatant spoilers (for now), I'll say that this shot is exclusive to the US release, and that the version submitted to the BBFC plays out VERY differently:

This shot is less than 3 seconds long, but it does leave me curious if the On-Demand version has any other footage not included in the UK Blu-ray that aren't directly related to all of those BBFC jump-cuts? Maybe if the Australian Classification Board bows to pressure and bans this after having cleared it once before (just like they did for A SERBIAN FILM), I'll be stuck being the asshole to provide a side-by-side edit report.

~~Frustratingly, there seems to be no US video release date in sight.~~ With a due-date on Valentine's Day and a listed runtime of 88 minutes, we'll just have to wait and see what happens. Not that I expect IFC to grow a big enough pair to release the complete, original version of the film, barbed wire included, but it'll be nice to know for sure...

This is Bullsquid

2011-11-23T18:44:00.003-05:00

Yeah, I just Blu'd myself. What's the squidding problem?

Forgive a moment of unfocused and incessant disgust... it's been a long ass week, and I'm just in the sort of mood where I'd like to see the world kicked in the balls. Repeatedly.

So, here's a fun little story: Back in August, someone asked Media Blasters' Faceplace if there was any chance of seeing the 2010 comedy anime SQUID GIRL/侵略！イカ娘 on Blu-ray, and not just DVD. As you can see, Media Blasters' public relations guru and CEO, John Sirabella, replied with a pretty straight forward negative:

"Not sure about Bakuman but right now I do not see a Blu Ray of Squid Girl."

The first DVD came out at the tail end of September, and the second DVD is due to ship the first week of December. I was ready to shrug it off as a sign of the times; Blu-ray replication is still expensive and anime consumers willing to pay for it are few and far between, so the fact that this title was destined for an SD only release was pretty much the natural result of the dwindling mar--

Oh wait! How silly of me. RightStuf announced the SQUID GIRL SEASON 1 BLU-RAY, just last week.

So let me get this straight: They're taking pre-orders after lying to their public and convincing them to spend $25 (minus the usual discounts) on the first DVD? And it's coming out, like, 3 fucking months after the second DVD - not a year, not six months, but three?!

I realize that a history of substandard quality on DVD and delaying even your few decent Blu-ray releases by anywhere from 3 months to a fucking year has left even the most dedicated of Media Blasters employees with a minimal sense of shame or pride, but to announce it as coming out 3 months after the second DVD - much less announcing it AFTER he's told the public to go buy the DVD, 'cause there ain't no fucking Blu-ray in sight? For real-real?

That's a dick move. Even for Media Blasters.

We Gotta Blu-ray (Part 2)

2011-11-17T00:30:00.018-05:00

ON THE LAST EPISODE OF KENTAI FILMS VS DRAGON BALL Z:

Kentai spilled his guts like a crying little girl over how much a cartoon about panties and punching aliens changed his life. What a loser! Can he redeem himself with a thorough and scientific review of the new FUNimation Level 1.1 Blu-ray?

BLU-RAY IS THE HOPE OF THE UNIVERSE!!

FUNimation, You Guys Are... All Right?

The final Dragon Box DVD set has been available for only a month. The last 23 episodes of Dragon Ball Kai have yet to even get a firm release date on home video in the states. It's truly a weird time to decide that RIGHT FUCKIN' NOW is the best possible time to release the first 17 episodes of Dragon Ball Z on Blu-ray, but I suppose a combination of the looming holiday shopping spree and the perceived thread of the "original" '89 version of Dragon Ball Z being seen as irrelevant with the completion of Dragon Ball Kai make their timing as smart as any...

Before I dissect the release for it's literal quality, I need to talk about the "Level X.Y" system. On the packaging they show a breakdown of what each set will contain, breaking DBZ down into 18 bite-sized Blu-ray chunks with 16-17 episodes each. Level 1.1 comes out on November and Level 1.2 comes out in December, with no set date for 2.1/2.2 (as of this writing, anyway). FUNimation is still performing this restoration work, and likely they will be for the next several years, so breaking them down into smaller chunks with a brief gap in between every two is actually pretty smart; it gives the illusion of these sets being inexplicably cheap, but by breaking those 18 sets into 9 designated "Levels" with a small gap between each half, they've given FUNimation more time to restore the show and buyers' wallets a little bit of breathing room. At the end of the day the MSRP is $45 for about 17 episodes, but with the magic of Amazon and big box retailers you can get them for less than half that... all things considered, I paid $1.25 an episode for "Level 1.1". Having experienced the pain of buying three episodes on a VHS tape for $20, and later four episodes on DVD for $30, I can't help but see this release as a damned good deal even at full retail. Obviously it's not as cheap as the widescreen DVD "Season" sets, no, but frankly that's akin to saying that a fresh cut of fillet mignon isn't as cheap as a McDonalds cheeseburger.

The packaging itself is fine. Gokuu, an orange stripe on the side, a bunch of goofy text hiding in the background including the cringe-worthy "Doragon Boru Zetto" romanization that not even the saddest weeaboo has used since '99, and English Goku's "I am the hope of the Universe!" speech that more or less signified FUNimation's upheaval of the English dub circa Cartoon Network's "Season 3" from around the same time period. I won't call this a nostalgia release, but they are tugging on shit that fans of both sides of the linguistic fence will recognize, and it's brilliantly evil. The discs are packed inside of a standard double BD keepcase inside a nonchalant cardboard sleeve, and there's nice little Chris Sabat/Vegeta profile card with a printed 'signature' inside for the dub fans - which seems silly, since Vegeta doesn't land until "Level 1.2" AND he gets the cover for that release. It's not exactly a classy chipboard affair like the Dragon Boxes, but other than the tacky prose floating behind the star of the show, it's perfectly fine.

Bonus features are limited, but include the expected "Creditless" Openings and Endings - which is almost completely redundant, for reasons I'll get into at some point. Aside from trailers for other FUNimation titles, the only real bonus feature - and it's short length perhaps belies its importance - is DRAGON BALL Z: FILM TO BLU-RAY (7:48), essentially an interview with the FUNimation video restoration staff, and the colorist who oversaw the FUNimation HD telecine... again.

Redemption time, come on - tell your friends!

"I was asked this past year to re-color correct and re-scan Dragon Ball Z. But in order to make that work we have to, obviously, find a starting point to try to match the colors of the film as the, uh, creative guys, intended it to be.

So what we did is, I got a hold of our telcine analysis films, called TAF, and what we do is we align the telecine to match the color information - the grayscale - and the detail of that film."

There's another bit that bears quoting, and you'll see why shortly:

"Now the prints at that time - you had a lot of grain, but in standard def[inition] the grain was kind of smushed over because you didn't really "see" the grain. And now we're taking to HD, it's looking further into the film we're seeing more resolution, and one of the byproducts for resolution in any film is grain - grain is what gives us the resolution.

That's probably one of the most important things about this project is - trying to be as true, and honest, and do the proper "reproduction", if you will, of this film... I feel like we've accomplished making it look as true as it could possibly look."

Keep in mind this is the same guy who, five years ago, recorded this featurette where he defends cropping the series to 16:9, using automated grain/dirt removal tools, and "performing little to no color correction" on the prints themselves!

Everything that FUNimation did for the '06 DVD Remaster?

They basically did the exact opposite for the '11 Blu-ray.

Perhaps inadvertently, this new 7 minute piece has answered a lot of technical questions I've had from the very start regarding FUNimation's source materials and film lab. As you can just barely make out in the video itself, the telecine device appears to be a Spirit Datacine SDC 2000 - the same machine they used five years prior - and the 16mm prints themselves being scanned appear to be 16mm negatives, suggesting that FUNimation has second-generation Internegative prints, not third generation positive prints as I'd long suspected... but the prints they show in the previous restoration featurette of the OP footage appear to be a positive. It's really not enough information to go by definitively - no nice long shots of a film can saying "Master Positive" like Criterion showed off for Godzilla - but it'll suffice to say FUNimation has a mix of Positive and Negative elements at their disposal.

Why is all of this important? Every generation away from "Generation 0" (that is the, original camera negatives) introduces additional grain, print damage, color degradation and other analog woes, so while FUNimation has done literally everything possible with their G2-G3 prints, it'd be physically impossible to make them look as good as the potential lurking on Toei's G0 negatives. Now that's not to say Toei isn't pretty good at fucking up negatives all on their own, but perhaps that's another discussion...

Four Perfect Strangers... One Perfect Restoration?

The rest of the video talks about the restoration of each episode, admittedly in very broad and basic terms - dirt removal, splice fixes, flicker reduction, gate weave removal, all of that good stuff that prevents HD transfers from looking like chewed up grindhouse prints. There are numerous split-screen examples, some of which are legitimately impressive. It's a shame they keep cutting the damned thing like it's a super badass heist movie or something, because these four people pictured are the life-blood of this restoration. They ARE Level X.Y, when you get right down to it, and loathe as I am to give Fukunaga's crew any real credit, FUNimation restored the show the right way this time, and it's no small task for a single 90 minute film, much less 291 TV episodes. This involves manually painting away all debris and stains on the print, stabilizing frame jitter with complex algorithms... they basically do the same shit I do for free, except they have much better hardware AND they're getting salaries for it. I won't say I envy them - doing this stuff right is hard and often thankless work - but I have a lot of real respect for the work they're doing, and I have to say that, by and large, it's top notch stuff. Oh yes, it IS better than the similar "frame by frame" restoration that Toei gave the Dragon Boxes some eight years ago, but considering we already have the Dragon Boxes in North America, I guess it... kind of had to be.

The only part of that caused me to raise a brow was the following quote from one of the four FUNimation in-house video engineers:

"After the steady pass, the last couple of filters that we apply - the first of which helps reduce the flicker that's evident in our print, the second process is the grain and noise - in order to make this the truest representation possible of the original master."

...I'm sorry, I must have had a bit of crazy in my ear. Did you just admit, after everything even that idiot colorist Franko said about "grain being the resolution of film"*, which is absolutely a true statement by the way, that the final pass is a "grain and noise" pass? The audio actually cuts out after the word 'noise' - but the image speaks for itself:

IT'S A MOTHER FUCKING GRAIN REMOVAL PASS!!

I fully understand that DVNR has some legitimate uses in the post-production world. For one thing, a light pass of noise reduction can help an encoder not create ugly quant-based artifacts like macroblocking, and with FUNimation squeezing 9 episodes on each disc, you're getting an average bitrate of about 22-23 Mb/s, or just slightly higher than half of Blu-ray's full potential. Another issue is that because FUNimation is using second generation prints - rather than the camera negatives, or even new fine-grain interpositives - there are "extra" layers of grain on the material that aren't necessarily the most desired levels of grain available.

The DVNR isn't anywhere NEAR as destructive as it was on the '06 DVD remaster, and as we'll soon see it's actually left a very thick layer of relatively natural looking 16mm grain through this 17 episode set. Had they not said anything I probably would have given FUNimation the benefit of the doubt and assumed that the "weird" look to the grain - a slightly uneven, "patchy" look you could say - was merely the result of their compression, not intentional filtering. A shame they had to open their mouths and essentially spell out that they were doing something even their idiot colorist says, point blank, is a bad idea... but, fuck it. At least they aren't lying to us about it, I guess?

...did I speak too soon?!

The restoration special also includes the following comparison between the Dragon Box and Level 1.1 - cool, right? It would be except for one little problem - it's bullshit, for a number of reasons. First off, see that little oval-shaped tag in the bottom-right hand corner hiding underneath the "HD RESTORED" box? That's an EIRIN Certificate number, which are only given to theatrical movies approved for public exhibition in Japan. So, FUNi's "Clean" OP is from an archival print of the first Dragon Ball Z movie, or 'The Dead Zone', NOT an archival print that would have been used for the TV series. Secondly, the Dragon Box footage they're using has credits laid on top of it, which in 1989 would have been optically printed onto the film, causing further analog degradation of the print. Finally, the opening/ending footage would have been animated on 35mm and then resized to 16mm after the episode titles were applied - the larger format film makes including credits easier, after all. The opening footage is, in terms of real-world resolution, the absolute worst point of comparison FUNimation could have chosen. A random scene from the middle of any episode would be MUCH more revealing in wither or not the FUNi HD remaster is a big step up from the Toei SD Dragon Boxes.

If that's the game FUNimation wants to play, fuck 'em. Kentai's here to make some REAL 1:1 comparisons using the American Dragon Box transfers. This is as real and accurate a comparison between the Dragon Box R1 DVD and Level 1.1 Blu-ray as it's going to get. No YouTube split-screens compressed down to 6 Mb/s, no 35mm footage shenanigans, and no goddamn smushy JPGs made without a clear concept of how to accurately represent the source. Just a flat-out old fashioned A/B Blu-ray vs DVD slugfest... just as Toriyama would have intended.

Samples were taken more or less at random from episodes 1-4. The Dragon Box images have been level-corrected to IRE0, resized to 1440x1080 in Photoshop CS3 using Bicubic, and then pasted into a 1920x1080 frame. The Blu-ray images are UNTOUCHED, saved as lossless PNG.

LEVEL 1.1 BLU-RAY On Top, DRAGON BOX DVD on Bottom:

Whew! Posting that many comparisons is enough to drive me crazier than usual...

*THE GOOD*

As you can see, the Blu-ray release might not be perfect, but still stands head and shoulders above the Dragon Box DVD in terms of image quality. Some (but not all) of the most notable improvements are as follows:

* The Blu-ray transfer has more of the frame exposed on all four sides

* The Blu-ray has much better outline definition and more visible 16mm grain

* The Blu-ray has substantially less gate-weave than the DVD

* The Blu-ray has, scene to scene, less print damage than the DVD

All of these are, in no uncertain terms, positive changes compared to the Dragon Box transfers. Broadly speaking, Dragon Ball Z looks fantastic in HD, and a hell of a lot better than I ever expected to see it outside of Dragon Ball Kai. Grain Removal processes or not, the show looks sharp as a tack and there's plenty of gritty 16mm texture left over from whatever filters FUNi has subjected their restoration to... I honestly expect that plenty of viewers who don't objectively love seeing film grain will be a little turned off by the way the new Blu-ray looks, but lucky for them virtually all HDTV's have built in DVNR settings they can experiment with, and lucky for us, FUNimation has clearly used a fairly light touch on the temporal dial. There's still some gate weave, flicker and dirt embedded into the prints, but compared to the Dragon Box, the results are still impressive.

One must keep in mind that this is a restoration of a 16mm low-budget TV series from multi-generational elements, not a Disney styled "trace the original frames, average in the backgrounds and let the computer sort it out" affair. Being able to literally see the hand-crafted flaws and gritty film texture without an excessive level of damage is something I personally adore. Mind you it's not as crisp and clean as Dragon Ball Kai, but Kai is a combination of the 16mm negatives, heavy handed digital tampering and brand new cuts of digital animation. Dragon Ball Z can't, and perhaps shouldn't look as "pretty" and modern as Dragon Ball Kai does. Dragon Ball Z has been preserved with just enough of the original production warts that there's no question we're looking at a title produced in 1989, but I think the minor level of analog issues baked into the materials only add to the authenticity of the experience. Yes, the show could still look better - but only if the original negatives were used, and given the same level of frame by frame hand-holding. FUNimation's given us what they've got, and they aren't exactly pretty, but somehow that make seeing them in HD absolutely gorgeous. It was David Lynch who, a few years ago, when questioned about the move from celluloid to DV and High Definition video, so eloquently said that "film is beautiful". Wither or not you agree with him will have every level of impact on how much you enjoy this presentation.

What's less factual and more a matter of opinion are the accuracy of the colors. FUNimation hasn't exactly been shy in calling the "Level" Blu-ray release the original director-approved color scheme, but how did they come to that conclusion without Daisuke Nishio's involvement? The answer Franko gives us is the existance of Telecine Analysis Film, essentially celluloid test patterns that give a colorist the Kodak-approved "official" range of color that should be available on the appropriate film stock. It's not a be-all end-all point of reference like, say, a director approved Answer Print or actually having the film makers themselves on hand to look the process over since all sorts of things can go wrong between shooting and the final product, but it's a substantially better starting point than letting Franko just eyeball it and make shit up on the fly, which, by the way, is exactly what they did five years ago.

"But aren't the Dragon Boxes perfect?" you ask. Well, even old-school Japanese fans who have vintage first-generation recordings of the original broadcast as a point of reference AREN'T CONVINCED. Even by using the incredibly scientific method I like to call "holding the DVD cover up next to the screenshot", it becomes easy to see that the Dragon Box - while certainly better than anything FUNimation has ever given us before! - is visibly oversaturated. Gokuu's orange gi practically glows with firey passion, and his flesh has an uncomfortably pink hue. Also take note of the sky and the shading of the clouds in the last few screenshots - on the Dragon Box it's an unappealing shade of teal, while on the new Blu-ray transfer it's a much more neutral shade of blue with happy, fluffy white clouds. For the last several images in particular, I can't say with any level of historic certainty that the Blu-ray transfer is "better", but I know it looks a heck of a lot more naturalistic. If I had to guess (and you just know I do), I'd say that Toei pumped the saturation up on their DVD transfers, likely to give the image just a little more "pop" and make Dragon Ball Z look as bright and appealing as it could, regardless of the damage it might have been doing to the colors as a whole.

Where it gets confusing are the caps from the first episode. Check out Raditz' hand, or the shot of Gokuu jumping through the trees. Once more the DVD looks oversaturated, but here the Blu-ray looks too dark, obscuring shadow detail and clipping whites, similar to someone adjusting the contrast on a TV set. That's a little strange, isn't it? That the first episode looks notably worse than the next 16 or so? Well, according to episode #0278 of the Daizenshuu EX podcast, the FUNimation print of Episode 1 - which has been used since the original American broadcast in '96 - has always looked worse than the rest of the first "season" (Japanese episodes 1-36)! Their best guess is that FUNimation's print for the first episode, for whatever reason, is an extra generation removed from the rest of their initial run of Toei sourced 16mm prints. Is this true? I don't know, and Mike "VegettoEX" himself admits he isn't sure either... but for only a single episode to look substantially different, and for every prior incarnation of it to have had the same problems, it's as good an explanation as any I could theorize. Even with these contrast based anomolies the Blu-ray is a marked improvement over the Dragon Box, so while it's possible that some future episodes will look worse than others you can be reasonably assured that the Blu-ray quality will continue to topple the DVD.

The audio is actually even trickier one to categorize. I'll point everyone to THE FULL DISCUSSION on the Daizenshuu EX message board, and summarize it as such: the original broadcast of Dragon Ball Z used the master "Cinetape" audio format. The Dragon Box and new Level Blu-ray are based on the optical soundtracks matched to their respective 16mm prints, and optical soundtracks simply aren't of an especially high quality to start with. It's assumed that Toei hasn't kept the Cinetape masters, though this has never been confirmed. In any case, the DTS-HD Master Audio (16-bit) for the original Japanese and two English tracks - one in 5.1 surround with the original Japanese score, and one in 2.0 stereo with the American broadcast music. You'll have to forgive me for considering the English dub for this show a no-man's land, but the Japanese audio... well, it sounds about as good as it ever has on home video. It's muffled and a little overly bass heavy, but it doesn't sound bad for being a vintage mono mix sourced from optical elements. It's been preserved as well as it can be, under the circumstances, so I can't imagine anyone remotely familiar with Dragon Ball Z's Japanese mix being too upset by the quality we get on Blu-ray. Much like the variable contrast and heavy grain on the video end, the limiting factor isn't FUNimation's work, it's the audio elements themselves.

*THE BAD*

Of course, this set almost couldn't exist without some caveats. Assuming the color balance is right, what did FUNi lose going from the Dragon Boxes to Blu-ray?

* OP footage is "clean"/ED footage has only main staff and English cast

* Japanese title cards have been replaced with English episode titles

* Next Episode Previews are not included

Remember how I said the inclusion of the "textless" songs was a moot point? Yeah, there's no credits during the show's opening itself - not even token "Animation by Toei, English version by FUNimation" or anything like that. You just straight up get the clean version of Cha-La Head Cha-La, which is fine, I guess. English credits are provided over Detekoi Tobikiri ZENKAI POWER, which includes only the main English dub cast and none of the Japanese actors. Main credits (producer, director, composer, etc) are given their due, as are many of FUNimation's staffers. Frankly my kanji knowledge is piss poor anyway, so while I do appreciate having things like the original cast list and episode directors on the Dragon Box, actually "reading" them requires a lot of squinting and kanji look-up on my part. It does make including the same exact OP footage as "bonus features" a little silly, but not anything to get upset about. And before I forget to mention it, the first opening is actually from the first Dragon Ball Z theatrical movie - but not to worry! The footage is absolutely identical, barring the EIRIN Code number on the title card. The second opening won't appear until "Level 1.2", so I can't say yet if that'll be sourced from one of the movies as of this writing.

The replaced title cards, however, make me wince every single time I see them. Now I KNEW they would be there, and I guess if you watch the show dubbed in English - which is likely how a great number of consumers do - it's not at all an issue. If, however, you watch the show in Japanese you'll be treated to seeing THE NEW THREAT on-screen, while the narrator and subtitles call the episode "Mini-Goku is a Sheltered Boy! I am Gohan." It's jarring, but not outside of the norm for an American anime release, and is likely one of those stipulations that Toei would want to see in place anyway to prevent Japanese fans from satisfying their immense Dragon Ball lust with "cheap" American imports... not that anyone on the fence can't probably download a decent quality 720p rip of these transfers anyway, I suppose. What makes this doubly frustrating is that we know FUNi has access to the title cards because the single DVDs from '99 or so had them as an alternate video angle! In a horrible twist of fate, FUNimation gave up the alternate angles right when they got their shit together and figured out how to encode DVDs that didn't look like pixelated asshole, so while it was (at the time) something of an acceptable loss, it does suck to know that I have the original title card on DVD and now have these on Blu-ray.

