Obscure Cinema

The Giallo Project #11: Death Walks at Midnight

Alternative titles: La Morte accarezza a mezzanotte; Director: Luciano Ercoli; Starring: Nieves Navarro, Simón Andreu, Peter Martell, Claudie Lange, Carlo Gentili, Luciano Rossi; Music: Gianni Ferrio; Italian theatrical release date: November 17th, 1972

Note: this review contains some spoilers.

Now comes the part where I get to revel in my own hypocrisy. Last time, I looked at Sergio Martino's The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh and picked it apart for its narrative shortcomings and weak-willed heroine. This time, however, I'm going to talk about a film that I enjoy much better on the whole, although it's not one I can really defend. Luciano Ercoli's Death Walks at Midnight, the producer-turned-director's third and final giallo, suffers from some pretty significant problems, not least the leaden pacing in its second act, but, if a giallo is going to be kitschy rather than serious, it's a lot closer to the sort of kitsch I personally enjoy than that which is to be found in Mrs. Wardh.

The plot centres around Valentina (Nieves Navarro), a glamorous model who agrees to take an experimental new hallucinogenic called HDS for a story her journalist friend Gio (Simón Andreu) is writing. While under the influence, Valentina sees (or thinks she sees) a woman being bludgeoned to death by a man wielding a spiked glove in the apartment facing hers. With virtually everyone, including Gio, her boyfriend Stefano (Peter Martell) and the requisite cigar-chewing inspector (Carlo Gentili) passing her vision off as nothing more than the result of a drug-induced stupor, Valentina sets out to do her own detective work, particularly when the same killer she saw begins menacing her...

This is one of these films that you have to take at face value and accept for what it is. It is not, by any means, great art, and looks decidedly out of place when positioned alongside the better genre offerings by Argento, Fulci, Bava, Dallamano, Lado and the like. Essentially, it's just a light, gory, kitschy romp in which a beautiful woman is menaced by various unsavoury types, and as such it has a lot more in common with the Sergio Martino films that tend to leave me cold. For some reason, though, I really do enjoy Ercoli's gialli, and this is by far my favourite. A lot of it, I suspect, has to do with the way in which the heroine is portrayed. Ercoli, it would seem, attempted to establish his wife/leading lady Navarro (credited here, as in many of her films, as Susan Scott) as a rival to Edwige Fenech, without much success (she only played the lead in three gialli: this, the earlier Death Walks on High Heels and Maurizio Pradeaux's snorefest Death Carries a Cane). Part of this might be due to her arriving on the scene late: she was much older than Fenech when she made her first giallo, and, by the time Death Walks at Midnight, arguably her strongest outing, came along, 1972 was nearing its end and the giallo craze had entered its twilight. However, I suspect that another reason is her on-screen persona.

To put it bluntly, "victim" is really not in Navarro's repertoire. She literally exudes sexuality, her self-assured "I'm gorgeous and I know it" pout a far cry from the sort of innocent damsels who tended to be the leading ladies in most gialli. Passivity seems to be an alien concept to her, and she controls virtually every scene in which she appears (and I can think of only a handful in which she is absent), continually giving as good as she gets and, unusually for a giallo heroine, absolutely refusing to give up. (It's also kind of interesting that, although she is a model by profession, unlike Fenech in Mrs. Wardh, she never takes her clothes off and is, on the whole, much more modestly dressed. That's not a criticism or a compliment, just an observation.) True, she gets slapped around a bit, but those who decide to take her on tend to get far worse from her in return, and, while the various men in her life all seem to treat her as a bit of a joke, you get the impression that she has the last laugh.

Valentina is, ultimately, an example of an extremely rare breed in a giallo territory: a confident, self-sufficient woman who takes shit from no-one: Julie Wardh she is not. A complete and utter narcissist (a giant blow-up photograph of herself hangs over her bed), you get the impression that she is in love with no-one but herself, despite having a boyfriend who has his own key to her apartment, and something of a love-hate relationship with Gio, the specifics of which are never made clear (personally, I suspect they probably had a relationship in the past). There is also a strong dose of comedy both in Navarro's performance and in her interactions with her co-stars, showing that she is not afraid to take the piss out of herself, flopping about on a bed with her arms flailing and wittering on about purple ice cream, red priests and murderers. While we might speculate that the injection of comedic elements implies that the filmmakers are uncomfortable with the notion of a tough, independent woman, we tend to laugh with Valentina rather than at her. All the men she meets either treat her as an attention-seeking child or like crap (or both), but, ultimately, she's right and they're wrong: she did see a murder, and there was a man after her, trying to kill her. Most of the laughs come from her eye-rolling as Gio attempts to worm his way into her favour, or from the number of people she slaps, punches or knees in the balls.