Speaking of which, the Next Episode Previews - or "NEP", as fans more hardcore and jargon loving than even myself have come to call them - are MIA, too. Not that this should be a surprise; it's been pretty well documented that nobody outside of Japan got the previews on vintage 16mm elements, and the only reason the FUNimation broadcast version had them was because FUNimation basically created new previews on their own. I actually like the way the previews were put together, since they'd always have Nozawa playing Gokuu/Gohan and giving an in-character summary of the events to come, but they're always non-essential bits of footage we have from the next episode anyway, so it's not a big loss. I'd have loved to see them included solely so I could hold the Blu-ray up as having usurped the Dragon Boxes, but I can't say I'm weeping tears of blood over their loss.

And what of the technical prowess of FUNimation's encoding? It's on a regular basis that I diss a release for poor compression or wonky audio and all sorts of similar issues, and I have little reason to hold back on this one. To be perfectly honest, I'm split down the middle on the encode: With an average bitrate of roughly 22-23 Mb/s (individual episode depending), the transfer is a major improvement over the DVD, but is perhaps unexceptional as a Blu-ray. The image of Raditz' hand gripping the side of his space pod should tell you everything you need to know; the image is consistently "grainy" to be sure, but it's also prone to pretty blatant macroblocking and patchy break-up when the grain overpowers that relatively meager bitrate. The only saving grace is that, because the show is consistently covered in a thick layer of grain, the macroblocks tend to "blend in" to the moving layers of analog movement better than screenshots can properly show. The artifacts are there, and if you're sensitive to MPEG-4 blocking you'll likely see them without too much of a struggle, but they're substantially easier to pick out when you hit the pause button than they are when it's actually playing at 24 frames a second.

*THE BLU-RAY*

I honestly wasn't sure what to make of FUNimation's announcement that their Blu-ray Remaster would be a brand new 4:3 scan from their archival elements with a 'real' frame by frame remaster... should I be excited that they're making up for their butchery of the "16:9 HD Remastered" Season DVD sets? Appalled that they were announcing them before either the Dragon Box or Dragon Ball Kai releases were even finished? I'm still not sure how I "feel" about this set sitting on my desk, but I can tell you that it looks and sounds pretty goddamn good, and it was surprisingly cheap. Exactly where on the "Owning Dragon Ball Z" spectrum you fall under should probably dictate how you treat this release, though:

Are you an OCD videophile who doesn't even want to touch a DVD anymore? Get it now. You're only fooling yourself by imagining that Toei's 2003 Digibetas with ghosting and oversaturated colors are "good enough".

Do you only own the "Season" widescreen DVDs and think they look "okay"? Skip it. This release is simply not for you, unless you want to empty out the Season DVDs and use them as ninja stars... which, actually, sounds kind of fun, doesn't it?

Have you been holding off on the series for too goddamn long? Consider buying the first Dragon Box as a reference of what you're actually missing, and then buy this as a litmus test. The second Dragon Box is already selling for $200 on Amazon, so your window to snatch up the whole show for MSRP or less has basically closed behind you.

Already own all 7 Dragon Boxes and are considering this release for the upgraded video? Well, how much shelf space have you got? The Dragon Ball Kai "Season" box set was almost the same price as buying Parts 1 and 2 together anyway, so unless you can't stand the thought of waiting between volumes or you absolutely need to keep a smaller footprint on your DVD shelf, there's probably not much incentive to wait another year to get "The Complete Level 1". That said, if you're just doing it to make FUNimation wait for your money after being such a dick about announcing this release before the last Dragon Box even came out, I can't say I'd blame you.

The Blu-ray has some niggling little annoyances, but on the whole I think this is by far the best looking and sounding presentation of "The Greatest Action Cartoon Of All Time" we've ever had. In the forseeable future, this is as good as it's going to get, and while I'm not convinced it's the best thing I've ever put my meager finances towards, I find myself oddly satisfied with the set sitting next to my Dragon Boxes. Dragon Ball Z in High Definition is a delicious treat for someone who cut his geek-teeth on (at times) literally unwatchable VHS tapes he bought back before eBay was a publicly traded company, and while I still can feel the aftershocks of that boundless rage that consumed me when FUNimation's initial "HD Remaster"came to light... well, that's all in the past. These sets, though a couple steps removed from ideal, are pretty fucking decent.

History does tend to repeat itself, I know, and I have little doubt that at some point before "Level 9.2" is released Toei will announce their own epic restoration of the series for Blu-ray... but how long will it take? Will it be caked in detail-smearing DVNR like the Galaxy Express films? Will you be willing to pay Japanese prices if their restoration is immaculate? The R2 Dragon Box release set Japanese fans back 100,000 yen each - that'd be $2,600 with today's exchange rate - and I can't imagine a new High Definition release would be any cheaper. FUNi's release will finish off with a retail price of about $810, and if you're a smart shopper odds are you'll get it for close to half that price.

Besides, we NEED that money. For bourbon.

So, there you have it. Pigs have flown, Hell has frozen over, and FUNimation has created a High Definition version of Dragon Ball Z that eclipses the Dragon Boxes... I'd say more, but it's clear the world is about to end, so I'm going to make peace with my family, eat a whole bunch of gummy bears, and have exactly as much sex as I can before the world simply ceases to exist. Because this, dear friends, is surely a sign of the end of days...

Unless, of course, the world keeps on spinning. In which case I'll probably be back sometime later on in the week.

-SPARKING!!-

*That's not entirely fair, I suppose. For all I know Franko's a smart guy - but, seriously, go watch the feature from the '06 16:9 DVD. He says "you'll see more!" when literally talking about cropping 25% of the film away. It's madness. MADNESS!! So either he is (or was?) an actual moron, or was really good at faking it five years ago... I'm not certain which would be more sad.

EDIT: One of the Dragon Box comparison images appears to be M.I.A, and I'm afraid I've long since deleted it from my hard drive. Thanks, Photobucket.

...Wha?!

2011-11-16T14:18:00.000-05:00

Ghana: The Turkey of the 21st century

Discotek City

2011-11-15T19:50:00.004-05:00

Yeah I know, I never talk about DVDs anymore. Blu-ray is finally starting to out-sell the SD competition, and the more DVDs I can sell for a dollar to FYE to replace with a High Definition version, the happier I am. Even so, several niche distributors focusing on cult titles like 1980s Japanese animation simply aren't at that level where releasing every title on Blu-ray is feasible, financially speaking, and so every now and then we'll have to make an exception and add yet another DVD to the shelf. Discotek Media/Eastern Star's recent R1 DVD release of KAWAJIRI Yoshiaki's supernatural action fantasy, DEMON CITY SHINJUKU/魔界都市＜新宿＞, based on the recently translated KIKUCHI Hideyuki novel of the same name happens to be one of those exceptions.

Since a few friends have asked if the new Discotek DVD is up to snuff, I decided to make a quick bitrate comparison between the new R1 and the 2007 Japanese Special Edition. The top graph is the Geneon DVD, the bottom is for Discotek DVD...

Sorry about the lingerie. Wasn't expecting company.

...or, maybe it's the other way around? I honestly don't remember, but it doesn't really matter because they're literally the exact same transfer. Same audio files, same video files. The menus, chapter stops and subtitles are ever so slightly different, which is why the VOB cutoff point differ, but the bitrate, source and encoding is exactly the same - an interesting oddity I noticed on Nozomi Entertainment's Revolutionary Girl Utena box sets, as well. The R2 DVD is an absolutely gorgeous affair restored in High Definition with a DTS Japanese remix, and the R1 release from Discotek mirrors it to perfection.

The transfer is absolutely stunning for a DVD, and if you still have the old CPM DVD, do yourself a favor: immediately set fire to it, and then throw it out of the window of a moving car. Yes, the remastered Discotek DVD is just that much of an improvement.

Subtitles appear to essentially be the same as the old CPM DVD, except all of CPM's hardsubs have been replaced with player generated subtitles. The CPM translation was by Neil Nadelman, so there was little to complain about. The villain's name in the original texts was "レヴィ・ラー ", or 'Levi Ra', as in the biblical name with the Egyptian sun-god suffix attached to it. The Discotek DVD subtitles use the spelling "Rebi Ra", which doesn't make a lot of sense... you see, the katakana [ヴィ] is used only to express a 'Vi' sound, so while "Revi" could theoretically be a proper romanization, "Rebi" is right out. But I doubt Discotek is to blame for this oddity, since the Kikuchi approved translation in the novel original novel also uses "Rebi Ra" - this looks like it could be one of those oddities where the Japanese creators aesthetically prefer a certain romanization, whether it's accurate or not, in which case the hands of the international licensor are sometimes completely tied.

Pictured: Another anime character with the same exact name in katakana.

The only other letdown in regards to the R1 DVD are the special features. The R2 has a total of six animatics showing Kawajiri's impressive pre-production storyboards set to finished music and dialog, while the R1 DVD has only the first scene of Levi Ra and Genichirou duking it out over Shinjuku. The R2 also had 100 character design sketches and a Kawajiri trailer show, though the latter isn't that big of a loss. The R1 DVD adds what appear to be the English credits from the old CPM version - nice to have, but not quite on par with the rest of the R2 features that went MIA.

Considering you can get the DVD from Discotek's own website for less than twenty bucks, it's absolutely worth getting. The R2 DVD will set you back nearly four times that before shipping fees, and you'd still be up a creek if you wanted to watch the feature subtitled. The pruned bonus features are unfortunate, but not by enough to keep me from recommending that any and all English speaking Kawajiri fans add this to their collection.

We Gotta Blu-ray (Part 1)

2011-11-15T17:29:00.004-05:00

ON THE LAST EPISODE OF KENTAI FILMS VS DRAGON BALL Z:

Kentai has grown ever impatient over the news that American anime specialist label FUNimation has promised a fully restored High Definition Blu-ray release of one of his favorite anime series of his misplaced childhood, DRAGON BALL Z!

JOURNEY IN THE WORLD OF 1990s MEMORIES!!

Can 1080p Replace Bootleg VHS In Kentai's Heart?!

Some background is necessary, I think, for explaining what this series means to me on one of those weird personal levels. If you just want to know how the fucking Blu-ray release looks... well, you're gonna have to wait a couple of days. I want to do this right, and the first part of that will be presenting you with a snapshot of my life from the mid 1990s. Nostalgia equals Distortion, I know this, but to understand why I even care, we need to dig for the nuggets of madness in the vomit-filled sink of my younger years. So read on, friends... or don't. I'd maybe skip this sort of thing, depending on how rough a day I'd had when all I want to know is how the fucking thing looks, so if you do the same I won't judge you... to your face.

Let it not be said that Dragon Ball Z is a fine series, in the scope of serialized entertainment for Japanese eight year olds. That's not to try and trivialize the show's appeal by suggesting that it's especially juvenile or simplified, but I think parts of the Western world has long held a mistaken assumption that a cartoon that features the hero getting drilled through his abdomen by a corkscrew fireball in the fifth episode is some crazy underground affair that was made to appeal to college kids, like the [adult swim] block of programming that's delivered on The Venture Bros. but still owes us more Korgoth of Barbaria. Just so we're clear that the blood drenched, child traumatizing, and man ass fueled action of Dragon Ball and its' related franchise was firmly a money-making juggernaut not unlike He-Man, G.I. Joe or any other ridiculous parody of 1980s machismo most men my age seem to remember with a far greater sheen of rose tinting than I do:

That's some big pimpin' there, Gokuu.

Unlike shitty 80s American cartoons literally based off of ridiculous toy designs, however, Dragon Ball was a single creator driven concept, as has been more or less normal in Japan since the 1960s when the thought of animating local properties started with Mushi Pro and titles like Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion, which in the context of me calling them "cartoons" forbids me from calling them Tetsuwan Atom and Jungle Tantei Leo. The creator of Dragon Ball is a charming, wicked little imp of a man man named Akira Toriyama, who decided after a lengthy and successful run with the gag comedy Dr. Slump that he'd change up the pace by adapting the 16th century Chinese fairytale Journey to the West (sometimes simply known as "The Monkey King") in what was scientifically designed to be the single most ass way possible, with the snarky sinning macaque god San Wukong having been turned into an innocent adolescent boy who sets off on a quest with a precocious 16 year old stranger to recover magical artifacts. Along the way they meet shape shifters, badland bandits, ninjas, and discover that the damn kid is not only stronger than Hercules but also roughly as educated as a jug of spoiled milk.

Potty humor, improbable martial arts, and an old pervert who hangs out with sea turtles proved to just be the start of a literal epic that would stretch from 1984 to 1995, totaling over 500 weekly chapters which would later be collected into 42 tankou digest books. It's easy to forget that a show as popular and successful as Dragon Ball Z basically started out as a bunch of gags that nobody with the emotional faculties past those of the average thirteen year old would probably find legitimately hilarious, but these people forget that Japan is great like that. Plus, a lot of people around the world only saw the censored international versions of stuff like this to start with...

"Wah! There's no balls! They're gone!"
If you think THIS is juvenile, go look up "Unchi-kun".

Toei Douga, having already animated Toriyama's Dr. Slump gag-comedy to great success through the first half of the decade, began adapting Dragon Ball into a TV series in 1986 once Dr. Slump's run ended. The adaptation was essentially usurped in 1989 when the TV show's title was changed to "Dragon Ball Z", and would continue until 1996. While Toriyama had very little direct influence with the TV series or related TV specials and theatrical films, series director Nishio Daisuke would pester him for input on character casting and like before being trusted to oversee the adaptation on his own for which, I think, he deserves plenty of credit - the Dragon Ball anime franchise expands upon the storylines Toriyama created without typically contradicting them, and the animation and direction itself, though naturally limited by the break-neck pace of being a weekly serial, was reasonably good and generally quite consistent, with most fans only turning their back on the (admittedly god-awful) anime only Garlic Jr. saga that tried to tie the stand-alone movie universe back into the generally more canonical TV series... let's just pretend this never happened. You know, like we tend to do with the fourth and eleventh DBZ movies.

Toriyama's publishers at Shueisha convinced him twice to extend the series - once after the defeat of Freeza, and again after the Cell Game. He continued pumping out new characters and expanding storylines, waffling back and fourth between his new role as the premier "action: mangaka and his first love of ridiculous jokes about poop, obesity and midgets. Toei Douga adapted the weekly chapters as best they could, adding original content (often disparagingly called "filler" by English speaking audiences) but stuck reasonably close to the source material, often cribbing dialog and camera angles verbatim from Toriyama's dynamic comics. The animated series was quickly sold to the rest of the world and dubbed into countless languages, and became a world-wide phenomenon that forever changed action cartoons. It may not sound like much, but the idea that, at any time, a main character - hero of villain - could be killed in the natural and due course of battle was kind of a big deal back in 1990, and it's a ballsy move that most children's entertainment (even back in Japan!) tend to avoid to this day. It also introduced the world to Mr. Satan, iconic pro-wrestler and Savior of Earth... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

This is the best thing ever and you fucking know it.

Toei Douga would continue milking the franchise - much to its detriment, it's worth noting - in Dragon Ball GT, a series that was made almost entirely without the input of Toriyama, and was uncerimoniously ignored to death after only a year and a half. The show was set to be canceled before that, but Toei kept plugging away at increasingly stupid stories after the defeat of the villainous Baby, only so that they could air the final episode on the same day as the Japanese release of the Playstation fighting game. That game was "Dragon Ball: Final Bout" and it totally ate a dick, by the way.

It's really a shame that Torimaya's Dragon Ball franchise, a decade long powerhouse of youth action and adventure that crossed all cultural barriers by way of sheer charming insanity, ended on such a whimper... but Toei found a way to milk the franchise 20 years later that's both better and worse in the form of "Dragon Ball Kai", essentially a 100 episode Cliff Notes reworking of the first 200 episodes of Dragon Ball Z. Most of the original Japanese vocal cast returned, essentially, to re-voice the roles that made them famous set to re-edited versions of the same fucking show - though occasionally brand new digital footage would be used to replace outdated special effects, which rarely looked half as good as the vintage material. I'd talk about the all new soundtrack, with Kenji Yamamoto's largely electronic beats replacing Shunsuke Kikuchi's neo-classical orchestral pieces, but it turns out that Yamamoto was a filthy plagiarist who thought little of ripping off scores from Hollywood movies and progressive rock bands alike, so Toei eventually nudged him off of the project and went about replacing the entire Kai soundtrack with vintage Kikuchi. I personally think of that as an improvement, but it does make Dragon Ball Kai feel all the more redundant for it...

I literally have no feelings for this song one way or another.

I actually admire the ruthless capitalism and nostalgia vampirism Toei showed in re-packaging a 1989-1994 TV series as a contemporary TV show in 2009 as a way to "celebrate" the manga's 25th anniversary, but in the end Kai is an amalgam of old and new, fixing what in my eyes weren't ever broke to start with. Kai is an abridged experience that some people find better than the cautiously paced original TV series that was always in very real danger of running out of new Toriyama created material to adapt, and even earned the snarky nickname "Drag-On Ball" by some of its fans who acknowledged that the show would tend to consist of long stretches of Gokuu and Freeza staring into each others eyes longingly instead of actually punching each other... but Kai decides that Goten and Majin Buu and Vegeto never existed, so fuck it. "Z" and "Kai" are completely different animals essentially made for different audiences. I'll not fault those who like it, but will say that it clearly doesn't exist for my sake.

It's greatest strengths are perhaps its incidental ones - the fantastically realized world of TORIYAMA Akira's boundless imagination that's equal parts Hamster dome and romanticized 19th century China. The fact that the hero, loosely based on the legendary Monkey King, literally grows up, gets married and starts a family after saving the world about a half-dozen times. The fact that the boundless power of a dragon crafted by God himself is abused to grant a Communist Pig - no, really, a talking swine in a Chinese military uniform - fresh panties. The fact that time travel, intergalactic warfare, and two children in a sheet passing themselves off as an adult are all given equal weight and exploration makes the show just as exciting as it is absurd. Case in point there are these guys, who are just as likely to break a five year old's spine in half as they are make even the homosexuals of N*Sync look like bastions of sweaty and heavily bearded heterosexuality.

Did I mention they're all named after dairy products?

Trying to explain the appeal of Dragon Ball - and its' latter chapters, which Toei Douga adapted as "Dragon Ball Z" to signify the rather dramatic shift in tone as classically "evil and stuff" demons loosely based on the Djinn's of 1001 Arabian Knights were replaced by murderous intergalactic real estate agent aliens as the show's main villains - is surely an exercise in futility. The show's core focus is on supernatural martial arts, the hierarchy of intergalactic race relations, time traveling android fighters and a being made of pure magical evil who happens to be legally retarded. Calling the premise of any given story arc "batshit crazy" is an understatement, and watching the series evolve from weekly comedy sketches about a naive country boy with a tail's lack of understanding that girls don't have penises to a show about a murderous lump of silly putty literally killing every single person on the planet just to draw out a worthy challenger is one so gradual and unpredictable that Toriyama's comics would literally shift between one extreme to the other seemingly at the drop of a hat, and created such a ridiculously convoluted world of fantasy, science fiction and straight up nonsense that it becomes impossible to explain where each ingredient begins and ends. Seriously, let me describe the backstory to one of the standard saga-long villains:

Upon returning from a second alternate future in which Dr. Gero has created a perfect hybrid clone of the Z Fighters, this biological create - Cell - returns to our time with a murdered Trunks' time machine so that he might collect the bodies of Androids #17 and #18 so that he can perfect himself, and - becoming the most perfect being in the universe - will spend his time destroying it to stave off boredom until he spends eternity in a void of nothing, satisfied that he is now everything.

Yes, that is the show's greatest villain's motivation in a nutshell; he can now truly be the greatest thing in the universe SO FUCK ALL Y'ALL. It's these broad, black and white terms in which Toriyama's universe exists, but it's in so many ways removed from reality that it never feels like uncomfortable thematic propaganda, but is also just close enough to our own that it never feels completely alien. Japan in particular is a modern culture obsessed with trying one's best, evolving and surpassing all others, and this is realized by the heroes literally becoming golden, glowing gods that possess untold powers in their Super Saiyan forms. A lot of people have read into this being a symbolic and racist concept, of Toriyama and perhaps all Japanese viewers wanting to "evolve" into aryan supermen, but I think taking that from a black and white visual medium where a change in hair and eye color from black to white might be taking it all a little to far without factoring in the limitations of a monochromatic visual medium.

...then again...

Son Gokuu himself is an inspiration to geek culture everywhere, though most people probably don't consciously recognize it. Discovering martial arts at the start of his adolescence, Gokuu literally spends every free moment pursuing his passions. Not because he's the Earth's defender with a strong sense of justice or even because he's a brainwashed murder machine, but because it's fun. Becoming stronger, finding tough opponents that excite him, literally spending months dead to learn a new style of martial arts - he wouldn't have it any other way. He isn't a neglectful father or a bad husband, though; aside from the whole "being dead" and "lost in space" parts of the story he spends his days at home punching trees for firewood or preparing hot baths, providing for and doing his best to take care of his dangerously insane wife and young son. He without hesitation accepts the trials and responsibilities of adulthood, but spends the time that's his own learning and experiencing that which he adores, solely because it's the one thing he really enjoys in life. His hyper-focused nature and complete ignorance of anything that's unrelated to his family and friends, eating or punching gives him an accessibility to the work's target audience - children, remember - but keep him from being a totally irresponsible role model, and could be the poster boy for the modern age if only people equated "punching skulls" with "playing Xbox". I suppose a cynic would argue these are less "geek dedication" traits and more a simplified discussion of aspergers syndrome, but I've no time for all that, so I'll let the Cracked.com editorial staff decide exactly what personality flaws fictional characters have.

Son Gokuu is a fascinating character anyway, because he is - at face value, anyway - an idiot savant. The victim of violent head trauma as an infant, an alien monster who turns into a giant ape in the light of the full moon, and able to launch fireballs out of his fist like he's snapping his fingers, Son Gokuu has all of the ingredients to be a jaded war-machine who's decades of fighting monsters, robots, aliens and balls of pink snot could have left him a bitter husk of PTSD. Yet he speaks with a thick Osaka twang, and seems more interested in what's for dinner than getting any traditional therapy. It'd be disingenuous to call him a redneck, but he's a simple bumpkin with a fair share of brain damage who's natural talents to work out what's wrong compensate for his broad lack of common sense. But he's also a fighter, through and through; the threat of bodily harm or even death to little to persuade him to stand down, and seem only to goad him on in some self exploratory emotional masochism that demands he fight until he has, in no uncertain terms, beaten his enemy on terms they can both acknowledge. He doesn't want to kill anyone, or even prove that he can win... he just wants to know he can. He's an ineffably charming bastard who's manly leanings were really incendental, and yes, the fact that he was voiced by a squeaky woman made the combination perhaps all the more charming.

"All these damn Chinese cartoon characters look exactly the same!"
- My grandfather and his infinite wisdom.

Ah yes, the last sentence has instantly created a divide in some people; those who think of Son Gokuu as Masako Nozawa, and those who think of him as Sean Schemmel - or, if you're getting old like me, maybe Peter Kelamis. FUNimation's English "reversioning", as they literally like to call it, has come a long way since they were working with the Ocean Group to dub the first 13 episodes of Dragon Ball in the mid 1990s. They were playing the Syndication game back when, and were busy making both Saban and the fellas at the freakin' FCC happy, which resulted in a show that was dramatically censored and repurposed for its American broadcast. The first 35 episodes were so chopped up they literally became 26 on syndication (with a "bonus" episode that was released on video), with the show's main selling point in the action sequences being bowdlerized, often outright castrated beyond recognition. People never "died" and went to Heaven, as was the case in every other dubbed version of the show (and made obvious by the halos) - oh no sir, they merely passed into "another dimension"! There was regularly ADR work to downplay images of destruction, with city blocks being blown to smithereens accompanied by someone snidely remarking about how it's a good thing they'd evacuated - when, often enough, the original version of the show would include images of hapless citizens being vaporized. This was on top of bizarre anglicized names, like "Krillin" instead of Kururin, "Tien" instead of Tenshinhan, and of course Son Gokuu's family name being dropped. In America he's just 'Goku', thank ya very much. Apparently last names are for losers.

Blood, booze and tobacco was digitally erased frame by frame on a regular basis, and in a stunningly bizarre decision, FUNimation removed all instances of a character being punched in the head. Obviously they could only cut so much before the battles became incomprehensible, so they came up with a "clever" solution by way of adding blinking "POW!" stars like you'd see in old episodes of the Adam West Batman TV series. Well, they didn't literally say POW!, but they sure as hell looked just as silly. Of equal note was that plenty of minor characters - holdovers from older storylines, mostly - were minimized, with some of them (such as the multiple-personality bank robber Lunch) disappearing outright. The show's soundtrack was replaced, a necessity after all of the drastic cutting done, and some episodes would be re-ordered or sped up digitally, just to meet episode count quotas. While perhaps not quite as butchered as vintage Harmony Gold titles - particularly the still beloved Robotech, which tried (in vain) to convince Americans that Southern Cross and Mospedia were somehow just the later episodes of Macross - the Americanized version of Dragon Ball Z was still a massive departure from the Japanese title it once was, and at the time, it was something of a big deal. Even before Dragon Ball Z hit American airwaves there were studios who were pushing for authentic and unedited presentations of Japanese animation... so what made Dragon Ball Z any different? Obviously, DBZ had a larger market for action figures and bed sheets than Ranma 1/2 and The Guyver: Bio-Boosted Armor, but what about the emerging base of fans who realized that Dragon Ball wasn't an American production, and wanted to see what all of the fuss was about without needing to see it through a filter of FCC regulations and a new electronic score?

That said... I kinda wish all syndicated cartoons had death metal themesongs.

It's thanks to Chris Psaros and his time capsule of a website DBZ Uncensored that I even knew that Dragon Ball Z was a different product outside of North America. At the time I had already "discovered" anime thanks to my father having shown me and my brother a copy of Vampire Hunter D and Robot Carnival, and I'd spent the next few years tracking down whatever I could find, good or bad, for adults or children, just to get a better understanding of what this crazy Japanimation stuff even was. The internet was in its infancy, mind you. I mean there was still a lot of porn, but it was all pictures instead of streaming video, and Real Media was the only way to see movie trailers in postage-stamp sized clips that may as well have been pixels on top of more pixels - I know I'm dating myself with all of this, and that's fine. I think it's great that now anyone can watch all of Citizen Kane on YouTube, I really do. But for there to be such a comprehensive and amusing (to my younger self) look at the differences between Toei's Dragon Ball Z and FUNimation's English bastardization thereof that I had to see it for myself. Only trouble was I wasn't Japanese, and it wasn't 1989...

At the time, you were just plain out of luck. It's easy to joke about the concept of internet sucking back when, but I honestly can't, in any satisfactory way, explain how different things were as a fan of anime in the late 1990s who was still only getting a weekly allowance; your options were buying VHS tapes at the local FYE store and hoping they didn't suck, waiting for the Sci-Fi Channel to stop playing Kolchak reruns long enough to premier something from Manga Entertainment or Streamline Pictures in a heavily cut run form, or search high and low in the internet for someone selling these... "fansub" things, which sounded like non-profit bootlegs, a concept that made even less sense than it does now when getting strangers on the internet to type "koo! thx ni99a" is a reward unto itself... apparently. We were several years off from BitTorrent giving any asshole with google the power to watch an anime the same week it premiered in Japan - back then, it was dubbed and potentially bastardized US releases, or skanky VHS bootlegs you mailed $25 in cash off to some guy who ran an anime club on the other side of the country, and hoped the results were actually subtitled and remotely watchable. When I saw the first 35 episodes of Dragon Ball Z as they aired on Japanese TV for the first time, it was a revelation for me - the show's fabric, it's very culture had nothing to do with the cringe-worthy Americanized shit friends of mine had convinced was the best thing they'd ever seen on a Saturday morning. Instantly I had fallen in love, and while I won't claim that it's remained my favorite single anime series, the impact it had on me was undeniable. Instantly I got WHY people wanted to watch subtitled films, why they sought out strange artifacts of foreign cultures, why weekly cartoons intended to move plastic toys and curry rice lunches mattered... even when it didn't.

I literally had an EP dupe of this fucking thing with 3 other movies.

It must have cost me like $12. At the time, I was literally elated.

While I don't for a second believe the arguments that friends and even strangers propose of anime "being worse" in the 21st century than it was 15 or 20 or 30 years ago, I do believe that there's a certain cutoff they're associating with things that they thought were "better". Anime was always a cultish obscurity one had to go out of their way to find, and the lack of a unified distribution system (ie: The Internet) made anime both an appealing and treasured commodity before the mid-oughts made it available both free and instantly to anyone with a passing interest in it as a disposable entertainment medium. It warms my heart knowing that my teenaged sister goes through twitching miserable withdrawals when she hasn't caught the latest episode of Naruto Shippuden, but I also know the fact that she only needs to go to YouTube to get it makes the experience that much less personal.

Also, odds are they fell in love with this crap when they were like 15. After a decade or two you see through all of the superficial and pretentious bullshit you thought was awesome back when and see it for the cloying, goofy manipulative bullshit it really was. Movies, music, fashion - it all reaches a point where the stuff you thought was awesome now looks ridiculous and dated, and the only way to acknowledge that you weren't a flaming douche when you did think that stuff was cool is to assume that YOU didn't change, but the world around you somehow got worse. It's a trap we all probably fall into from time to time, but it's one I only hope the world can march towards understanding and recognizing more than it does.

I would never buy dubbed tapes, not even in '97.
But I have to admit, Blu-ray cases can't do that...

Before one thinks this is strictly a bucket of self-pity about things being "better" back when, I don't decry the perceptible loss of quality anime as so many friends and frenemies over the years have suggested. Merely I decry the intangible concept that there was something special and magical about them, that you were alone in the world and consuming something that those around you just didn't understand. This doesn't make shows better or worse - it's an illusion, a fabric of coolness you build up around yourself subconsciously that makes what, and the end of the day, is a cartoon for 8 year olds seem personal. It's not even bad to take stupid shit like movies and video games and novels like they're tailor made just to make you happy... but with the ease with which one gets these things, the only thrill left is the consumption.

That isn't really such a terrible thing, mind you. Film is a consumable product, and if a film is good it doesn't matter if you imported the damn thing from Kazakhstan on a bootleg VCD or if you just saw it on cable one day. The only problem with the model of everything being readily available is that now nothing has a set worth - not only a price tag, but in how hard you had to work or how long you had to wait just to see something you were legitimately excited for. The days of trading fansubs with dudes you barely knew on message boards or writing reviews on a website before the word "blog" existed about some weird horror movie your local mom 'n' pop video store had which IMDb said didn't exist are gone, and with them is that sense of discovery and satisfaction. Don't get me wrong, the fact that I had to spend a comparative fortune and watch Dragon Ball Z on nth generation tapes with barely readable subtitles and utter garbage quality just to understand what the show really was is a thrill I'm not convinced I'll ever find again in this world... it's a dumb emotional attachment thrill, but that doesn't mean it was real. These days I'd probably have to murder a stripper with a length of habanero-coated barbed wire to get that same rush, and goddamn it, I can't keep asking friends to keep locked freezers on their property for me forever.

If, for whatever reason, I'm emotionally unable to put away my toys and grow the fuck up, I'm surprisingly fine with that. At the very least, maybe I can just put away my DVD box sets in favor of the new Blu-ray...

ON THE NEXT EPISODE OF KENTAI FILMS VS DRAGON BALL Z:

...wait, how the hell am I doing a Next Episode Preview if the Blu-ray doesn't include them? OH GOD, I'M BEING EATEN BY A PARADO--

Fright Afternoon

2011-11-13T21:22:00.001-05:00

Screen Archives Entertainment will officially be taking pre-orders for Fright Night starting at 12 Noon Pacific Time (that's, let me check... 3 pm for me?) tomorrow - that's Monday the 14th - with a release date of December 13th. Limited to a mere 3,000 copies this release is a first come first served affair, so don't wait if you have any interest in quality 80s horror releases. The HD transfer work was handled by Sony Pictures, and word is the 1080i MPEG-2 broadcast version was no slouch in the audio and video department, so there's every reason to expect that this high bitrate 1080p release should only improve upon what we've already seen.

Orders can be placed exclusively at the Screen Archives website, and the list of current TWILIGHT TIME DVD/BLU-RAY titles can be found here. $29.95 plus shipping gets you the film, the trailer, and an isolated score, if I'm not mistaken. It's not a wild special edition, I admit, but Sony has shown to give absolutely zero fucks about this title, so I'd argue to everyone bitching that it's not available at Target for half the price that a quality, limited release made for the people who actually care is better than no release at all.

The company's main stock and trade is actually in niche dramatic titles from the 50s 60s, so this is the closest thing you'll find to contemporary genre cinema. Still, their release of The Mysterious Island on Blu-ray is shipping now and not yet sold out, so at least fans of awesome vintage stop-motion effects can get their groove on until this gem is available.

UPDATE: It's up all right, as I've just ordered mine. Boo-yah!

Intruders Come Early

2011-11-12T20:31:00.001-05:00

As I'd mentioned a few weeks ago, Synapse got me to pre-order Scott Spiegel's infamous slasher film INTRUDER Blu-ray + DVD set at full MSRP - two things I rarely do these days - by offering the rare VHS sourced workprint on a hand-numbered DVD-R (and I'm in the double digits, for whatever that's worth). It's not uncommon to get a disc up to a week early when you order from the publisher, but I certainly didn't expect to get the disc a month in advance! Holy shit, thanks, Synapse! Now, if only we could get Media Blasters to release discs less than a month after their projected release dates... As for the disc itself, it's pretty damn encouraging based on the curiousity glance I've been so far able to afford it. Please, don't take this as a comprehensive review, this is just me riffling through the chapters and giving you my first impressions for an early X-mas present.

Levels look spot on with white highlights and solid blacks, while flesh tones and the crimson Karo syrup all appear as gaudy and natural as I'd expect from the last great American slasher film. Grain is thick, but well enough resolved and looks quite natural in motion. The speckling of minor black and white specs point to Synapse's 2K restoration being based on a high quality positive print rather than the original negative - Don May Jr. has only ever said they made a new scan of the "original materials" when discussing Intruder, and never actually used the word "negative" - but with the stories I've been lucky enough to hear in private, it's possible that this is the best 35mm elements left anywhere.

The 16:9 framing - I think a first after years of 4:3 "fullscreen" presentations - looks very natural and doesn't seem to go out of its way to clip off the tops of heads or any especially relevant details. I can only assume that this was shot with the intent to be released theatrically at 1.85:1 and all prior releases were simply released open-matte, with this 1.78:1 being close to how the film COULD have looked theatrically, had Paramount not decided they didn't give a half a shit about it and then promptly kicked it out into the fledgling direct-to-video market. Rest easy on the aspect ratio, friends: There's absolutely no need to hang on to those crumby old DVDs sourced from nasty looking VHS period masters.

For those of you who preordered from Synapse's website, you'll get your disc in a resealable plastic bag (rather than shrinkwrap) with a hand-numbered DVD-R featuring a copy of director Scott Spiegel's own VHS workprint, which includes a number of alternate takes (some included on the BD as a ten minute "deleted scenes" reel) and the original on-set audio. It's not an essential lost Director's Cut or anything like that, but it is pretty damn cool to have as a bonus, and as differences literally appear within the first 30 seconds of the film there's bound to be all sorts of previously undiscovered nuggets for even old-school fans who saw all the gore on the Dragon import DVD.

The Director's Cut Blu-ray runs 1:27:35, while the Workprint runs 1:29:15. Keep in mind is that the workprint doesn't have any credits at all, while 6 minutes of the DC is Opening and Ending titles - so the workprint actually has about 8 minutes of alternate footage!

Synapse "Intruder" Blu-ray

Synapse "Night Crew" DVD-R

Obviously the workprint bonus disc isn't going to win any audio/video awards, but it's a unique look at the original cut of Scott Spiegel's gore opus that fans with fond memories of the bootleg VHS days of yore should get a kick out of. Remember friends, the workprint is only available at the SYNAPSE FILMS WEBSITE to the first 500 people who order it direct from the source. So go on, support your local independant film distributor for a job well done, and get a sweet little limited edition bonus out of it.

As far as extras go, the release doesn't compare to Zombie, but it feels substantially packed none the less: There's an all new commentary with writer/director Scott Spiegel and producer Lawrence Bender, 10 minutes of workprint sourced deleted scenes, a 39 minute long "Slashed Prices: The Making Of INTRUDER" retrospective created by the busy folks over at Red Shirt Productions, two vintage video trailers, about 11 minutes of screen tests, and most unexpectedly a 7 minute approximation of The Night Crew, Scott Spiegel's early 1980s short that would later become Intruder. There's some cool stuff, but it'll take me a while to really dig my teeth into all of it.

Fans of gross-out B-movies of a bygone age need to order this thing, like, yesterday. I'll update the site with anything else of note should I find it, but consider the above screenshots a fair and accurate rendition of what to expect. The film looks fine and there's plenty of extras to gnaw on, and the fact that Synapse sent the lovely thing out four weeks early has just tickled me pink. My poor, abused Mastercard might be off in the corner considering suicide right now, but personally I couldn't be happier.

I Have The Worriedest Boner

2011-11-11T21:00:00.004-05:00

Did I ever tell you guys that I saw the A-KITE COMPLETE WORK BOOK at an anime convention several years ago, but couldn't get the attention of the guy behind the counter fast enough? I watched some five-foot tall gothloli, who I fucking swear looked like she was 15, buy it right in front of me based on the fact that I figured I had a 10 second window to scan over the selection without jumping up and down like a 'tard. True story, Hand of God. I'm still pissed about the whole thing, though I guess the blow was softened ever so slightly by the lingering thought of a 15 year old gothloli violently schlicking to glossy images of cartoon adolescents being violently molested by grown men... we've all got to start somewhere on that Road to Hell, right?

Anyway, Media Blasters has announced Umetsu's lolita-infused action masterpiece, A-KITE/カイト, is coming to Blu-ray in both "18+ [Edited]" and "18+ [Uncut]" versions courtesy of their Kitty Media label. Part of me is dancing in the streets at midnight at the mere thought of watching A-Kite in delicious 1080p... but mostly I remember, with clenched fists and slitted eyes, what a pitiful clusterfuck Legend of the Overfiend was on Blu-ray.

Media Blasters is about as hit or miss as a publisher can get, so while I'm keeping a close eye on this one, I flatly refuse to get excited until the product is proven to actually exist and I've seen for myself wither it's a proper 35mm sourced transfer from start to finish... it's sad that I have to state both of these up front, but Urotsukidoji was such a new low for Media Blasters that I really can't give them the benefit of the doubt.

Stay tuned for further developments.

UPDATE: The listing for the "Edited" version has now been replaced with a 16+ rating and a 45 minute runtime. So, the "Edited" Blu-ray will be the completely sex-free Anime Works cut, not the slightly edited 'Director's Cut'. Makes sense.

120 Dollars Worth of Sodom

2011-11-11T20:05:00.008-05:00

Without a doubt, the real crown-jewel title for me during the semi-annual Barnes and Noble 50% Off Criterion Collection Sale (going on for at least another week) was Pier Paolo Pasolini's SALÒ, O LE GIORNATE DI SODOMA/THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM. When all was said and done, I spent an eerie $120 on Criterion titles. Man alive, has my Mastercard taken a beating this month...

Those of you who have known me for some time likely already know that I have quite a bit of affinity for - and even some history with - this film, so I'll try to keep my riding of the director's stiffened corpse relatively brief. Based largely on the Marquis de Sade's massive tome detailing literally every example of human torture he could imagine (with just a pinch of Dante's Inferno as a framing device), we are treated to just shy of two hours of four men - men of power, high breeding, above average intelligence and a profound understanding of the world around them - who have decided that they're not satisfied with the way the world is turning, and bring with them a number of anonymous, beautiful teenagers to live out their deepest and most taboo fantasies while the world, for all they care, burns to the ground outside the walls of their remote castle.

The film is an oddly perfect example of stripping humans of their basic dignity and even their names or personalities, and that's exactly why the proceedings become so horrifying: The "Victims" presented in The 120 Days of Sodom are just that, prisoners with no hope of escape or betterment in their short, meaningless lives. The libertines have brought with them the unshakable force of the bloodthirsty fascist military, and what few uprisings happen are dealt with in swift and certain terms. The human body is reduced to a silent, miserable bag of meat, and it becomes clear that even the libertines themselves are no longer taking any joy in torturing them. The "Masters" become bitter husks of humanity, whipping, bludgeoning, raping, and pissing on their assortment of beautiful toys in the vain hopes that they'll feel something, anything before the winds of change render them as empty and powerless victims as well. Presented in long, wide takes like a cloying documentary, the film's otherwise sensational content is downplayed to a fault, reducing the lengthy and loving descriptions of de Sade into an "indigestible" melange of melancholy and disgust.

The film is not, however, remotely exploitive; for that to be the case, there would have to be something viscerally or morally aggressive for viewers to cling to and be excited by. Instead, the process is a morose mockery of life, with one of the most tense moments being a celebrated beauty's very existence being threatened at gunpoint as a solliloquy of the nature of the Sodomite is explored. The Sodomite (not necessarily a homosexual - just one who interntionally turns their back on the laws of nature), they argue, is more powerful and deplorable than a murderer, because the Sodomite has the power to continually destroy the foundations of life itself. In a sadly absent snippet of dialog found from the final scene of the original script, the following partial quote - one that sums up de Sade's nihilist pre-Nietzchian "we are all selfish animals bound to goodness for society's sake" principles almost perfectly - was to have been uttered just before the closing credits:

...I personally maintain that my imagination has always greatly surpassed my faculties. I lack the means to do what I'd like. I've conceived things hundreds of times worse than what I've done. I've always complained that nature gave me the desire to violate it, but never the means to do so.

There are only two or three crimes worth committing in this world. Once that's done, there's nothing more to be said...