Perhaps the strongest possible indication of the difference between Valentina and Julie Wardh comes in a scene in which Valentina and Gio are sitting in an outdoor restaurant. Only half-listening to what Gio is saying, Valentina allows her mind to wander and suddenly spots the killer standing in a crowd nearby, watching her. Realising he has been spotted, he turns tail and runs, while Valentina immediately gives chase, berating a reluctant Gio into tagging along. Julie would probably either have fainted or collapsed into George Hilton's arms, begging him to take her back to the safety of his bachelor pad (no doubt for a bout of reassuring sex on the sofa), but giving up is the last thing on Valentina's mind. Throughout the film, she is the driving force in getting to the bottom of the mystery, and all the amateur sleuthing is carried out by her. I'm not trying to suggest that this is anything approaching a feminist tract, but in comparison with Mrs. Wardh, it seems positively radical.

I think Valentina's relationship with the world of men is perfectly summed up in the scene where, attempting to exit the asylum she has been visiting, she has to fend off a room full of crazed inmates, who crowd around her, pawing at her or acting up to get her attention. She seems ultimately to be the lone woman and voice of reason in a world dominated by mad or immature men, some of whom with to do harm to her (e.g. Stefano and the assassins who come after her), while others simply don't realise they're getting in her way and are too preoccupied by their own concerns to see her point of view (e.g. Gio, Inspector Seripa). Even random individuals seem to want to do her harm: a driver whom she flags down for a lift back into town ends up trying to rape her (and finds her foot connecting with his groin for his troubles). When we finally meet another female character - the pale, frightened Verushka (Claudie Lange), obviously a "kept woman" - the difference between her and Valentina is striking.

As I said at the beginning, I can't make too many excuses for Death Walks at Midnight or claim it to be a lost masterpiece. It is, in places, a whole lot of fun, and has some very nicely-directed scenes (in particular, the opening hallucination and the rooftop fight which rounds things off), not to mention a great, charismatic heroine, but it really falls off the rails in the middle, giving way to a seemingly pointless subplot involving Stefano and two Japanese children who he is looking after (I'm assuming the point of this is to reveal some sort of latent longing for a conventional domestic life in Valentina, but it is buried before it has a chance to be explored). Still, for all its faults, it's an agreeable, breezy giallo with a nice sense of self-deprecation and a lead who doesn't make me want to tear my hair out. I don't know about you, but I'd rather hang out with Valentina than with Julie Wardh. Provided she didn't start thumping me.

I'm not sure which film I'll be looking at next time, but hopefully you won't have to wait too long for it.

The DVNR bandits strike again

The other day, I ordered a copy of the soon-to-be-OOP US HD DVD release of Pan's Labyrinth from New Line. I did this fully aware of the controversy surrounding the noise reduction that had been applied to the transfer, sucking out much of the grain and fine detail. My reasoning behind this was that the UK release, which I reviewed late last year, also showed signs of noise reduction, so I figured that both would feature the same decent but flawed transfer, with the US release having the added benefits of lossless 7.1 audio, picture-in-picture and other additional extras.

Unfortunately, it looks as if I was wrong. Screen captures have surfaced at the AV Science Forum showing, in their full 1920x1080 resolution, the same frame from both releases (as well as the French HD DVD and EU H.264 broadcast versions), and to say that the US release makes the UK version look stellar would be an understatement. This is probably the worst example of grain-sucking I've seen on an HD release this side of Cat People or American Psycho, and while many people are predictably praising the US release for looking "smooth" and "clean" (words which always put the fear of Pazuzu in me when used in reference to material shot on film), the more informed among us are justifiably outraged.