It's only in the final reel that they seem to find satisfaction, and we - the viewer - are left with no choice but to empathize with the vouyeristic sadism the libertines visit upon their nameless, spineless, perhaps even soulless victims. It's a merciless sequence that should rock even jaded gorehounds to their moral core, but like a ton of shit slapping you in the face, any astute viewer will recognize that they themselves are no different - sitting in the comfort of their chair and peering at these horrors as a vouyer into de Sade and Pasolini's mad dream. Unlike an oddly similar sequence in the 2010 feature A Serbian Film, there is no morally vindicative moment in which a heroic figure stands up in disgust and walks out: we are invited to join in their sadistic, perverse delight, and to look away as so many paying patrons have done over the years would be to miss the point of the film entirely. We as the audience are the libertines, not the victims - paying to vicariously revel in the untold power they exert on the hapless casualties we don't even know by name. To go into Salo and turn away is to deny the part of yourself that wants to exert dominance - something mankind as a race has proven completely incapable of doing since the dawn of recorded history.

The film's politics are - as with everything Pasolini did in life - an important component, even if the majority of the action on display was written in the 18th century and is set in Mussolini's historic last stand against the Allied Forces. In the Neo-Consumerist culture born in the second half of the 20th century, you are either a libertine abusing those below you, or a victim being abused by those above you. To look away is to be among the victimized, and to watch on is to agree with the tenets de Sade quite literally wrote on tightly coiled toilet paper. Interpreting the film as a literal allegory about Fascism is, frankly, a heavily flawed way to read the events as a whole, but equating it (if only symbolically) to the social inequality that rampant commercialism has led to - particularly in an era in which "The 99%" is making a public stand against those who, it's charged, abuse their seemingly limitless power against them - seems more relevant today than a great number of more recent films with the same underlying message.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Salo was largely lambasted by critics upon its 1976 theatrical release, banned as obscene in much of the English speaking world and largely forgotten in the annals of tragic arthouse history up until The Criterion Collection released the film as a part of their prestigious Laserdisc lineup in the late 1990s. The DVD infamously went out of print in 1998, less than a year after its initial release, and due to being "the rarest of the rare" quickly commanded prices of up to $500 at auction - this is despite the fact that the DVD was of exceptionally poor quality, being sourced from a PAL video master, presented at 1.85:1 in a letterboxed 4:3 widescreen presentation, having an unnaturally heavy green hue and missing a 22 second sequence that was actually available on their prior LD release. It was truly a shit release of a phenomenal film, and it's the title I can't help but point to and shake my head whenever I see people going on about how perfect and caring those folks at Criterion are. Don't misunderstand, they usually do very decent work for the hefty price tag they continue to charge in the climate of studio-owned double disc special editions, but they're far from infallible.

Even 35 years later the film is notoriously difficult to watch, not only for its' psychotic and pointless brutality but for the way in which all of these acts are presented; the film takes place in a cold, uncaring universe in which anything resembling compassion has absolutely no place, and this leads to lengthy, cringeworthy sequences without a single sympathetic human emotion to be found. The camera languidly watches over the victims and victimizers alike with an uncaring indifference, while Ennio Morricone's minimalist score, itself reinterpretations of period pop music, intrudes on reality only by way of a background pianists intervention. The entire film has been meticulously constructed to anger and disgust viewers without manipulating them unjustly into feeling one way or another; you are invited to watch humanity at its most basic and transparent, seeking power in its most basic form of sadomasochism. Never before or since has such a literal and profound piece of cinema been crafted from the wretched mind of history's most celebrated pervert, and never before has so much controversy been attached to a film's premier, with Pasolini having been murdered literally just three short weeks before the release of Salo - with new implications going all the way to the 21st century that political extremists aware of the film's distaste with fascism and capitalism were who did him in.

The BFI Blu-ray from 2008 actually has far more comprehensive coverage of his mysterious death than I can give here as supplementary material, so anyone interested in as much of the story as possible should watch the 1981 documentary "Whoever Says The Truth Shall Die". Unfortunately, the image and sound quality of the 2008 UK import - something I find far more important than any supplementary material - left much to be desired. Despite having been supposedly made from the camera negative, the whole transfer was a clumpy, blue tinged mess of digital noise reduction and heavy edge sharpening, looking less like 35mm film and more like each and every character was sculpted out of clay and given a glowing electric outline. It was, for the time, still the best looking and sounding release of the film available. The Criterion Collection struck back a mere week later - but with only a standard definition DVD, and no Blu-ray in sight. As THE CAPS-A-HOLIC COMPARISON accurately shows, the Blu-ray showed increased resolution and less in the way of low-pass filtering and compression artifacts, but the DVD featured a more lifelike color and a healthy, natural coating of grain. I'm not one to suck Criterion's asshole on a regular basis, but I think it was perfectly fair to say that the BFI Blu-ray was, at best, only a modest improvement over the R1 DVD.

Thankfully, it's 2011 and we finally have 120 Days of Sodom on Blu-ray from Criterion Collection. Almost everything negative I've had to say about their treatment of the film has now been made irrelevant; this is by leaps and bounds the best it's ever looked, and honestly, I don't picture anyone topping them in the near future. I'll point you all to CAPS-A-HOLIC ONCE MORE for the BFI vs Criterion Blu-ray comparison. Yeah sure, I guess I could do it myself, but why bother? The results would be identical, and they have done a stellar job of showing how the CC release all but obliterates the 2008 BFI transfer. The warm, healthy skin tones of the 2008 CC DVD have been augmented with the full 1080p resolution of the source, and a natural coating of fine grain and the accompanying fine detail has been preserved. Though limited by the source to some degree, the CC release has also removed the majority of analog hiss and crackling from the original audio mix without any obvious degradation in sound quality.

The CC master is (according to the booklet) based on an Interpositive, while the BFI release was (again, so the booklet says) mastered from the "restored negative" - I have little reason to doubt either claim, so unless I find evidence to suggest otherwise I'll take their word for it. Sadly, any enhanced clarity the OCN may have had to offer has been thoroughly obscured by heavy digital filtering, rendering what could have been a superior presentation anything but. Criterion may not be infallible, but I'd be lying through my teeth if I said they didn't mop the floor with BFI's presentation of the film, and I for one have never been happier to have one of their minimalist and overpriced digipacks sitting on my shelf. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that even if you've imported the BFI release that adding the Criterion Blu-ray to your collection is worth the current sale price. Admittedly, if you already own the BFI Blu-ray and the CC DVD it's kind of a hard sell, being that the CC Blu-ray is composed of the same materials, but not one I'm convinced would be without merit to those who see the profound and grim power lurking beneath its infamy and morose musings about mankind's most base properties.

The only real complaint I have with the Criterion Collection Blu-ray is that, just like both their 1998 and 2008 DVD releases, there's a brief scene missing during chapter 10 (0:44:33). After the wedding ceremony the victims are rushed into the stairwell and the doors slam shut - following this, there's a 17-second sequence in which one of the libertines quotes a poem by Gottfried Benn. Criterion ADDRESSED THE ISSUE on their website at length (complete with a comparison video), stating that the camera negative lacks the poem recital and that their print was sourced from the negative, so they simply released the materials as they were given to them. Concurring on some level with this story, BFI had stated on the booklet included with their 2001 DVD release that the poem recital was actually sourced from a 35mm print at the British Film Institute National Archives. Seeing as how the sound mix on the shot of the clothing being dropped after the cut on the Criterion print is indeed completely different - you can hear the door slamming both times, but not the libertine saying "Gottfriend Benn" immediately before the first slam - I can only assume they're being honest about it.

What's especially bizarre is that this scene was dubbed into English! Sort of, at least - the English dub for this scene has the English voiceover quoting the poem in its original German (...the hell?), while the Italian dub* has him quoting the poem translated into Italian. That said, the video quality does shift visibly during this scene on the BFI Blu-ray, so it wouldn't surprise me if the sequence itself was, for whatever reason, cut out of the original negative. The end of the wedding ceremony was a reel change point (as evidenced by the cue-mark in the DVD BEAVER COMPARISON), so the most logical answer is that the Gottfried Benn poem was just removed from the negative due to print damage over the last several decades. Now Criterion can do all the research into the issue they like, but common sense dictates that if the scene was dubbed into multiple languages, including the film's original language (ie: Italian), odds are it's a valid part of the damned film!

If Criterion simply didn't want to include the scene in the film due to the quality of the materials - a valid enough concern, I admit - couldn't they at least have added it to the Blu-ray as a deleted scene? For that matter, the BFI release also included the vintage English credits via seamless branching (which alone suggests access to the more materials than Criterion had), but an alternate set of motionless film slates, while still pretty cool to have, is of substantially less importance than footage from the middle of the actual film.

Bottom Line: If you're interested in the highest quality release of Pasolini's final masterpiece the BFI Blu-ray has been violently usurped, so get that Criterion Collection Blu-ray while it's still cheap! Alternately, if you want to get in on those juicy BFI extras the 2 disc Blu-ray + bonus DVD has recently been replaced with a 3 disc Blu-ray/DVD dual format set for the same price as the prior DVD set (readily available from Amazon UK for about 15 GBP/25 USD).

The CC release is "REGION A" only, while the BFI release is "REGION B" only with a REGION FREE/PAL DVD for most of the bonus features. Hopefully you can find a way around all of that, but if not...

*Italian films from the 1970s were regularly shot without any sync sound, and Salo was no exception. The film premiered in French before any other language, so it's not unthinkable that all of the various languages the film was dubbed into - French, Italian, German and English, among others - were done at roughly the same time. The actors all spoke Italian on set, and the script itself was written in Italian, so despite being a post-dubbed feature Italian is still the "original" language. I wouldn't be surprised if the French version follows de Sade's text more closely, but not speaking a word of it I wouldn't be the guy to confirm it...

Magi Puella Caveat Emptor

2011-11-08T12:05:00.008-05:00

For those of you who are perhaps a bit less willing to take a chance on a contemporary and cute looking anime series about "magical girls", allow me to inform you that the breakout anime series of 2011 was SHAFT's original 12 episode fantasy Magi Puella Madoka Magica/法少女まどか★マギカ, and not without damned good reason. The script was handled by Gen Oribuchi of Requiem for the Phantom fame (and, I suppose, Blassreiter infamy...), character designs by Hidamari Sketch creator Ume Aoki, and the director was none other than Akiyuki Shinbou, director of Portrait de Petit Cossette, Bakemonogatari and Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei - among many other notable projects over the last decade.

With the passing of Satoshi Kon, I sincerely think that Shinbou might be the single most unpredictable and fascinating animation director in Japan today, which is exactly why his absolute lack of consistency - sometimes over the course of a single series - drives me absolutely mad. Magi Puella Madoka Magica (or "Magical Girl Madoka of the Magus") is perhaps his most consistent and polished series yet, with his eye for experimental and minimalist animation techniques used only when they're legitimately appropriate to telling the story, as opposed to a number of other titles Shinbou's directed, where the sudden shift from lush, detailed animation to Escher and Argento inspired surrealism with little to no actual animation was just a desperation move to distract viewers from how limited SHAFT's budget and schedule left the final product.

Early promotional material made Magi Puella Madoka Magica look like an explosion of moe-infused cotton candy, but the actual product was more akin to cinnamon flavored Mentos caked in dried blood and served with fresh tears. Madoka Magica was less a celebration of the "Magical Girl" trope than it was a cruel dissection thereof, dragging the genre kicking and screaming from the grade school fantasies of yesteryear into the violent, angst ridden and all too finite world of adulthood. While the show is far from the most explicitly violent thing to ever premier on Japanese television, it's broad aesthetic appearance of innocent sweetness combined with a focus on literally destroying young girls, piece by piece, until only their bitterness and sorrow remain makes it one of the most surprising and brutally despicable Japanese TV series in recent memory.

As cliche as comparisons to Hideaki Anno's 1995 Neon Genesis Evangelion likely sound these days, Madoka Magica is literally the post-modern exploration of themes so deeply embedded into Japan's unique fantasy culture that have - much like the nation's love affair with young boys piloting giant robots to defend against invading alien forces - become so infused as an archetype most fans simply don't analyze it much anymore. It's just a part of the culture, of the fabric of anime as we know it today, and being a smart, dangerous inversion of that simplicity is what makes both of these titles carve out a narrative that's familiar and unthinkable all at once. Both Madoka and EVA have an acute focus on esoterica in their mythology, both have a cast of stable archetypes which are slowly twisted and broken down into something totally alien and "real", and both have left the international public truly stunned, only wanting more. SHAFT and Aniplex are clearly listening, as a trilogy of Madoka Magica theatrical films have just been announced - the first two being remakes of the TV series, and the third being an "all new" story - again, if coincidentally, mirroring the theatrical revival of EVA nearly 15 years ago.

For the American who wants to get his hands on the series outside of far too often poorly translated HDTV rips*, Aniplex of America has crafted a fascinating compromise between the uber-expensive Japanese release and the expected bilingual and bargain-minded American DVD market. Each disc will feature 4 episodes, and will be available in three distinct flavors:

DVD: $29.99
Blu-ray: $39.99
DVD + Blu-Ray Limited Edition: $74.99

You're not misreading that, I promise: That's $120 for just the Blu-ray, or $225 for the Limited Editions. That extra coin gets you, according to the Madoka Magica USA Official Website, a collector's box of somesort, a 24 page translated booklet, an original soundtrack on CD, a poster, sticker and postcards. The paper goods are an exclusive for the US release, which is actually pretty cool, but $105 extra for three deluxe editions is a pretty damned stiff premium! Keep in mind that Japanese fans paid roughly $90 for six individual volumes, so even this is a bargain in comparison. (For what it's worth, Japanese buyers also got director's commentaries and an exclusive Digipack with a transparent sleeve for every volume.)

What's slightly more troubling is that the already limited number of bonus features has recently changed: The creditless ending sequence has disappeared, though a "Music Video" for Kalafina's haunting theme, Magia, remains. A strange omission, to say the least, but as long as the theme itself is still present in the show no harm has been done, I suppose. I don't demand bonus features when the content is strong enough to stand on its own, but for the plans to be changing long after the specs were released to RightStuf is... troubling. One can only hope that the content itself isn't changed during the production of the US release, something I can't say for the similarly expensive Bandai singles of K-On!, which not only got shafted with DVD quality audio and lost all of the Japanese on-disc extras, but also had some exceptionally random musical cues replaced on both the Japanese and English audio tracks.

Aniplex USA has mostly repackaged Japanese Blu-ray releases for their US release up until now, and they've seemed to consistently release high quality, Japanese styled R1 DVDs... with high R2 prices to match. While Madoka Magica is really a phenomenal show, it'd be ignorant to say that the price isn't damnably high for it, so while I'm still willing to purchase the show I'm really, REALLY hoping they don't fuck the presentation up in any way. Even $40 for 100 minutes of content is pretty steep when FUNimation and Media Blasters regularly sells an entire 12 episode series for about fifty bucks, forget the price of the Limited Edition combo packs! For that matter, why the hell do I have to buy a useless DVD just to get the other goodies? What sort of sadism is that?!

Unfortunately, I've already opened Pandora's Box by buying those two Rurouni Kenshin OVAs at $50 a piece. With as fantastic and unprecedented a series as Madoka is, my fate is already sealed... the only question left is whether I go for the Blu-ray singles or the box sets. I do love me soundtracks, and the promise of 4-panel comics from the original designer in the booklet is a nice touch, but this is simply not an investment for the faint of heart or those who weren't absolutely blown away by the third episode of the series.

*For reals. Just because the LATIN NAME of the show is "Puella Magi" doesn't mean you need to use that as your translation for 'Mahou Shoujo'. It just means Magical Girl, goddamn it, and it makes some of the dialog virtually incomprehensible when you try to be pretentious about it. Thankfully the term "Witch" is one native to English and Latin, so that one led to substantially less fansub-fueled RAGE!! on my part.

The House By The Underground

2011-11-03T14:48:00.009-04:00

Apologies, friends, but I just don't have the energy to do a two-part write-up on Lucio Fulci's 1981 unconventional monster movie HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY. Suffice to say that it was the final film in his "Trilogy of Death" with Katherine MacColl, wears its The Shining inspiration with pride, and has some of the most infamously irritating child-dubbing in the entire history poorly dubbed children (regardless of what language the film seems to be dubbed in, no less). With more than a pinch of Lovecraftian shenanigans and a healthy dose of the surreal, it ranks as both one of the stranger and more entertaining Fulci supernatural tales, being nowhere near as scattershot as City of the Living Dead but also not as batshit wild as The Beyond. I can't sensibly argue that it's a particularly good movie, but there's something strangely fascinating about it all the same, with an escalating sensation of literal madness and a breakdown between the worlds of the living and the dead so ill-defined that it's all but impossible to decode the eldritch comfort of the film's final minute.

There was a fantastic dissection of the film is available at Brain Eater written some years ago, and anyone hungry for a serious look at Lucio Fulci's impressively chaotic work in general should give it a quick read through.

Blue Underground's 2011 Blu-ray was released the same day as Fulci's Zombie, but for whatever reason I didn't get my copy until about a week later. I took a quick peek at it on Halloween and was left severely wanting, but in the interest of fairness I've done a very brief comparison with the EC "Ulratbit" DVD from 2004, a transfer that was universally banned as being inferior to the Anchor Bay release, but was worth hanging onto for what might be the only surviving video interview with Lucio Fulci himself. I'll throw up a few quick examples, just for fun:

Top - Blue Underground BD / Bottom - EC "Ultrabit" PAL DVD

I can't stress enough that the EC transfer was pretty poor, even for DVD - caked in print damage, overly pink, cropped and with boosted contrast, just to name a few of its flaws. In terms of overall resolution, color grading, print damage, and so much more the new Blue Underground HD transfer is a clear improvement over the EC DVD, and is reputed to be just as substantial an improvement over the old Anchor Bay DVD. I'd love to provide a comparison for that, too, but I just don't have it on me - DVDBeaver COMPARED the Anchor Bay and Blue Underground releases, but their BD caps are softened out for one reason or another, so it's not nearly as reliable a comparison as I'd like...

Even if the EC release wasn't especially good, it still suggests that the new HD master might not be all that it could. Note that in the scene of the girl being dragged across the floor in the first comparison, the Blu-ray has some very digital smearing on her arms and shoulders, while the DVD does not. You can clearly make out Lucio Fulci's fingernails on the SD resolution transfer in the third comparison, but they've been somehow smoothed away in the leap to High Definition. You can clearly see that despite a heavy dusting of "grain" on the HD version, there isn't that much added detail in many of these close-ups. I feel we've established for some time that most of the 'grain' coming out of Italy is really just analog video noise, but it's almost shocking to see how little of the actual high-frequency information we have on this HD presentation could ever be described as "detail". You can also see just how out of control the video noise gets around edges in the final comparison - if you can look at the fuzzy, harsh edges of the out-of-focus seat to the right of the frame and not immediately wince, you're a far happier bastard than I'll ever be.

This in no way makes the DVD the lesser of two evils, but once more it gives us just a brief glimpse into what might have been in the hands of a better film lab. But even without a point of comparison the new HD transfer is inconsistent, at best. Some scenes - such as the entire pre-credit double murder - are awash with some pretty blatant DVNR that's left us with a static layer of video noise that's a bit like you're watching the action unfold through a screen door. Others - such as the scene with the decapitated mannequin - are extremely grainy and, dare I say it, almost film-like underneath all of that extra CRT garbage. Detail is marginal and smearing is evident on a great number of scenes, though at least it's considerably less "waxy" looking than it was on Zombie.

The image fidelity drops considerably during optical effects (as expected). All of the print damage I've noticed is consistently white outside of those already 'iffy looking dissolves, so just as with Zombie I have little doubt that BU's claim of having used the camera negative is accurate. Minor bits of dirt and minimal scratches are present through the film's runtime, but I wouldn't call them particularly distracting - especially not having had a chance to compare them to the EC transfer, which makes it look like the negative was stored in a washing machine full of razor blades and kitty litter. Color timing has improved compared to all previous releases, and while it seems doubtful that BU would have Sergio Salvati oversee the transfer and then not mention it on the box, the results look consistent and largely natural compared to the overly pink shadows of the EC transfer or the crushed gamma of Anchor Bay's old DVD. The transfer's bitrate weighs in at about 33 Mb/s using AVC, and as expected there are no compression related mishaps to speak of.

The English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (16-bit) track is, essentially, the film's vintage mono mix with the haunting Walter Rizzati score presented as it was recorded in glorious stereo. Italian mono is also provided for those of you who want to try and escape Bobby's horrific dubbed voice, though sadly the only English subtitles included are of the Hard of Hearing variety, so as such any matching they do to the Italian dub is purely coincidental. (French and Spanish subtitles are included, presumably, for the English track.) I'd say the film sounds better than it looks, and honestly I'm satisfied to see a Blue Underground release that doesn't include a ridiculous 7.1 surround remix. There's a pretty nasty audio dropout after the opening opticals, but it's present on the EC release, too. It surely could have been fixed (and is so jarring it probably should have been!), but being an error native to the original English dub I'm more or less willing to let it slide.

Fulciphiles and Eurohorror completists who have been satisfied with Blue Underground and LVR's most recent offerings like Cat O' Nine Tails and Torso will surely be overjoyed with the transfer, while those who have thought that everything after Deep Red has been a bit of a crapshoot will likely disappointed, so upgrade accordingly. It's honestly starting to piss me off that the two year old BD release of The New York Ripper remains the single best looking Fulci title on home video...

A host of new HBTC-themed interviews are included, with a particularly informative piece with Gino de Rossi being my personal favorite - though there's certainly something to be said for an interview with the grown-up Bob who says "Don't blame me! That's not my voice!" with a big smile on his face. The animated menus are cute enough, and the film is packaged in a standard BD keepcase with one of the film's better pieces of key art. I think my favorite is actually the old US one-sheet as featured on the EC Ultrabit slipcover, but at least that's been included in an SD still gallery - one of several odds and ends BU saw fit to port from their decade and change old DVD release, along with the silent deleted scene that was once an easter-egg.

As always, the Blue Underground presentation is all class... too bad the transfer's kind of a letdown. Arrow Video in the UK has the film lined up for an early 2012 release with what's sure to be some exclusive new bonus features and a myriad of different covers, but knowing it won't look any better than this I'm going to have to pass. It's a shame that Blue Underground's Italian sourced transfers are getting generally worse and not better, but I suppose the fact that I can chalk this up as looking better than Zombie or Torso is better than nothing.

Post-Halloween Purge: HC2 [Full Sequence] Review

2011-11-02T14:49:00.017-04:00

Halloween is always one of my favorite nights of the year. Giving strange children candy makes me laugh in an off-handed "haha, pedophiles..." sort of way, and it gives me ample opportunity to dress up like a freak of nature and torment my sweet little wife with unwatchable gore and sadism for about 48 hours. This year was pretty low key, on account of the both of us being broke and fucking exhausted - no costumes, no theaters, and even the miserable weather kept the number of kiddos ringing the doorbell to something of a minimum. I also promised Mrs. Kentai that we could have one year that didn't involve faces being peeled off with butterknives, so instead we caught up with the horror-franchise du jour in Paranormal Activity... I'll shrug and say that they're slightly better than I had expected with "Part 3" in particular being a legitimately good half-of-a-larger horror film, but will note to the shock of absolutely no-one that it's clearly not the franchise to get my panties exceptionally wet.

The day after was when I took a little time to myself and watched a film that's piqued my curiosity ever since the BBFC told the world that it was blatantly unfit for human consumption: THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 2 [FULL SEQUENCE]. The film passed through the BBFC with 2:37 worth of cuts and an "18" certificate back in June, but this controversy's not over yet, as Australia - the one country to have passed the film uncut so far - has recently ordered a second classification process which will happen at the end of November!

Writer/Director Tom Six's first feature, 2009's The Human Centipede [First Sequence], was largely reviled by the mainstream press as "the sickest film ever made". I question the validity of such a bold statement when, for all intents and purposes, the film is surprisingly sedate in its presentation of a mad scientist who stitches three hapless victims mouth-to-anus to create a "new life form" with a single digestive track. Yes, they're eating each other's poop, but you don't fucking see anything - how could you? Their misery is totally implicit, and the "mouth" of the centipede doesn't even speak English, giving the audience - unless they speak some pretty basic Japanese - yet another level of distance from the plight of the titular character(/s)' suffering. That said, the film wasn't bad. It was a totally unique concept and was delivered in a way that was more psychologically affecting than outright gross, and at face value Tom Six deserved a lot of credit for crafting a unique and smart exploitation film in an era when it seems that literally everything has been done to death. Honestly, anyone who would say that The Human Centipede is more disgusting than Men Behind the Sun, Ichi the Killer, Antichrist, Kichiku, Aftermath, August Underground Mordum, Crash or Nekromantik (to name just a few candidates!) is a man who's never seen any of these films, and as such their opinion on "Sickest X Ever" means nothing because they haven't even tried to find them.

With the ignorant public having embraced The Human Centipede as the new standard, Tom Six was regularly assaulted with hate mail, and even death threats over a made-up film that people went out of their way to watch on their own free time. Tom Six (much like myself) was amused by the attention that the conceptually icky but visually sterile film had raised in people, and swore to create a film that, and these are his words now, would make the first film "look like a Disney movie". I'll give Tom Six credit, because that crazy Dutch bastard delivered exactly what he promised... I'm just not sure at what cost it came.

Forgive the blatant memetic breakdown of my prose for a minute here, but to understand why The Human Centipede 2 [Full Sequence] exists, one most understand internet culture's concept of "trolling". If, for some mind bending reason, you have internet access, are reading this page and DON'T know what I'm talking about, it's that thing where people do intentionally stupid or contrary things, solely to get everyone else around them pissed off so they can laugh about it as a shitstorm billows up over absolutely nothing. Trolling is essentially the lowest, simplest, and - goddamn it, sometimes the funniest - form of attention whoring, but people fail to realize that it's an art, not just a passtime. Andy Kaufman was proof that trolling can be done IRL (that is, in the usual meatspace all non-interntet people inhabit), but you have to be pretty damned good at it to make a gig out of it. Making films, or books, or any other narrative work - particularly sequels, which are easier to get greenlit - gives some clever and sadistic types the chance to troll their own audience... this might not sound like a great idea, for obvious reasons, but I can't accuse Tom Six of being a trailblazer.

If you'll forgive a tangent, I've been convinced to some degree that Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 - the sequel to his own remake of the John Carpenter film of the same name - was the man trolling long time fans of the franchise by literally destroying both the iconic masked-nobody Michael Meyers and the original "Final Girl" character Laurie Strode, by completely and reimagining them as a filthy dog-eating hobo and a mentally shattered PTSD victim respectively. The only proof I needed was when the director told audiences in a behind the scenes interview "This film has NOTHING to do with the old Halloween 2. It's a completely original story, all new. So, here we are at the location we're using for Haddonfield Hospital..." Understand that the 1981 version of Halloween 2 was set entirely at that very same location! He was just giving the fanboys who hated him even more scraps to chew on and go onto forums and rip him a new asshole, because... well, why shouldn't he?

Zombie was tasked with reimagining Halloween in the 21st century and created a stylish, twisted reality that fused a distorted sense of dysfunctional nostalgia with the boundless cruelty and psychological dissection that made his prior film, The Devil's Rejects, so goddamn interesting. In short, he made a remake that took a new approach with the source material... and, instantly, the whole world hated it. It didn't matter than the behavior of the young Michael Meyers - the largest update to the story - was based on the behavior patterns real life boogeymen like Henry Lee Lucas and Jeffery Dahmer. Nor did it matter that he worked in elements from the second film, playing up the mythology that fans supposedly dig while simultaneously inverting the style and tone of the film into something modern and harrowing. Nope, everyone just said "Fuck you, Rob Zombie, go back to making shitty music." At that point, why should he care what they think, and why shouldn't he go out of his way to piss them off just to make himself happy? If he re-made the film verbatim they'd bitch anyway (see Gus Van Sant's Psycho - or better yet, don't!), so why not take this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to really stick it to all those fanboys who said Rob Zombie's remake was the worst idea ever and then paid to see it anyway? I'm not saying that Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 is a great film - it's not, I know. But it's at least a fascinating abortion in a franchise that's basically been one long series of varying embarrassments that range from Druid drivel to Busta Rhymes... seriously guys, the White Horse bullshit is not the dumbest thing Michael Meyers has been through at this point.

And I digress. Back to the shit-eating.

Tom Six only has his own film to work with, not a legacy of crumbling sequel-driven mediocrity and expectations that the villain will be the exact same thing every single time or else nobody will like it. So rather than troll audience expectations by turning the concept on its head, Six has literally trolled the viewers themselves, delivering the film they all claimed the original Human Centipede was - sick, depraved, disgusting filth with absolutely nothing socially, morally, or stylistically redeeming to speak of. A Serbian Film may have set the standard in grotesque cinema of the 21st century, but the film has a point - it's a clever narrative exploitation film in which the first half is a dramatic tragedy, leading up to the explosions of abuse and murder that have made it so infamous. [Full Sequence], however, is so far removed from the 21st century concept of "torture porn" that it's returned to the cinematic underground of yesteryear, in which explicit violence was literally the only quality the video existed for. I'm talking about conceptual gutter filth like The Guineapigs, August Underground, Onna Hara-Kiri and Pink Flamingos - films that, good or bad, right or wrong, art or trash, existed for one reason and one reason only: to disgust the audience to the breaking point.

Minimal dialog. Long, unflinching takes. Shot in color, but presented in stark black-and-white. The soundtrack is little more than uncomfortable background noise, and often times is simply not present. There is no stylistic juxtaposition to cling to, or ironic detachment to distance yourself from Martin's bleak, disgusting obsession; the entire film is driven by his impulsive need to create what he loves, and the film has virtually nothing else to offer. Human Centipede 2 [Full Sequence] is a singular vision of debauchery and dares you to look away. You are a sick, sad little pervert for watching this film, and it - intentionally so - puts you in leagues with Martin. It's not a character you want to be associated with, but that's the only choice you're given, and this alone makes the film harder to watch than the first. Dr. Heiter was at least a generally handsome, charismatic, and intelligent bastard of a mad scientist. He was crazy, certainly, but he had lofty, idealistic reasons for carrying out his crimes. Martin is nothing more than an obsessive, perverted little worm... and with none of the victims having a history or a personality to latch onto, he's the only person you've even got a chance of empathizing with. I don't want to make this comparison, but it's valid in this once instance: Not since the final scene of Salo has a film ever so brutally told its own audience "You're a fucking creep".

[Full Sequence] is not a narrative film so much as it is an excuse to show the audiences so upset by his first film what they so easily could have been subjected to, which paradoxically will probably never be viewed by anyone who actually found [First Sequence] so morally reprehensible that they'll never seek it out anyway! This cinematic experiment stars the hapless antagonist Martin (Laurence R. Harvey), a thoroughly disgusting, bloated, bug-eyed little troll who's mute, retarded, masturbates with tools of genital mutilation, and in general is the single most unpleasant protagonist... well, probably ever. Seriously, hanging out with Michael Rooker in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is downright pleasant after this mess. He's repulsive in absolutely every possible sense of the word - intellectually stunted, physically disgusting, emotionally scarred beyond repair, and the only reason he gains even a scrap of our sympathy is because it's clear everyone in his world treats him with nothing but scorn and abuse. His own mother wants him dead and blames him for his father being put in prison - mind you, Martin's father is in prison for having raped his mentally deficient son as a child. His psycho-therapist crosses the line into horribly uncomfortable territory. And the only solace he can take is obsessing over the brutal, phallic power that comes from watching the original Human Centipede DVD daily, and comforting himself with plans of a "12 Human Centipede"...

Calling the film diabolical is an understatement. I've used the term "Cinematic Terrorism" before to describe experiences like Henry, Martyrs, Subconscious Cruelty, Cannibal Holocaust and Antichrist - you don't "enjoy" them so much as you do survive them, trudging through the grotesque and unflinching imagery in the film because they have some deep rooted meaning behind their acts of sadism and degradation - even if some of it turns out to be pretentious and misguided bullshit, these films use their harrowing narrative to try and dissect the problems of humanity, forcing us to acknowledge our own hearts of darkness and walk away with a better understanding of just how terrible we can be... I love these films, flaws and all, and while I understand that not everyone has a need or a want to ever see them because of their extremely volatile content, they serve to prove that just because something is offensive does not mean it's worthless. Sometimes a message is so unpleasant, so grim and important to being alive that there's no more subtle way to illustrate it than by sheer cruelty, proving why something is wrong instead of trying to describe it and hoping the audience "gets it".

However, [Full Sequence] is not one of these films. It's literally the over the top wank-fantasy of a degenerate mind. It is, in short, everything Tom Six's critics were afraid the film might spawn, and it's only within the confines of being a "meta" film that this was entirely possible. By showing the perpetrator of the horrifyingly DIY-Centipede as a socially and mentally deficient bastard, he's found a way to continue the concept without literally just repeating the same exact story (something too few sequels work out): Martin is the only human being who could ever worship the horrible concept of this franchise, and the film is wise enough to show that a mind must be diseased before it can carry out acts of violence, regardless of what inspiration those acts might take. Critical acclaim for this film has been sorely lacking, and on the surface I can't blame them; it's a single minded, retch-inductively filthy, and almost totally joyless exercise in showing human filth visit degradation upon itself. Some critics love to discuss "the joy of movies", of the triumph and wonder of Hollywood's golden age of charming musicals and vast epics... this is the crushing, soulless, black hole of movies, one so gruesome you're unable to turn away, but so joylessly abhorrent that you're not entirely sure why. It is, without a doubt, an immeasurably more explicit and horrifying film than Tom Six's prior's "Sickest Movie Ever Made", and if absolutely nothing else, it proved that everyone who was offended by the first film really just needed to shut the fuck up already.

[Full Sequence] a boundless success for what it is; a dreadful, painful, ugly slog through a world so bleak that the profound moment of pitch-black humor that pokes out of it all involves a newborn being-- well, I refuse to spoil it here. Suffice to say it's absolutely deplorable, and so asinine in both concept and execution that I laughed. Hard. Yes, I am a terrible human being, but this sequence was literally inserted at the point when the film had done absolutely everything it could possibly do with its concept*, at which point Tom Six simply shrugged and said "fuck it all" with his narrative. Any pretension of the film taking its' utterly contemptible subject matter as anything but a sick joke is crushed into a fine jelly, and we're left only with Martin's realization that his fantasy must, as with all good things, come to an end. The people calling the film narcissistic need to consider that the only person in the film who's doing the worshiping is the single worst human being on the planet; if that's Tom Six's way of saying he's a really cool guy, he's doing it wrong.

The entire film is taking the piss (or, more accurately, taking a diarrheal shit) all over the people who decried his film as the most horrible thing on the planet, and on that one, simple level, it's a rousing success - but that makes the entire film a joke. An 88 minute, completely tasteless, and virtually endless joke that nobody it's targeting will have the stomach to actually see through to the end! The fact that Tom Six was smart enough to convince a production company to let him even make it is impressive, and as something of an unconventional cinematic endurance test [Full Sequence] may well become this generation's Faces of Death... but that singular amazing achievement in trolling history alone doesn't make it particularly good. What impressed about [First Sequence] was that it was a serious, measured meditation on a concept that, at face value, is horrifying. This is exactly the schlocky, empty gruesome posturing that people erroneously vilified the first film of, and while it does all of that incredibly well... I'm not certain that's really a step forward. The film clearly offends from start to finish, but it doesn't really impress in the way that A Serbian Film, Hostel Part 2 or Martyrs have.

It was a film designed to draw attention and ire and hatred, and at that - if absolutely nothing else - boy, does it excel. Personally, I wouldn't go as far as to say it's "boring" - the pacing and constantly rising stakes of torment and mutilation do a fine job of not becoming literally monotonous - but the film is absolutely one note, and it's mushy, indecisive final shot does little to convince me that the film has a lot under the hood. This is pure, heinous exploitation made for all the wrong reasons... but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't incredibly mean-spirited and meticulously constructed to fuck with the viewer's gag reflex. It delivers exactly what it promises, and in abundance. That should be enough, considering what the film is trying to be; giving all of his fans what they say they want, but knowing full well that even the most hardened of gorehounds are going to think twice about sitting through the sight of a man choking to death on a mixture of his own puke and another man's feces. Honestly, the actual audience for this film who would appreciate it (forget "like it") is so small that it's amazing it even exists. I don't want to convince you that The Human Centipede 2 [Full Sequence] is a bad film, though... it's neither bad nor good - it simply is. The film is sure to make even the most jaded viewer wince, but it's not going to stick with you on any moral or artistic level once the credits have rolled. It's a grim, exhausting experience that's causing controversy and generating word of mouth over how depraved it is, and that's what it was born and bred to do.

Remember my memetic talk earlier? [Full Sequence] isn't a narrative experience, it's this:

I acknowledge, nay, I think I even appreciate what Tom Six has created here. Who hasn't wanted to tell idiots where to stick it in the most brilliantly obscene manner possible? I'll even buy it on Blu-ray, assuming an uncut version actually surfaces and the original cut isn't banned into oblivion. I'm even looking forward to seeing how in the name of fuck he thinks he can top this with [Final Sequence] - I just can't with a clear conscience call the second film in this trilogy good. It's trash, and Tom Six knows it. Sick, vile trash that's just as filled with contempt for the first film's detractors as it is its fans... and honestly, that's fine by me. Go in expecting 88 minutes of unpleasant misery - like Schindler's List was somehow raped by the works of Jorg Buttgereit, and this film is their congealing stillborn spawn - and I'd say it delivers. Just don't expect it to be a smart-assed, tongue in cheek take on [First Sequence] in the "meta" vein that Wes Craven reduced the concept to. This isn't New Nightmare, not by a long shot.

I can't honestly recommend The Human Centipede 2 [Full Sequence] to anyone with the slightest bit of sanity or good taste left, but I'm glad I've watched it, and have no doubt I'll watch it a few more times over the next few years - and surely force a few friends to sit through it head to tail, just to watch them squirm. Underneath the behind-the-scenes layers of spite and on-screen misanthropy, there's something almost, well, beautiful nestled in its' simple minded monochromatic sadism... exactly what that beautiful thing is, however, I still can't say.

* Mind you the only available print of the film is IFC Midnight's US edit, which actually cuts the "barbed wire" scene the BBFC was so quick to spoil. So despite the print I've watched running 88 minutes, I know it's missing footage... a pity, but I just wasn't interested in waiting until next year and hoping that Australia doesn't ruin everyone's fun by renigging on their uncut R18+ certificate.

I'm very confused as to which version of the film is available and where; the US cut runs 1:28:01with a 15 seconds of logos/warnings. The BBFC submitted "uncut" print ran 1:26:50! Why is the US version LONGER, despite not having the barbed-wire version the BBFC confirmed is missing? There's also talk of a woman being stabbed in the face with a kitchen knife - but that's not at all how the scene plays out in the IFC print.

Night of the Intruder

2011-10-29T23:15:00.006-04:00

So, just a heads-up for the people who care about this sort of thing (and a big thanks to Christopher for alerting me to one of them):

This is way cooler than it really ought to be.

FRIGHT NIGHT is going to be available exclusively through Screen Archives Entertainment, with pre-orders starting on November 13th and shipping December 13th as something of a timely X-Mas present to all fans of quality, modern horror. The release will be strictly limited to 3,000 units and sell for $29.95, plus shipping.

I'm strangely satisfied to see that one of the men behind the Twilight Time company has issued the following statement on their Facebook:

Folks, for those of you waiting for the Sony Blu Ray let me just re-affirm something to you folks - Sony had ZERO interest in releasing this film on any other format, including Blu Ray.

They specifically said there was no market for this film, or not one that was big enough for them to warrant a Blu Ray release, and now with the recent remake flopping I wouldn't be expecting them to re-release their own Blu Ray down the road packed with special features to coincide with the box office bomb remake.

So, there you have it. Sony simply isn't interested in the scraps that a successful 25 year old cult film will bring them on Blu-ray, and licensing "niche" titles out to smaller labels is, indeed, the future. I'll pre-order the damned thing as soon as it's available, and while I have no doubt that we'll see the same transfer in Germany or the United Kingdom or wherever through a third party in slightly higher quantities, it's good to see that someone cares enough about this film to pry it from Sony's cold, unfeeling claws.

By far the best promotional art the film's ever had.
Well, except for maybe the Another World Entertainment cover...

On a slightly different (but all too related) note, Synapse Films will be selling an "exclusive" version of Scott Spiegel's gruesome slasher movie INTRUDER direct through the Synapse Films website. The short of it is that you get a bonus DVD-R including the rarely seen feature length workprint, burned and individually numbered by hand. It's also selling for $29.95, but to their credit Synapse will ship it for free by December 13th, the official release date.

Keep in mind that the Blu-ray/DVD combo set itself isn't limited and all of the extended KNB gore scenes are included as "deleted scenes", so even if you decide to roll the dice and save fifteen bucks through Amazon or Deep Discount you'll have the most notorious footage to drool over. The only "exclusive" part is having the entire film as a work in progress on a third disc... but damnit, that's so ridiculous that I've already put in my pre-order with Don and pals.

I wouldn't blame anyone who just wants to get the title for less than MSRP, but offering an exclusive, limited edition goodie - much less one that neat - was about all I needed to hear. My pre-order's in, and I'm sure a review of the Blu-ray will follow.

The Kiss of the Queen's Blade

2011-10-29T02:54:00.002-04:00

I guess I spend more than my fair share of time talking about Media Blasters in a negative light. It's not out of some vindictive, sadistic pleasure I get out of stomping on John Sirabella and company's hopes and dreams... they honestly just release a large number of products that kinda suck, and it so happens that a large number of those sucky titles are movies I want. So it comes as a pleasant change of pace when I can say that QUEEN'S BLADE 2: THE EVIL EYE/クイーンズブレイド玉座を継ぐ者 is about as perfect a release of the 12 episode jigglefest as we could ask for. Not to say this is entirely a shock, as their presentation for the first season - Queen's Blade: The Exiled Virgin - was similarly top notch.

Wither or not Queen's Blade is "good" is almost a moot point. The show was based on a series of Tee 'n' Ay filled RPG sourcebooks - picture it like a game of Dungeons and Dragons, except when you roll your twelve sided die, you're treated to pictures of hot psuedo-anime girls getting stripped down to their skivvies instead of a boring chart listing how much damage a goblin scout does with his +1 poison dagger. This absurd concept became an ongoing actual anime series in 2009, and used a staff of highly trained pornographers - including La Blue Girl and Twin Angels character designer Rin-Sin, and Front Innocent and Yakin Byoutou San director Kinji YOSHIMOTO - to craft a show that's so goddamn close to porn it's almost as if he inevitable steamy lesbian couplings were cut at the last minute. (And I swear, some of the left-over setup remains.)