I'm now really sorry I ordered this release, and at this rate I won't even be bothering to unwrap the cellophane. It also makes me slightly suspicious of the rave reviews that New Line's other HD releases have been receiving, and I have a feeling I'll need to pick up one or two of them to get to the truth of the matter. The problem is that none of the titles they've put out so far appeal to me, least of all Rush Hour 3.

The Giallo Project #10: The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh

Alternative titles: Lo Strano vizio della Signora Wardh; Next!; Blade of the Ripper; Director: Sergio Martino; Starring: George Hilton, Edwige Fenech, Conchita Airoldi, Ivan Rassimov, Alberto de Mendoza; Music: Nora Orlandi; Italian theatrical release date: January 15th, 1971

Note: this review contains a number of major spoilers.

No, you haven't gone crazy. I have indeed just skipped over several films, leaping from 1969's The Frightened Woman all the way to 1971's The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, leaving out a whole lot of interesting title along the way (not least The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, arguably the single most crucial film in the giallo movement after Blood and Black Lace). I fully intend to go back and cover these films at a later date, but since, at the moment, I'm writing (or trying to write) a piece comparing the portrayal and treatment of the heroines in The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh and Luciano Ercoli's Death Walks at Midnight, I thought it made sense to treat you to my thought process as I went through these two films. (Ergo, the next Giallo Project will cover Death Walks at Midnight.)

Mrs. Wardh is a film that I think people tend to overrate... although, of course, that's just my opinion, and I suspect many people will feel that I underrate it. In historical terms, it's noteworthy for being the first giallo to be directed by the prolific Sergio Martino (although he only actually directed four further gialli) and to star Edwige Fenech, considered by many to be to the giallo what Jamie Lee Curtis is to the American slasher. It's very much a giallo in the "harangued woman" format that we might say got its kick-start with The Sweet Body of Deborah (covered here), on which many of Mrs. Wardh's key players on both sides of the camera worked. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your taste in gialli), this means that the voluptuous Ms. Fenech spends the duration of the film running from one man to another, often fainting into their arms or begging them to protect her. For some viewers, this is part and parcel of what makes gialli so enjoyable; personally, I prefer my heroines to have a bit more pluck - think Nora in The Girl Who Knew Too Much or Valentina in Death Walks at Midnight. Barring the pansexual seductress she played in Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, Fenech's giallo roles tend to be comprised exclusively of complete drips who wouldn't seem entirely out of place in a Victorian romance novel.

The amusing part is that this appears at least partly to be intentional. The rest of the women in the film are considerably less highly strung, and, while most of them meet a bloody end screaming their lungs out, they seem to have noticed that the year is 1971, not 1871, and that women are no longer the property of men. While Julie Wardh (Fenech) is married to her dry-faced dolt of a husband, Neil (Alberto de Mendoza), her best friend Carol (Conchita Airoldi) enjoys living it up, espousing a motto of "When it's good, I enjoy it. When it's bad, I don't think about it." A bit of an airhead, yes, but she's considerably better company than the humourless Julie, even if her notion of being liberated doesn't extend much beyond having lots of sex with lots of men, and seems to be in the fortunate position of having ample money at her disposal despite not appearing to have a job or anyone else to provide for her. La dolce vita indeed!

Julie, too, has far too much free time on her hands, but she spends it fretting and running into the arms of one man after another, hoping they'll protect her. I said before that there's a common theme in the "harangued woman" gialli, of the heroine (a term I'm using very loosely here) hoping the Good Man will protect her from the Bad Men, with the former invariably turning out to be the latter. Here, all three men in Julie's life - Neil, the thuggish Jean (Ivan Rassimov), the roguish George (George Hilton) - are involved in a plot to do poor Julie in and collect the proceeds of her life insurance, so in a sense you can't really blame her for running around like a headless chicken practicing her wide-eyed look of horror at every opportunity. The three conspirators' scheme has to rank as one of the most nonsensical in any giallo (and that's saying something), but I'll get on to that later. In the meantime, it's quite fascinating to see the three archetypes so clearly established: the boring, safe (who is of course anything but) older man who seems to be something of a surrogate father; the dangerous, sinister rascal who enjoys leering at the heroine and subjecting her to various forms of sexualised torture; the rakish playboy whose happy-go-lucky nature really can't be anything but an act. That all three are planning to do Julie in is further evidence of how misanthropic these films tend to be: Julie may be a complete and utter nervous wreck, but if the entire world appears to be populated by bastards, can you really blame her? Actually, I think you probably can: in Death Walks at Midnight, Valentina's response to an attempted sex attack is to knee the perpretrator in the balls; Julie tends to to swoon and let them get on with it. Okay, so I'm not expecting every giallo heroine to be a gung-ho action woman, but it's kind of disheartening to watch one who is such a pushover.