I'm sure most people who are still waiting for the next Cowboy Bebop or Trigun to blow their minds will write it off as unwatchable pandering garbage... and that's true, in some ways. It's a totally goofy, self aware kind of fun that prioritizes nosebleed inducing fanservice over common sense, and gives absolutely zero fucks of how over the top it gets in the process. It isn't really a satire of Japan's culture of over the top objectification and sexualization - or if it is, it's damned subtle - but it does it so shamelessly that it's going to leave you either utterly repulsed or giggling like a three year old who just saw dog poo on the side of the road. With fetish minded gags like Merona being made of living transparent slime, Echidna literally wearing a live snake as a thong, and Cattleya using her ridonculous bewbs as a travel-friendly pillow, it's whole heartedly embracing these bone-headed fantasies rather than poking holes in them... and come to think of it, what's so wrong with that? Can't we just enjoy the retarded tropes of post-Frazetta/Vallejo/Rojo "Fantasy" being about buxom half-naked women fighting giant monsters - or each other - for little sensible reason cranked up to 11 and change? I'll be damned if I won't enjoy an attractive, charming, and often legitimately funny show just because it's catering to my boner instead of my brainstem.

Media Blasters' Anime Works imprint, technically speaking, released this SKU back in July. Unfortunately they only sent a limited number of copies to specialty anime retailers like RightStuf and Robert's Anime Corner Store, and only started farming copies out to Amazon in the last week or two. I know because I've had the fucking thing on "pre-order" since August. Mind you, this isn't the first time we've seen Media Blasters "leak" a title to a few retailers and then do a full release a couple months later, having - ironically enough - given Amazon the first season of Queen's Blade before they shipped copies to RightStuf. Why is this happening? Is Media Blasters only printing 500 copies at a time and then ordering more with the returns they get from the initial pre-orders? I honestly don't have any better guess, but in any case, it's out now:

Completely Random shots from Episode 8.

All 12 episodes are presented in 1080p at an average bitrate of a whopping 35 Mb/s (AVC), with lossless DTS-HD MA (16-bit) stereo in Japanese with English subtitles, as well as an English dub with accompanying slates. The mini-OVAs are subtitled only (which is fine by me!), and for one reason or another the original TV spot is a 1080i upscale, likely because it was created at 480i anyway. Honestly, if the video files were copied from the Japanese encodes, I wouldn't be shocked - but that's far from a complaint. Anime consumers back in Japan who regularly pay fifty bucks an episode get pretty OCD about the presentation of their insanely expensive habit, and if that means the US release costing about fifty bucks at Best Buy and RightStuf for the entire series looks just as good, I consider that a win/win.

The show is packaged in a pretty standard 2-disc Blu-ray case, though the "B" logo at the top is sculpted but not painted. Strange... can't think of any other discs I own with a non-painted format logo. I also hope you really dig that cover, because both discs are silk-screened with the same art. This is a show that easily has DOZENS of cheesecake pin-up shots to pick from, and we get the exact same mash-up three times in a row? Weak, but oh well. If that's the biggest complaint I can dig up, this release is worth every penny MB's asking.

Will you like Queen's Blade, friends? I dunno... but it's pretty easy to figure it out. Just ask yourself how you feel about the accompanying line of stripable, anatomically correct 6" action figures - which, honestly, I've bought far too many of as it is. Are you cringing, or laughing at the angel girl with an alternate face covered in 'spilled milk'? Decide wither the show itself is worth fourty bucks shipped based on that gut feeling alone, and odds are you'll not be too disappointed one way or the other.

For what it's worth, the show has just been renewed for a third season after the OVA's clearly successful 6 episode run. No word on wither or not Media Blasters will be pursuing either of these, but I can't imagine the magical combination of fantasy duels and half-naked ladies has been a slouch in the sales department.

Less Than 9000?!

2011-10-27T22:15:00.005-04:00

Pictured: Kentai before at least 3 cups of coffee.

Are you a closet Dragon Ball fan who lost your shit over the widescreen remaster back in '06? Disappointed that the new Blu-ray release won't have the original Japanese credits or next episode previews? Oh come on, I know you're out there somewhere!

Fun little question for you: Did you get all 7 of your Dragon Boxes? You'd better hope you did, because FUNimation has officially cut our asses off, according to an overly curious member of the DaizenshuuEX forum:

The Dragon Ball Z boxes were all limited edition box sets, and they will not have a second run. They have been discontinued and the stock that each store caries is limited.

Clever way to make the Blu-ray release look all the more appealing, no? I'm going to grab the last few myself ASAP, since they're clearly not going to get any cheaper now...

I Am Going To Eat You! (Part 2)

2011-10-26T01:42:00.003-04:00

A BEAUTIFUL ZOMBIE?

(Unearthing The Blue Underground Blu-ray)

As I've been exploring for a couple months now, I've come to the conclusion that the reason I'm consistently disappointed with the quality of Blue Underground's transfers comes down to the process being used long before Bill Lustig and his companions ever actually get the materials. Whilst Blue Underground's film lab of choice - LVR Video and Post - is clearly (and sadly) not the worst film lab out there in Rome, it does all have an uncomfortably uniform "look" to their HD transfers. It's a difficult phenomenon to describe, but the best I can do is to say that there's a layer of thick, coarse grit on top of the image that doesn't have very much to do with the actual grain structure on the 35mm stock it's supposed to be capturing. I no longer assume that they're trying to generate artificial grain, it's just... kind of there, once the scan is made.

For reference, here's a few snapshots from prior efforts, all of which show a similar layer of coarse "grain" to varying degrees, in the order in which the films themselves were created:

DJANGO (1966)

THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (1970)

THE CAT O' NINE TAILS (1970)

CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980)

THE NEW YORK RIPPER (1982)

THE STENDHAL SYNDROME (1996)

All stolen, with compliments, from our friends at Land of Whimsy.

One thing to remember is that two of these films (The Stendhal Syndrome and Django) were shot using standard spherical photography, while the other four were shot using two-perf Techniscope. The Techniscope films should have more visible grain, not less, and there's a massive difference in the "fuzziness" of the underlying image between The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and The Cat O' Nine Tails, despite the two having literally been produced in the same year, using the exact photographic process, and both being taken from the negative - either by way of a direct scan or the creation of a brand new IP. So why does the grain structure and "smudginess" of these two films look so dramatically different from one another? And while I expect anything shot on 35mm to have some level of grain, I'm hard pressed to think of any American sourced transfer that... well, that just LOOK the way these titles do.

There's been quite a bit of back-and-fourth between myself, a few fellow enthusiasts and even a professional or two about what's going on in Rome, and the best theory to date is that the film scanners being used for these releases - professional CRT scanners from the last decade that cost a small fortune, and aren't exactly easy or cheap to replace - are the root cause of it. The only way to "fix" the noise generated by the CRT's flying spot scanner is to use noise reduction, which'll not only remove the video noise but smear away anything resembling fine detail the scanner might have captured as well! It's something of a zero sum game, trying to fix video noise on an HD master: Either you keep it warts and all, or you start smearing it into oblivion and lose so many of the advantages that scanning in High Definition brought to the party to start with. And for a perfect example of why Noise Reduction is a bad thing, let's turn to another LVR soured transfer, this one released by Media Blasters:

ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST (1980)

There's a reason I thought this one was a goddamn upscale...

I'll admit that, when sitting about 6 feet away from a 46 inch TV - I imagine a distance and screen size most "sane" people are comfortable with - the noise many of the affected Blue Underground titles isn't overly irritating. It just looks like super heavy grain to the untrained eye, but it sticks out like a sore thumb sitting less than three feet away from the 23" PC monitor I do most of my more up-close and personal viewing on. I say this because I sometimes forget that most people aren't damn near pressing their nose up against the screen and going back, frame by frame, to figure out why a brief section has ghosting or if that blip passing by was a scratch repair artifact or exactly what set of standard levels the master was corrected to: That's reserved for the OCD fanboys, the professionals, the completely insane... and of course yours truly, who likes to think he's just a bit of all of the above.

With all of that in mind, there have been a number of largely positive reviews for the transfer from various horror-centric and even more general home video sites, who all laud Zombie as a rousing success, and the best it's ever looked. There's certainly some truth to this, and if you tend to think I'm overly critical on these sorts of issues, you'll probably agree with the majority here... but if you agree with them, I'm not sure why you've read this far to begin with. If you HAVE made it this far anyway, congratulations! From now on, you're in the Kentai Super Secret Review Club! Now then, if you'll just mail your $15 annual entrance fees to... *ahem* There I go again. Track, off of it. Focus, Kentai, focus...

So let's just cut out the bullshit and get to some screenshots, yes? These were captured via Media Player Classic (using FFDShow as a decoder) initially as PNG with zero additional filters in the chain, and then recompressed to JPG using Photoshop CS3 at "12" (best quality) - as is my typical method. In short, what you see here is nigh identical to what's on the disc:

In a single word, the transfer strikes me as "inconsistent". The video noise I've discussed at length is absolutely present - but mostly just in brighter areas of the screen or during pan shots, particularly the sun-baked exterior scenes in New York Harbor and on the beaches of San Salvador. Somehow, it's almost completely absent on darker sequences, or can only be found clinging to the edges of moving objects. Isn't that all very curious?

Pictured: Celluloid Insanity

As you can see, there's a heavy coating of grain/noise/whatever you want to call it in the sky... and yet, once you get down to the surface of the water, there's none. Not a scrap of grain anywhere in the ocean! How is this possible?

In this shot, we can see that the "grain" on the assistant's lab coat is anything but natural celluloid - and more importantly, whilst the bright white areas of the screen are practically swimming in noise, the flesh tones are positively smeared. Essentially any object that approaches true white becomes a haze of fine, sharp noise, and the inverse is true: The darker any scene gets, the less noise it has, and the more smoothed over the results tend to be!

The fourth shot in the above example really shows off how inconsistent the transfer is even in the same frame- the flames are crisp and properly resolved, noisy or not, while the zombie they're clinging to appears blurred and smoothed over. Anyone with even the most basic knowledge of photography knows that normal exposure behavior means the darker areas will be more grainy - not the other way around! And it's not as if an object being out of focus means it should suddenly lack grain completely.

That second cap is from the scene in which the heroes make arrangements to go to Matool - it has some of the most obvious smearing in the film I can remember, and may as well be the red flag showing off that digital tools were used to combat the heavy video noise of the initial transfer. If you don't see the frames blending and blurring together from 18:10 to 19:53 on the Blu-ray, consider yourself lucky; when the camera stops moving towards the end of the long shot in the airport, you can literally see the grain freeze on the walls in the background. Another scene with heavy DVNR is the legendary "Walking Flowerpot" sequence from 1:06:47 to 1:13:38 - it's not as obvious in stills as it is in motion, though, and sometimes the noise itself is still present, but it has a sluggish, stilted quality to it... again, temporal oddities like grain manipulation is much easier to see in motion, so while these caps are exactly what make up the affected scenes, they can't be considered the whole story.

I'm damned positive that what we're seeing is the result of some heavy-handed noise reduction on top of the expected CRT noise, and while one can argue that this is preferable to the entire transfer swimming in a thick haze of analog video noise, the results are so visibly inconsistent that it gets positively distracting. Having used my fair share of noise reduction algorithms on strictly analog video - material that desperately needed it, I know that you can carefully tailor which frequencies are affected by the filter, and that when most algorithms are asked to produce a "sharp" final result, that high frequency noise - those smaller bits that often cling to edges and in brighter areas of the luma channel - are left more or less intact. Meanwhile the low frequency noise - those bigger, often ugly chunks that would otherwise inhabit the shadows - have been smoothed away into oblivion. They've only put a digital bandage on a festering analog wound - it's obscuring the problem, sure, but it's not actually FIXING anything.

Do you know where we've seen this before? The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, a title I'd long thought may be the single worst looking title in Blue Underground's catalog, and up until Media Blasters squatted down and gave us the unprecedented one-two punch of Zombie Holocaust and Burial Ground, it ranked as perhaps the single worst looking Italian horror film on Blu-ray on the market. The filmic texture and fine detail that the Zombie negative possesses is still lost to the ages, and in its place is an inconsistent, oddly indistinct image with just lingering traces of that analog static dancing in certain frequencies that were less liberally filtered. People raving about the transfer leave me scratching my head on this one, particularly when one need only to look at The New York Ripper or The Bird With The Crystal Plumage to see that LVR is clearly capable of sharp, detailed, and relatively film-like transfers. They're certainly not perfect, but I honestly think they're still preferable to this:

That said, the DVNR in The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue was some of the worst I can remember seeing on a transfer that wasn't minted in the first half of the last decade; it makes that poor film look like it was shot on silly putty through a layer of drying sludge, with just a dusting of heavy grain on brighter areas, particularly the sky. The grain reduction used on Zombie, while certainly unfortunate, is substantially higher quality stuff that's allowed faint traces of grain to peek through during motion on various frequencies, and resulted in somewhat less obvious smearing and a decent, if not impressive, level of underlying detail. It seemingly hasn't produced any of those shockingly awful temporal artifacts found on Phenomena, either, so while frustrating, it's important to realize how much worse the results easily could have been. After the truly heinous application seen on Manchester Morgue and Zombie Holocaust, this transfer is at least a step in the right direction.

Some reviews have theorized that this "softness" is inherent to the film itself, but I call bullshit on any Techniscope 35mm negative being soft and grainless. Techniscope was a two-perf 2.35:1 native format, and is very similar in terms of real-world resolution to Super 35. Now then, was SE7EN ever grainless? What about Top Gun, or Reservoir Dogs, or Terminator 2: Judgment Day? Before the advent of the Digital Intermediate, they would do all sorts of things via optical printing just to keep the grain at a manageable level, and nowadays they can smooth everything away with digital noise reduction, but any film using a two-perf process in the scope ratio should be notably grainier than anything shot using a four-perf anamorphic method. Granted, some of that grain was just a side-effect of the blow-up process when converting the two-perf negative to a four-perf release print, a step no longer necessary on Blu-ray, but that doesn't somehow make Techniscope a magical grainless process. This fact is actually a big part of why I assumed that the excessive level of noise present on earlier Blue Underground transfers like The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and City of the Living Dead might have been an accurate representation of the film negatives... it's not until we had more samples to compare - particularly Django and The Stendhal Syndrome - that we had reason to suspect that something was rotten in Rome.

With all of that said, I can't fault Blue Underground's transfer when it comes to color grading. Produced under the watchful eye of Zombie's director of photography Sergio Salvati, corpses shamble out of rock solid blacks, the sun baked beaches and sweltering jungles of Matool look gorgeously lush and picturesque in their own... decaying way, and the warm flesh of the living looks vibrant and natural up until its chewed off like so much delicious jerky. Anchor Bay's old LD master was an ugly mess and the Blue Underground/Shriek Show DVD, while a pretty massive step up, is almost glowing with oversatured yellows and greens compared to this new HD transfer. While I have my issues with the transfer as a whole, the color timing blows a number of other Italian releases out of the shark infested water, and I have little doubt that as far as Salvati's concerned, this is Zombie as it was always meant to be seen. (Mind you, I doubt Salvati would have been against this having been scanned on better hardware...)

Another aspect Blue Underground is quite proud of is the dirt and scratch removal. Not only did they list out the man-hours LVR put in, but they employed a second American film lab to use the high-tech Flame system, which digitally tracks the motion of the original camerawork and then removes scratches and warping by averaging out the interpolated data between the "actual" frames... or at least that's sure what the "Making a Beautiful Zombie" featurette they threw up on YouTube made it look like. The scene they showed the process on was the iconic shark attack, and while there's still obvious traces of the damage to the negative, it's nowhere near as blatant as it likely once was. While not as stunningly pristine as Alien 2 or A Nightmare on Elm Street or even less warmly accepted titles like Return of the Living Dead and The Thing, there's actually little to complain about; apart from some thin horizontal lines on a handful of shots or the occasional spec you'll probably miss if you blink, Zombie absolutely looks like a pristine print, and I have little reason to second guess their talk of using the actual original camera negative this time around.

It's really too bad they didn't just have LVR make a new 2-perf 35mm IP, and let Fotokem do the whole transfer from the ground up from there... ah, well.

As far as the technical aspects of the disc go, the feature sits on a BD50 that just barely steps a toe into dual-layered territory at 25.4 gigs. If I didn't know any better I'd think they did it just to discourage people from burning 1:1 copies on a cheap BD-R versus an overpriced BD-R DL. The video bitrate clocks in at an adequate 23 Mb/s, and while it's not a scale tipping bitrate like some of their earliest efforts, I'll give the devil his due and note that whatever encoder Blue Underground is using performs circles around Arrow Video's treatment of the same material, even when BU uses a substantially lower bitrate - and as such, the resuls are predictably fine here. There are some minor compression artifacts on what overly complex scenes have retained more noise - such as when the fatass zombie goes "splash" into the harbor - but overall it's nothing to get fussed about, and I imagine most people will never even notice them. Also, the bonus disc barely clocks in at 23.6 gigs - that's right, they could have easily shuffled everything onto a single disc and saved money in the process if they'd just dropped some extraneous content (say, longer menu loops or lossy 5.1 mixes?), but instead chose to pad the "Deluxe" aspect of the release out as much as possible and make it a two-disc set. It stinks of a skeezy marketing technique, making the buyer think they're getting more bang for their buck, but hey, whatever. It allows BU to release a cheaper "Standard" edition down the line if they so choose, and I guess this means navigating all of the new features will be less of a pain in the ass, so while slightly pointless and a bit misleading, it's far from the worst thing BU could have done with it. Still, under the circumstances, why not max the bitrate of the film out? They're letting that second layer essentially go to waste!

The disc includes both a new 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio lossless tracks (16-bit rather than 24-bit) as well as Dolby Digital 5.1 downmixes, plus original mono tracks in both English and Italian - and yes, all new English subtitles are included for those who want to see the Italian dub. Anchor Bay's DVD release was infamous for its 5.1 surround track working in a number of freshly recorded foley effects for gunfire and explosions, and while I no longer have that wretched disc on hand to compare, I think it's safe to say that all sound elements present in the new lossless master are from (or at least very similar to) original Zombie elements. While I don't have a proper surround setup at the moment, I can say that on my preferred pair of cans - a pair of Sony "studio monitor" headphones - the 5.1 mix sounds more dynamic and robust than the 256kp original mix. Dialog, screams, jungle drums and gunfire are, for the most part, front and center, but some clever use of distortion for ambient sound has been used, and Fabio Frizzi's score is presented with proper stereo separation and sounds fantastic. I applaud Blue Underground for including the original mono mix, but the 7.1 HD remix is a largely respectful track that I can't see all but the most ardent purists turning their noses up at.

As I'm sure I've mentioned a hundred times now, Italian films were typically recorded with limited or sometimes zero sync-sound up until the early 1980s, and as such actors would speak whatever they were comfortable with on set, since they'd just get dubbed over later on anyway. Ian McCulloch and Tisa Farrow both clearly spoke English on set, but the lovely eyed Olga Karlatos syncs up pretty much perfectly on the Italian dub. Under the circumstances I think of the English dub as the "original" language for the film, but it's pretty cool that Blue Underground have included the Italian version all the same. Subtitles in English (for the Italian version), English HoH, French, Spanish, Portugese, German, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Thai are included... it should almost go without saying that the disc is region free, and I'm betting that Blue Underground is hoping to make a mint on a very wide and quite impatient international audience.

While Media Blasters may have initially beat Blue Underground to the punch, the new Blu-ray contains a coffin full of bonus features, including over 100 minutes of brand new interviews. Yes, there are High Definition interviews with virtually everyone involved in the film - stars, stuntmen, producers, costume designers - you fucking name it, odds are they probably have ten minutes on a couch. Highlights (for me, anyway) include composer Fabio Frizzi, special effects guru Gianetti de Rossi, uncredited co-writer Dardano Sacchetti - whom it's worth noting Fulci had a falling out with in later years and as such has little reason to recite hazy, gold-tinged memories of the man as so often happens as soon as someone kicks the bucket. Hell, the charmingly gluttonous dark fantasy director Guiellermo Del Toro gets an interview too, and he didn't have but fuck all to do with Zombie! Tisa Farrow is still mysteriously MIA, but she hasn't made anything of note (or at all?) after Joe D'amato's Anthropophagous, released just a year after Zombie, so I can only assume that Mia's little sister is quite comfortable with being retired. Perhaps the only notable face missing from "Building a Better Zombie" is Dakar, the Matool native who warns the scientists they're meddling in things they don't understand, so... yeah. Dakar fans will be heartbroken, but I can't imagine there's any anecdote of worth found in Building a Better Zombie that's not included in the new pile of bonus features, so dig in without fear of having lost anything overly important from that old Shriek Show 25th Anniversary Edition.

We're not quite done yet, though: The original "International" trailer and a recreation of the US trailer are included in HD, TV spots (SD), radio ads, a new 10 minute animated marketing stills gallery set to Frizzi's score - also in HD, and even that crusty old Ian McCulloch LD commentary are included on disc one. All of this might as well be the 'archival' suppliments we've for over ten years, but it's nice to not have to keep an older DVD for them.

The films opening credits appear to be sourced from a 35mm source, but the title is a new one - the title is simply "ZOMBIE", but uses the font of the Italian title "ZOMBI 2". I can only guess they used the Italian title as a base and basically turned the 'B' into an 'E'. The two discs come housed in a standard (ie: thankfully not a fucking "Eco-Case" that'll eat your cover) double BD case with a thin, but suitably grim embossed cardboard slipcover. The animated menus are pretty cool, I suppose, so the overall presentation is a slick and respectful one.

Zombie's Blu-ray debut is very frustrating for me. It's certainly a release that's been poured over with a fine tooth comb, and given a truly impressive stable of bonus features to keep any gut-munchers busy for hours. Unlike so many "old" titles from niche labels, this has been given a lot of thought and care, and at face value, that $40 MSRP almost seems justified... but that new 2K transfer just isn't up to snuff. Blue Underground arguably did everything they could with it, but the analog noise killed whatever hope Zombie had for being a reference transfer right from the start, and slathering it in temporal digital Vaseline only makes it worse in the end. The final result has had some glowing reviews elsewhere and will doubtlessly please a great number of gorehounds who will call Blue Underground's "eye popping perfection" more than good enough... it's kind of a shame I'm not among them.

Unfortunately, I also realize that Zombie is the sort of film we get exactly one chance on. Nobody, and I mean nobody is going to bother making a new HD Telecine now that one already exists. You like Zombie? You want to own it in HD? Then let's not mince words or waste time; order the Blue Underground Blu-ray before the price goes up. No, it's not the ideal, perfect transfer I was hoping for and that Lustig was promising... but it's not getting to get any better, either. Not for a long time, and quite possibly not ever. Arrow may pop up next year with different bonus features or something, but the transfer will be the same goddamn thing, or maybe worse. If you want to enjoy Zombie in the best looking and best sounding release it's bound to get this decade, take a deep breath, and just get it over with. I honestly can't imagine anyone who's read this far doesn't want to own as close to an archival, "Final Edition" version of the film as we're ever likely to get. So do yourself a favor, whip out that credit card, and order it from Deep Discount or Amazon or wherever you can find it for under twenty-five bucks.

But even having seen caps and more or less knowing I was walking into a transfer I wouldn't be 100% satisfied with, I pre-ordered and held my ground. You know why? Not because it's the disc of the year - but just because it's ZOMBIE. And Zombie is, all things considered, pretty goddamn awesome...

Blue Underground's best efforts have been rendered muddled and unimpressive by questionable equipment coupled with a ham-fisted attempt to smear away those problems in post, but the final results - flawed though they might be - is perfectly watchable, and a dramatic improvement over recent transfers for Zombie Holocaust and Burial Ground, for whatever that might be worth. It pains me to suggest people compromise on "perfection", instead of giving all of your money to any number of totally competent releases you've probably been putting off for the last year or two. We're all guilty of skipping movies we know we need for one reason or another, and if you just want a quality transfer of a late 70s/early 80s horror film before the big day on Sunday, there are much more impressive options than this, and they'll probably only cost you half as much. Halloween 2, Cujo, Friday the 13th, My Bloody Valentine,The Fly, Basketcase, The Funhouse, Last House On The Left, and I Spit on Your Grave are but a small sample of high quality HD releases of vintage horror films I DON'T have any real excuse to pick apart at length.

For fuck's sake, even Troll 2 - yes, THAT motherfucking Troll 2 - looks like an actual 35mm print without any DVNR or video noise issues. What sort of world do we live in when Troll 2 looks better than Zombie!?

TROLL 2 (1990)

...no seriously. Go fuck yourself, Troll 2.

Could Zombie have looked better on Blu-ray? Absolutely. But if this really is the final word on the film that made Fulci an eye-gouging superstar, it's a compromise I'm more or less willing to make. It looks okay, I guess, and in the scheme of things this is still largely one of the better looking Italian cult films available in High Definition... painful as that is to write. But it's hardly the "skull rotting perfection" Blue Underground have boldly claimed on the cover. The only thing that would have made Zombie perfect would have been for Blue Underground to switch to a film lab using up to date CCD scanner. Maybe the licensor stipulated that LVR would do the work, I really don't know... and if that's the case, then nobody could have ever made Zombie look much better.

Blue Underground have really outdone themselves on the packaging, bonus features and attention to detail in preserving ZOMBIE for the 21st century... too bad the transfer's all over the place. As Adam Tyner's DVDTalk review (which was kind enough to give me plenty of traffic on the whole "noise" situation) illustrates, the transfer is, while far from perfect, a dramatic step up from the 2004 Blue Underground DVD... so, there's not much else to say, is there. Blue Underground's already gotten my money, and wither or not they get yours should have as much to do with how you feel about the film as you do about the above screenshots.

I Am Going To Eat You! (Part 1)

2011-10-24T03:32:00.004-04:00

A Mondo Tees Limited Edition One Sheet,
already selling for inflated prices on eBay...

FULCI LIVES!

(Before The Beyond And Back Again)

I feel that Zombi 2 is an authentic zombie film. I wanted to send them back to their origins. That is why we shot the film in Santa Domingo. My inspiration came from Jacques Tourneur, not George Romero. - Lucio Fulci

Lucio Fulci's eye-popping, shark-fighting, New York invading epic ZOMBI 2 was originally conceived by producers as the semi-official sequel to Georgeo A. Romero's watermark horror film Dawn of the Dead, a film released as "ZOMBIE: Dawn of the Dead" through most of the non-English speaking world. Having already earned some level of infamy for the grotesque dream sequences in A Lizard in a Woman's Skin - special effects so convincing for the time he had to reproduce them in court to prove they weren't really torturing dogs! - Fulci tackled the inevitable Spaghetti knockoff, but violently rejected the slightly preposterous musings of contemporary Dario Argento in how Romero, his partner in cinematic crime, "created the zombie" by dragging it kicking and screaming back to its Haitian roots, fusing the contemporary Italian love affairs with electronic scores, gratuitous nudity, and gross-out violence all amidst the uniquely Gothic Paradise upon which the horror unfolds. As the film unspools to solve the mystery of why the dead won't stay that way, reality slowly grinds to a halt until only inconceivable horror shambles forth. Gripping in the final reel like the inevitable embrace of the Grim Reaper himself, Zombi 2 closes around the viewer until all hope is lost, shattered, and eaten fresh from the crushed bones of the ungreatful living.

The plot is simple, as far as these things go; a seemingly abandoned boat washes up into New York Harbor which, investigators quickly find, actually contains the ravenous and seemingly rotten corpse. The boat belongs to a man who's gone missing on the tropical island of Matool, and after being questioned by the police, his New Yorker daughter (Tisa Farrow) and a no-bullshit investigative reporter (Ian McCulloch) decide to find the old man and find out what the hell just happened. They head off to the mysterious island with a Al Cliver and Auretta Gay, but meet a frustrated scientist (Richard Johnson) and his equally frustrated wife (Olga Karlatos) who knows that the shit is edging ever closer to the fan...

Easily one of his most accessible features today, and perhaps the perennial fan favorite next to The Beyond - another film in which the vengeful dead exact bloody vengeance upon the living - Lucio Fulci's Dawn of the Dead psueso-sequel was released in the United States through the Jerry Gross Organization in 1980, without an MPAA rating, under the title that's now embedded into my subconscious: ZOMBIE, and was sold with the bold tagline "we are going to eat you!", and even gave patrons free barf-bags so they could blow chunks without leaving their seat. Now, isn't that thoughtful? In the UK the film was known as "Zombie Flesh Eaters", and was actually banned nearly thirty years ago as part of that whole Video Nasties... thing. That's all a fascinating subject unto itself, but perhaps we'll cover that another day.

Lucio Fulci had a long career as a director stretching back to the late 1950s, though his earliest films are all but forgotten outside the realms of academia. Certainly his grim Spaghetti Westerns have earned their fans, but Fulci - for better or worse - just wasn't someone who could stay out of trouble. Controversy aside, A Lizard in a Woman's Skin was followed by the first Fulci picture to get a lot of attention back in Italy, in Don't Torture a Duckling - a thriller who's demented killer's identity was, for reasons that should be obvious to this day, deeply troubling to an Italian audience at the time. For the next few years he tried a little bit of everything - more westerns, a pair of White Fang adaptations(!), and even a Dracula movie nobody seems to give a damn about... weird. After the risky financial dud that was Duckling, Fulci would tread familiar territory up until 1979, when he broke new ground with international audiences everywhere via that grand universal language of "watching zombies seriously fuck some shit up".

Zombie represents an almost distinct cutoff in Lucio Fulci's career as a director of horror films, in which the need to embrace the increasingly abstract overtook his work. There were inklings of this change in the director's philosophy towards narrative in the breakdown of the altogether familiar giallo modus-operandi in The Psychic, released a year or two before this film, but while a change from Fulci's earlier films, this fusion of the blatantly supernatural with the mundanely mysterious wasn't entirely new ground. Even if we ignore Dario Argento's "Three Mothers" trilogy beginning with Suspiria in 1977, there was still Francesco Barilli's The Perfume of the Lady in Black in 1974, a film that combined the tortured past of Mimsy Farmer's icy heroine with a less than subtle flavor of Romsemary's Baby... but I'm getting off track now, clearly.

Japanese program book, under the title "Sanguelia" (Bloody).

Perhaps it was used to make the film's title sound more like "Suspiria"?

While it's doubtful that anyone who's seen the masterful suspense of features like The New York Ripper or Don't Torture A Duckling would ever argue that Fulci was a talentless hack, most of the films that followed Zombie - among them City of the Living Dead, The Beyond, Conquest, and The Manhattan Baby - became more nonsensical and free form, narratively speaking, oft bordering on the surreal but never going so far out of the realms of basic narrative that it was totally clear wither Fulci is deliberately breaking down the walls of conventional cinema, or if he simply no longer gave a shit and realized audiences would flock to see City of the Living Dead to see Giovanni Lamberto Radice get a drill-press through his skull regardless of how little sense his story arc made. Fulci himself was later quoted saying "[T]hey used to call my art shit. Now, they call my shit art!", suggesting at least some level of self-awareness that his later films were a bit less high-brow than the westerns and thrillers that gained him more commercial than critical acclaim. Fulci left this mortal coil in March of 1996, literally just a scant year or two before many of his most legendary films would be revived for the world to see on DVD, and as such never had a proper chance to set the record straight via newly produced interviews, as so many of his cinematic contemporaries were.

Whatever the case may be - art, shit, it's all commercial entertainment in the end, isn't it? - Zombie represents a middle ground between Fulci's hyper-realistic gialli pictures and his surrealistic zombie films, with one of my favorite moments showing the clear divine between the two; the film's cryptic, violent opening scene is presented much in the style of his earlier films, a cold, scientific sequence of deep shadows and grizzled, raw humanity. When the scene is replayed in the films second act via flashback, it's presented as a romanticized and even dreamlike scene of heroic sacrifice and profound loss - something the film's pre-credit sequence eschewed entirely! How could Fulci possibly present the scene in two such dramatically different styles? I know the man can no longer tell us himself, but it certainly tells me two things: One, that Dr. Mernard is a liar, and that the REAL truth is something he'll take with him to his shallow grave. Two, that the universe Zombie inhabits will no longer be bound by triviality of "realism".

Perhaps a less forgiving critic can certainly argue that this level of horror fantasy vs grim reality was breached violently when we watched a zombie duel with a shark, a sequence so glorious that Windows used it as a piece of slightly tactless, but perhaps not undeserved marketing for their operating system:

C'mon, Apple! Strike back with some Demons 2 footage!

But the film's idiosyncrasies with reality go so much further than that. Time literally stops when the "Walking Flower Pot" of the film's almost legendary poster, and the hapless victim can only stare in horror as the ancient corpse of a centuries-buried Conquistador slowly sits up, worms dangling from its empty eye socket, and then lunges for her beating throat. Certainly that old chestnut "people acting goddamn stupid" is a common crutch in horror films, since if people acted smart in the face of danger they'd cease to die in splattery ways and the audience would never feel especially worried about the cast (and thus, if only vicariously, about themselves), but she literally stares, unable to move, as this now iconic visage of Italian horror slowly forms out of the ground to drag her back down with him. She doesn't scream, she doesn't run... all she can do is watch as her life unwravels between the teeth of a black magic fueled monster, a mystified spectator to her own demise. Is this merely weak direction? Or is Fulci tapping into that deep rotted horror of our nightmares, being presented with abject terror and being totally devoid of a way to stop it? Particularly when factoring in how gradually unhinged the presented hyper-reality of A Lizard in a Woman's Skin becomes, in which increasingly sexual and bloody dreams become an integral part of the story itself, I tend to side with the theory that it's more of the latter.

Now that's not to say that Fulci wasn't just capable of producing unmitigated shit with "dream logic" being a weak defense. I realize, despite all of the love I may have for it, that Fulci's inevitable retread in Zombi 3 has absolutely nothing positive to recommend aside from its never ending string of shocking absurdity, starting with a kid's head exploding for no specified reason in a failed pseudo-scientific experiment and ending in a zombified DJ holding down his day job - but Zombie was Fulci firing on all cylinders, and while I can appreciate that some people will never cotton to its over the top charms, the film has so much more lurking under the rotting hood than so many similarly themed Romero knock-offs that it's a shame people will mostly remember it as "that movie where a zombie and a shark fight for some reason".

Every word is absolutely true.

It's not as profound as Dawn of the Dead, clearly, but it's perhaps just as entertaining, far more stylish, and drags the viewer headlong into territory Romero has mostly ignored for the modern, Western world: the notion that the viewer is a lone man in a wild, dark world that neither wants nor needs him, and will consume him if he doesn't get back to where he belongs. I'm not quite as convinced as Jamie Russell in his impressively researched Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema that Fulci's film is a somewhat symbolic study of White Guilt and the lingering resentment of Haiti's colonization, but will readily admit the arguments he makes for the film presenting a world in which the "heroic" white foreigner (ie: the European/American viewer) tread into territory stained with blood via the actions of white conquerors, only to get their comeuppance at the hands of the "Black Magic" raised living dead is much more profound than anything I could come up with. Again, I'm not certain that's what was on director Fulci's or screen writer Darando Sacchetti's mind at the time, but it's a damned fascinating way to read the film, and would recommend anyone who legitimately likes the film to give the chapter focusing on Fulci a read.

Released on VHS in the early 80s by Wizard Video, the format many current fans in North America first saw the film on, the unrated print was (essentially) uncut - but rendered nearly unwatchable by reframing the Techniscope 2.35:1 film into a "standard" 4:3 pan-scan version. Prior to the advent of DVD, your best bet for a high quality presentation was to get the Japanese laserdisc for the better part of a hundred dollars. Zombie first appeared on DVD in 1998, in a less than inspirational non-anamorphic port of the Roan Group's, for the time, respectable Laserdisc. As is so often the case, this disc has aged very poorly, and having owned it I can tell you it was a pile of mediocre ass. In 2003, Media Blasters (mostly) Italian horror label Shriek Show announced that they had picked up the rights to Zombie and were preparing an Anniversary Edition... which was pretty odd, since Blue Underground had re-released the Anchor Bay DVD verbatim the year before, and presumably still had the rights to the film!

Exactly how and why this happened remains anyone's guess outside of the companies themselves, but in the end Blue Underground released a single-disc edition in July of 2004, with Media Blasters releasing a two-disc edition a month later. BU's release was about ten bucks cheaper and had a superior progressive encode plus some great cheesy DVD menus, but Media Blasters struck back with deluxe packaging and a second disc containing a feature-length documentary called "Building a Better Zombie", focused on the making of the film in which virtually everyone involved in the creation of the film (barring those who had already passed on) was given a chance to say their piece on it. Valid complaints were leveled against Shriek Show's documentary being occasionally repetitive - not to mention a little amateur in execution, but there was no denying that - for the time, at least - it was the exhaustive Zombie companion piece.

Mmm, shiny cardboard...

In 2011, Blue Underground has perhaps the single largest catalog of High Definition Italian cult/horror films available, and the crowning jewel of their lineup for the year is unquestionably the one-two Fulci punch of Zombie and House by the Cemetery, both released on the 24th of October, and just in time for Halloween. Blue Underground was quite proud of the time and effort put into their restoration of what's easily Fulci's most accessible and popular feature, but I grew wary the moment I saw the sign for LVR Video and Post, the same film lab responsible for each and every one of their Italian features on Blu-ray, good and bad alike. This time the film has been restored at 2K resolution by a combination of LVR and Fotokem - clearly Blue Underground has spared no expense on this release, and while they continue to announce familiar titles for their High Definition review stretching into 2011, I still feel that I have every reason to call this their "Last Hoorah for Euro Horror". I mean, best of luck and all that, but I think we both know you'll move at least three times as many copies of Zombie as you will Night Train Murders.

So, how'd all that turn out...?

NEXT TIME:

We'll talk about the Blu-ray itself!

The Vampire Strips Again

2011-10-21T17:16:00.000-04:00

Awesome! Kino Video have officially announced the acquisitions of the Redemption catalog of Jean Rollin films, which include plans to release titles on remastered DVD and Blu-ray in 2012. The first run of titles include The Nude Vampire, The Shiver of the Vampires, The Iron Rose, Lips of Blood, and my personal favorite, Fascination. Tim Lucas will be providing brand new bonus material, and that charmingly sadistic bastard's been teasing us with some relatively encouraging looking HD screenshots for weeks now.

There's some obvious Rollin titles missing from this announcement, but I have little doubt that Kino is getting these in a package deal, and will do more should the market bear what they've already got on their plate. To be honest, I thought Rollin's first film, Rape of the Vampire, was goddamn awful and could live if we don't see that on Blu-ray for a while yet. But I'm surprisingly saddened to not see The Living Dead Girl among them. The film has many flaws, but it's final reel is such a tour-de-force of visceral bloodshed and melancholy loneliness that it was Rollin breaking down that poetry so near and dear to him into its most basic components, bludgeoning the viewer with the themes of solidarity and of needing to destroy to truly live that it comes full circle with his, at times, almost infuriatingly symbolic earliest films.

Jean Rollin is a difficult figure to discuss because his works are so inertly polarizing: Either you'll love them or you'll hate them, and there's absolutely nothing anyone else can say to convince you one way or the other. They aren't really pointless nudie pictures and they aren't really unsettling horror movies, but more a measured and totally whimsical reflection of both. Poetry as narrative, if that makes any sense. Rollin clearly believed in his work, no matter how absurd it all tended to be, and while he was far less relevant today than he was in the 1970s the world is still a slightly less interesting place without him.

I wouldn't ever fault someone for walking away from The Iron Rose and calling it a pointless, pretentious pile of nothing, but at the very least I'll give Rollin credit for crafting a gorgeous, fantastic looking dreamscape out of little more than an actual cemetery and an old train. Rollin was, if nothing else, an impressive artist and I'm thrilled at the chance to admire his art in 1080p from a label who will likely give these features the respect and care they rightfully deserve.

Let's just hope that sales are a bit better for Kino than they were for Encore Entertainment, who released a slew of impressive - if, at times, artificially padded - 3 disc special edition DVDs, then trimmed them down to 2 disc editions in simpler packaging for a few dollars less, only to can the Redemption line altogether after the 8th feature.

Cracking The Burial Ground Wide Open

2011-10-19T19:05:00.002-04:00

It's Not Who You Think It Is...

A correction/clarification worth noting: Blu-ray.com user "Telecine" has stated that s/he works for LVR Video & Post, the Italian film lab responsible for all of Blue Underground's HD masters of Italian genre films, which in turn are being used world-wide.

Anyway, while I'm still hoping for more info regarding the funky DVNR on Torso or the coarse 'grain' on literally all of their titles, s/he pointed out that LVR had absolutely nothing to do with either Arrow Video's THE BEYOND or Shriek Show's BURIAL GROUND. I had assumed they did the latter specifically because they had done Media Blasters' two prior Euro-Horror transfers, there were a number of basic similarities in the general appearance of the work, and not having a film lab listed I hazarded what I felt was an educated guess.

Turns out I guessed wrong, and I feel kind of bad about that. I wouldn't want anyone to be implicated for a garish High Definition turd like Burial Ground if they weren't responsible for it! Of course the implication we're left with is that there's yet another lab in Italy that produces even worse results than LVR, and that's an utterly horrifying thought.

We'll see if much else comes of it, but I don't think there's a lot they can say or do to change how I feel about their transfers: The root of the problem lies in their Cintel hardware, and there's nothing they can do to "fix" that short of buying a new Telecine. The DSX they have now probably cost them up to (and including) a cool million dollars US, and good CCD scanners are no cheaper, so asking them to swap it out for something a bit nicer is probably a pipe-dream.

The Censorship Centipede

2011-10-17T17:49:00.001-04:00

Centipedes? Made from MY anus?

After the initial BBFC classification refusal essentially banning the film outright in the UK, both distributors and censors have compromised and released THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE II (FULL SEQUENCE) with 2 minutes and 37 seconds worth of cuts. Considering just how iffy the Britsish censors get around sexualized violence I can't say I'm surprised, but of course curiosity means that all of the good bits the film might have are now spoiled as all hell. I'll spare you, suffice to say that you really shouldn't bother reading anything about the film on the internet unless you're prepared to hear what it's got to offer. And trust me, it's got so much more to offer than the initial "This is why we banned it..." statement from the BBFC ever let on.

What's more troubling is the fact that IFC's limited theatrical release this month was also cut. To be fair, this isn't entirely news: The Aussie teaser even said outright that the film was "Cut in America", but now IFC have stated in no uncertain terms that the scene involving barbed wire was the culprit, specifically adding that Tom Six "has made a concession" for the US release.

The really weird part in all of this? The Aussie release is still the only country to confirm that it'll be released uncut! Yeah, Australia: The country that won't let adults legally play Mortal Kombat, is letting Full Sequence go through without a single frame cut. Go fucking figure, eh?

Tom Six is now promising a third film that'll make Full Sequence look "like a Disney movie". I'm still not convinced that "Part 2" will light my world on fire, but I have to admit, that's a promise I find hard to take lightly. Funny that I'm so excited about the sequels on this after I found the first film to be a competent and unique, but largely underwhelming experiment...

I'm not convinced that Johnen Vasquez didn't design this one...

In semi-related news, Britfags have also refused classification for the extremely unpleasant looking film The Bunny Game, which looks to be what the shot on video exploitation film Scrapbook always wanted to be but failed. The trailer is repulsive in a way that precious few films seem to be, so I'll be keeping my eye out for this one.

Blue Undead Running Through My Head

2011-10-15T23:42:00.000-04:00

...I fucking hate being right all the time.

Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE (Zombi 2, 1979)

Lucio Fulci's HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY (Quella Villa Accanto al Cimitero, 1981)

The fine folks over at Rock! Shock! Pop! have more comprehensive reviews HERE and HERE. If I'm not mistaken they rank as the first online reviews with accompanying screenshots, so Ian gets potentially more traffic for both being speedy and taking lotsa pretty peek-a-tures. These rank as some of the worst images in their respective sets, so go look at more if you want a slightly more complete idea of how these titles look from start to finish.

Sadly, the above two images tell me everything I needed to know: It really doesn't matter how much money you throw at a title, LVR's dated Cintel DSX setup is simply incapable of creating an accurate, high quality film scan that doesn't prioritize video noise over legitimate detail.

What's worse is I'm still keeping my pre-orders for these films... sorry, bitter principles, but we're talking about Zombie and House by the Cemetery. These could look as bad as Zombie Holocaust or Burial Ground and I'd probably still pony up for the privilege, but thankfully they appear substantially better than either of those unfortunate transfers. From the looks of it though, neither is quite as good as The New York Ripper or The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, the two titles I'd rank as the best we've seen outside of Alien 2 (Midnight Legacy) and Tenebrae (Wild Side).

It's a crying shame that the "best" looking Fulci BD is bound to be the one title BU wouldn't spring for a dual-layered disc on...

Free Speech, Tentacles and Newborn Pr0n...

2011-10-12T20:28:00.005-04:00

Sorry guys, no review today. Just a personal editorial I have to get off my chest with news of A Serbian Film being released in these United States shorn of nearly two minutes of "controversial" content.

Let us begin with why the film was only released censored. This is fucking AMERICA, isn't it? Land of the free, forged under the First Amendment, and a country where the MPAA film ratings board is completely optional, right? Unlike those pansy Brits and those upside-down Aussies or those stuck-up Iranians or whatever, we can pretty much say, publish, and yes, do whatever the fuck we want up in this bitch without the need for some government official to look it up and down cross-ways and then slap an arbitrary rating on it... it's a pretty sweet gig, particularly if - like me - you're probably looking at shit like this all day:

Pictured Above: FREEDOM!

Her anus symbolizes the right to bear arms... I think.

So with all this fucking freedom at our disposal, it seems a little weird that we still have this ass-backwards thing called "Obscenity". In legal terms, the phrase almost always equates to material of a "salacious or morbid" nature, and the idea with creating obscenity laws was to put a damper on all of that freedom I was just talking about.

Y'see friends, virtually any material - be it photos, films, drawn images, or even just plain text - that a court rules as obscene is no longer defended by the First Amendment, and therefore can be barred from access to the general public. 20th Century America has had a long history in deciding what is and isn't obscene, in particular sexually explicit passages in novels like The Life and Misadventures of Fanny Hill and The Tropic of Cancer. The first mainstream pornographic film, Deep Throat, has a long and complicated history of the people behind it being charged with "Conspiring to Distribute Obscene Material", and while many of the convictions against guys like Harry Reems were eventually overturned, it literally took several years and a mind-numbingly epic legal war in which Reems especially was used as a lightning rod for public hate for that to happen. We wouldn't even have Ron Jeremy to make fun of today if it weren't for these cases, and so I can only thank Reems, even if he traded in his professional dicking for a life full of AA meetings and real estate. No, seriously.

Basically, for material to be proven obscene you have to fail the "Miller Test", defined in the case against a mail-order pornography peddler in the early 1970s. It asks wither the so-called "average person" in the "contemporary community" the case is being held in would find it obscenely upsetting, wither it specifically describes or displays "explicit" sexual content, and wither or not the work - taken as a whole - possesses any identifiable "value" towards the arts, literature, science or politics. At face value it doesn't sound bad, right? So long as you aren't peddling midget donkey-shit porn, you should be in the clear, right? For a painfully broad example, Michaelangelo's David might well have his uncut schlong hangin' all out and in your face, but that's fucking ART, and thus would be classified as "erotica", which is considered a different classification altogether - it's explicit in that it has a dingle, but it's not offensive to society at large to the point where access should be denied. That's completely different from the grotesque Japanese dick-girl tentacle fuck scribbles I've posted above... right?

Above: Erotica, NOT Obscenity. (Legally speaking.)

Well... exactly what is and isn't considered "obscene" per the Miller Test was left, perhaps intentionally, quite vague. The jury isn't literally asked to assume that they find the material purient (ie: grossly sexual) personally, but rather if they think a theoretical average person in their community would. How the fuck could you even measure that sort of thing? Do you walk up to a hundred people on the street, flash some hardcore porn, and then ask them if they think it's normal or not?

Another factor is that of the lack of a definition toward the "community" itself - is that the whole country, just your state, or just the goddamn cul-de-sac where the poor sap was arrested? Typically the 'community' is interpreted as whatever state and/or county the charges were drawn up in, but that seems dicey when the material may or may not have been acquired from elsewhere - most smut is bought through mail order these days, and actually there's been porn available by delivery for well over a hundred years now. When the material in question is being uploaded to a website that's literally available to anyone with normal internet access, what "community" would that sensibly consist of? Do you go to 4chan and ask /b/ if it's obscene?

Even dicier is wither or not the work in question has any merit. Can grotesque porn have scientific value, period? I'd hope so, but I honestly have no idea. Political? Dude, do you realize how much Sarah Palin porn there is on the internet? (Assuming Bayonetta porn counts toward the total...) Well, "purient" or not that all falls under the umbrella of Political Satire. At least that's what Larry Flint says, and I tend to trust a pornographer who's dead from the waist down on these matters.

"Literary" and "Artistic" is where it all goes to shit, sadly, because those are matters of personal opinion. Quick! Name a film that's "art". You're probably thinking Citizen Kane, or Sleeping Beauty, The Godfather, Casablanca, Metropolis, or some other stuffy bullshit that you were forced to watch your first year of college. Now, what about a film like White Chicks? Scary Movie 2? Spooky Buds? They're undeniably torturous piles of shit you should keep as far away from your soul at all times, but that doesn't inherently mean they lack any value whatsoever. There were screenwriters, set designers, assistant directors and everyone else involved from the ground on up through the test audiences who created these films to fill a perceived void in the marketplace for them. All Hollywood movies are commercial art, and while not all art is good that doesn't mean it doesn't have the right to exist and express itself freely. Even garbage has dedicated craftsmen behind it, and while I'd certainly not want to have to convince a jury that something like Blood Feast has anything resembling literary and/or artistic value behind it, that doesn't inherently mean that it doesn't possess some raison d'etre that goes beyond the basics one looks for in most "art" - like, you know, competency and common sense. Thankfully, violence is always safe in this country, so Blood Feast and its' admittedly trashy ilk isn't really the problem... but we'll loop back to that shortly, I promise.

Pictured: Art... I guess.

With all this in mind, are pornographers not artists? Does it not take skill to perform on cue when your anus is burning from the non-water based lube, and is the technical prowess of properly lighting a silicone enhanced tit really much different from lighting a dialog scene of a major motion picture? I'll grant that the standards are certainly much lower, but that doesn't mean the artistic integrity is completely non-existent. This is nowhere more apparent, in my eyes anyway, than the realm of 2D art in which underground professionals are paid - often per commission - to produce erotic art of an intensely personal and unique nature. Wither you think - let's say, Dmitrys' work - is little more than pathetic material for closet homosexuals to pleasure themselves to, his understanding of anatomy, color theory and staging puts plenty of artists working in the realms of "legitimate" commercial art to shame!

Don't believe me? Let's compare one of Dmitry's pieces to that of 90s stalwart comic artist Rob Liefield:

Good Porn.

Bad... Everything.

To the six person jury who found Jesus A. Castillo, a man who was tried and found guilty of obscenity for daring to sell a grown man a copy of Toshio MAEDA's Demon Beast Invasion manga, I ask this: Who the fuck are any of you to say that any man who created a piece of degenerate spank material is also incapable of producing "art" in the process? Much less when two separate expert witnesses agree that there's artistic and cultural merit in the work, only for their testimony to be completely ignored in their use of the Miller Test because FUCK THOSE ASSHOLES!, apparently?

This ridiculous, unfortunate outcome was for a man who sold comics and other assorted geeky sundries for a living, and was reportedly targeted by a local police officer in tandem with a new bill to tax the sale of magazines and similar publications. He was a fucking scape goat for local politics, and in the end he was put through two years of legal hell for selling a cartoon to an adult that was properly marked as being material for adults only. He only had one charge dropped (for Legend of the Overfiend, no less!) because the CBLDF threatened to expose exactly why the local authorities were taking such an interest in anime smut, but in the end the conviction for Demon Beast Resurrection stuck, and he was found guilty by a jury despite the fact that the defense found expert witnesses to testify towards the title's which, as I understand it, the jury has to accept as true without the defense finding their own experts to argue against it. They asked for an appeal based in part on this very fact, and were eventually denied. See? The System works... just, not for this guy.

It pains me ever so slightly that the UROTSUKIDOJI charge wasn't the one that stuck.

I mean I feel awful either way, this is no joke, but come on... Urotsukidoji deserved it more.

Can anyone on the street with high school education which included basic art classes create it? Can someone with no formal training pick up a guitar and play a song? Can someone who has no concept of color theory paint with oil based media? Can any of these "average persons" in this theoretical community put their pencil to paper or point a camera out their window and come up with the same exact material that's become so goddamn controversial?

No? Then it's fucking art, and I refuse to hear any arguments otherwise. This is probably the second most upsetting part of the whole thing - this underlying concept that by default, pornography, horror films, video games and pop music isn't 'art' in its own right. That it's some lower form of primitive, worthless experimentation that neither a cultural, political, or even - gasp! - artistic impact on the whole of the society that created is, as if only a miniscule sampling of "real art" is worthy of that status.

Look, I may want to shove fucking chopsticks into my ear drums every time I hear I Gotta Feeling, but that doesn't mean it's not a valid part of the bullshit culture it was cultivated in... does that make sense? The fact that I don't LIKE something doesn't mean it should be made unavailable, it just means I don't have to fucking listen to it... and thank fuck for that. Freedom is a powerful thing, and you are free to ignore the shit out of whatever is is you don't have a boner for. Don't get me wrong, you can still certainly argue wither or not it's good art. There's a huge difference between a Picasso painting and a street gang's ornate tag on a subway car, but that doesn't mean both don't have some inert value.

To flatly say that anything you can't just scribble in five seconds, or point a camera at and wind up with by default doesn't take the creative and professional impulses of an artist is a bullshit trap created by pretentious assholes who decided that their concept of what makes art "good" needed differentiating from what the common man considered "good". Look, I'm not saying that fucking Caligula is "better" than The Godfather, but I am saying that in the end they're both works of commercial art, and both deserve some basic level of respect by dint of the process they went through to even exist. Coppola's doubtlessly a better artist than Brass, but so fucking what? Short of it breaking blatant laws - you know, those fucking snuff movies and child porn videos we'll never associate ourselves with - it simply doesn't deserve to be kept away from the general public just because it's offensive. Almost as if to prove my exact point, the following quote was made in June by Justice Scalia based on a Supreme Court decision not to further regulate the sale of "M" rated video games to minors, in a decision that decided such a ruling would be unconstitutional: “Disgust is not a valid basis for restricting expression.”

Amen, sister... It's really too bad she has to be a bitch about it and keep talking about how this is specifically in regards to depictions of violence - not sexuality.

Kemono FOR ESSENTIALS 3.

One of many titles in the Chris Handley case.

Obscenity laws protect no-one because obscene material, by and large, is material one has to seek out to begin with... or literally stumble across by accident. When Christopher Handley was arrested and eventually plead guilty for owning a stack of imported pornographic comics, he wasn't even selling them! He was getting a package of goodies shipped over from Japan, the box broke in transit, and postal workers were aghast over the contents. They sent them to the police, the man's home was raided, and the PROTECT act - a recent law with no minimum sentencing for obscene material - was used (some have argued erroneously!) to get a plea bargain out of a man who otherwise could be facing a lifetime in jail for comic books. He wasn't a sexual predator or a menace to his community, he was just an art collector with eclectic tastes who hit a brick-house of bad luck. I'm still disappointed he didn't fight for his rights, but when you factor in that each and every panel of "obscene" material could be a separate charge, it's hard to blame the poor schmuck for buckling under pressure and figuring that six months in the joint was better than the potential of... life. Horrifying thought, isn't it? Living out your days in a state prison over drawings?

I bring up the above examples not only because I'm all too familiar with them, but because these are clearly examples of fantasy being prosecuted in the United States - and successfully, at that. They're drawings, exaggerated and stylized two-dimensional pieces of hand-drawn artwork that clearly involve no "real" images of sexuality and pose no obvious threat to anyone, and yet according to a stuck-up jury or a sadistic plea-bargain, they are illegal in the Land of the Free.

This all becomes exceptionally relevant when we talk about the two minutes missing from A Serbian Film, a film that - while also a work of deranged fantasy - involves realistic prosthetics and digitally manipulated images to put actors who are minors in the same scenes as graphic depictions of rape and child abuse. Forgive me for spoiling a movie I've talked at length about in the past - I'll gray out the relevant bits so you have to highlight them to read it- but simply put, the film involved one scene of a man forcing his penis into a (realistic) rubber newborn baby, and another lengthy scene in which a grown man forces his penis into the anus of a pre-school aged boy, whom we briefly see graphically bleeding out his rectum during said coitus. Despite any frontal nudity in these sequences being obscured, and the fact these scenes are meant to demonize (NOT glorify) these actions, if a fucking Science-Fantasy manga like Demon Beast Invasion can be found guilty of lacking artistic and social merit despite expert opinion to the contrary, I don't know what "That Gross European Kiddy-Porn Horror Movie" has to differentiate it when at least half of the critics who have seen it are more than willing to write it off as pretentious, shock value driven cinematic garbage.

Also sodomy, skull crushing, skull fucking, waxing poetic about goat sperm...

Right from the start, I was wary of Invincible Pictures having purchased the US rights to A Serbian Film and then saying they intended to submit it to the MPAA. There was exactly one devil-may-care US distributor I could have imagined taking the rights to it and releasing it uncut in an expensive and extremely limited edition, but sadly that's not what came to pass. Right from the start Invincible Pictures realized they had a monster on their hands, and they went about exploring every avenue they could think of to not lose the money they had put into purchasing the film that blew their minds at a festival premier... unfortunately for us, they took heed of the examples above of innocent, normal folks who happen to like "extreme" entertainment getting fucked by the American legal system, and decided to play it safe. Let's not forget that it's the distribution of obscene material that's a legal matter, and as the publishers of this feature film they are just as likely to get reamed in the process as either a shop selling it for them, or just some poor schmuck who just wants a copy sitting on his shelf.

A Serbian Film has entered a certain no-man's land in its frank and vile depictions of child abuse, and that's exactly why Invincible Pictures purchased the US rights in the first place - because it defined anything resembling safe, expected cinematic convention. Naturally, once they learned why even independent exploitation movies don't simulate this sort of thing they promptly pussied out. If it were on the same level as something recognizable released with little to no controversy - Thriller: A Cruel Picture, the August Underground videos, or even Aftermath - they would have released the film uncut, I'd have bought it, told you all to do it, and then warned you not to touch it until you were dead sure your very soul couldn't get any more jaded. But the material in this film, at least the way it's presented, is bold new territory that makes even projects like Mysterious Skin and Anatomy of Hell cringe in shock.

With the above information fresh in your mind, you guys tell me. What should Invincible Pictures have done? Should they have passed on the rights, and let whatever meager profits a cut version of this impressive and confrontational work of cinematic terrorism might create go to another distributor who would have done the same thing? Should they have released it uncensored and merely prayed that it wouldn't run afoul of this country's insanely vague and unfairly stacked Obscenity laws? Should they have walked away from the film entirely? There's countless "potentially" obscene films available in these United States that have slipped under the radar without any issue, so it's entirely possible that A Serbian Film would have coasted in the fringe of the home video market, just as films like Aftermath and August Underground have before... but if you were a part of a company that just realized you had a title that could get you jail time if some court arbitrarily decides you're guilty of selling "obscene" material, what would you do? Put your balls on the line and say "Fuck you, I'll go into debt for 20 years on legal fees and fight it to the bone?" Or would you take the plea bargain that promises just a year's worth of jail time? Perhaps you'd bow out, say you're no longer interested in selling the film. Would you get your license back? Could you sell it to a second distro and cut some of your losses, knowing they'd have the same troubles with it you do?

I'm not saying Invincible Pictures was right or wrong in their decision - it's really not my call to make. I obviously don't like that they compromised the local release of what might be the most controversial and confrontational film of the decade, but I like the reason they felt they had to even less. Obscenity laws are bullshit, and I'm still praying that someone outside the usual rung of pornographers have the balls to stand up against it someday... but man, I doubt I'll envy whoever it is that has to stand up in court and say that they don't feel they should have to go to jail for selling, or even just owning, "a movie that shows a baby getting fucked to death".

We'll now return to Kentai's usual video-related musings, already in progress.

No More Houses on the Left

2011-10-12T16:07:00.002-04:00

I'll be honest in saying I'm a little sad to know that David A. Hess, star of Wes Craven's Last House on the Left, Ruggero Deodato's House on the Edge of the Park, and Pasquale Festa Campanile's Hitch-Hike is no longer with us. His family broke the news a few days ago via his Facebook account, and our sympathies go out to the wife and son he left behind.

Word is he was in talks to be in a sequel to House on the Edge of the Park, which Giovanni Lamberto Radice is still attached to (as far as I know, at least). Horror fans will probably remember his last role as the murderous director in Lee Demabre's 2009 horror-comedy Smash Cut, a film in which Hess essentially plays "The Godfather of Gore" himself, Herschell Gordon Lewis. I've put that film off for some time now - sorry guys, but releasing it on DVD and not Blu-ray when I know it was shot in HD is simply not the way to earn my money - but, under the circumstances I think I'm going to give it a watch sooner rather than later.

Word is he was just a bit of an egotistical maniac, and there's little in various interviews - either from Hess himself or his contemporaries - to counter this. But really, how can we hold that against anyone who's iconic screen presence was playing an overbearing manipulative rapist? Some actors achieve greatness by turning their own personality off and disappearing into a role until not an ounce of themselves remain. Others simply tune into natural aspects of their personality and then crank them up past 11, removing their filters and letting whatever greatness and darkness exist in their personalities bubble up to the surface. With all due respect, I'm pretty sure Hess was the latter - not that there's anything wrong with it.

The legacy that Hess left us with are truly in Krug, Alex, and Adam, characters that represent the worst and most selfish in humanity. If getting that performance meant that Hess wasn't made of rainbows and sunshine, hell, that's fine by me. His "unsubtle" personality helped horror films evolve and grow into something even greater and more (in)human, and I'm glad to have seen that evolution, if only retrospectively.

I've long felt that Hess composed a lovely requiem, and I suppose there's no better time to give it a listen.

Invincible? I Think Not...

2011-10-09T00:17:00.002-04:00

Blu-ray.com has POSTED their review of Invincible Pictures' "Unrated" North American release of Sdrjan Spasojevic's genre-destroying, critic-dividing and all around baby-f*cking epic A SERBIAN FILM/SRPSKI FILM. I won't fault Jeffery Kaufmaan for blasting the film a new asshole and calling it repellent, pretentious bullshit; he's neither the first nor the last to come to this conclusion, and while it may not be my own opinion I do fully understand that this is a film mathematically designed to create this violent reaction in a large number of people... in effect, the film is a trap and he walked right the fuck into it. Can't blame him for that any more than I can blame a komodo dragon for getting stuck between fence posts after eating a belly full of sweet, delicious goat.

In the end there are no bonus features - not even those brief director interviews the UK release got. The "Limited Packaging" is a slipcase over the keepcase, wow, yippie. 2.0 stereo audio, despite every other DVD release on the planet featuring the original 5.1 mix... but none of that really matters, does it? There's been talk of the film getting censored for its inevitable US release for some time now, and thanks to Jeffery being a clever enough reviewer to list the US cut's runtime, we've finally hit our moment of truth...

"UNRATED" USA BLU-RAY: 01:41:57

UNCUT NORDIC BLU-RAY: 01:43:46

Assuming the US release begins with the Contrafilm logo and ends with the original Croatian film credits, that's a grand total of 1 minute and 49 minutes worth of cuts... depressing, but not entirely shocking. I'll eagerly await the Schnittberichte.com censorship report, but already having an uncensored copy myself I don't really "need" Invincible Pictures' release anyway.

So, there we have it. I hate to have to say this, but don't fucking bother supporting this release - if you really want to own an original copy and give Spasojevic and his pals their due... well, good fucking luck. The German, Norwegian and upcoming Dutch releases are uncut, but almost impossible to find these days, and of course none of them have any English subtitles.