As for the aforementioned plot devised by the three men, it's one of those traditional giallo schemes that superficially seems to make sense - having three killers, after all, means that you avoid any unfortunate problems of having someone be in two places at once - but, once you start to pick it apart, promptly falls to pieces. Now, you might say, if I'm paying too much attention to the plot, I'm not really getting into the spirit of things, but I like my pizza to have some dough in it rather than just a mountain of toppings, and the same goes for my gialli: the photography, sex and violence is all very well, but if there isn't a plot holding it together, I find it harder to care. Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Massimo Dallamano and Aldo Lado (probably my favourite four) all seemed to understand this, and were able to ground their stylistic set-pieces within interesting plots; here, the killers' motives and their actions seem almost to have been an afterthought.

Essentially, the plan is that, if Julie dies, Neil will inherit a substantial amount of money. Now, he could bump her off himself, but he needs an alibi, so he enlists his associate, George, who would like Neil to do him a favour and do away with his cousin Carol, so he can come into some money of his own. All well and good, and the fact that a maniac is currently terrorising Neil and Julie's native Vienna, slicing and dicing young women with a razor, gives the pair the perfect opportunity to make it look like the demises of Julie and Carol are the work of this individual. Killing Carol is straightforward enough - they lure her to a deserted park on the pretext of meeting someone who is blackmailing Julie (though how they could be sure Carol would go in Julie's place is anyone's guess). With Julie, however, they complicate things by, for seemingly no reason, involving her old flame Jean, and then going on a gratuitous trip to Spain, where they chloroform her, turn on the gas and attempt to pass her death off as suicide. All well and good, but why bother going to Spain to do it? Why not just do this in Vienna, or better let keep things simple and stick a knife in her in a dark alley? The most obvious answer is that this was a Spanish co-production, and the script needed to include an excuse to do some filming in that country. Another theory, of course, is that writer Ernesto Gastaldi was making it up as he went along, which is one of the reasons why I've always found his assertion that Dario Argento's scripts are nonsensical quite bizarre.

Is this enough to make or break the film? Not really, but, for me, it does introduce one distraction too many in a film that was already struggling to hold my attention. While a couple of the set-pieces are quite effective (the best being the death of Carol, which anticipates a similar park murder in Argento's later Four Flies on Grey Velvet), Emilio Foriscot's photography is flatly lit and overly contrasty, while, as already mentioned, Julie is a completely insipid protagonist. As far as Martino's work goes, I find myself drawn more to All the Colours of the Dark, which features nearly all the same flaws but makes up for them by being completely crazy and off the wall. Mrs. Wardh is... well, it's not a dead loss by any means, and I do quite like the atmosphere of casual decadence that Martino creates, but it's one of those films that I always have to force myself to go back to, and never enjoy as much as everyone else seems to.

Next time, I'll be looking at Luciano Ercoli's Death Walks at Midnight, one of my guilty pleasures.

DVD review: The Plague Dogs

The Plague Dogs is a film that I can honestly say I don't ever want to watch again, and I mean that in the best possible way.

I've reviewed Optimum Home Entertainment's recent release of The Plague Dogs, Martin Rosen's second and final animated feature and a spiritual successor to the earlier Watership Down. Optimum's DVD includes both the shorter theatrical cut and the much longer director's edition.
 

The Warner shopping list

With Warner's HD DVD support on the way out, it no doubt stands to reason that the titles they have already released on at format will now only be on store shelves for a limited time. With that in mind, I thought it would be useful to put together this little post together, cataloguing Warner titles that are either not (yet) available on Blu-ray, or are available on Blu-ray in inferior versions, therefore giving people the opportunity to pick up any titles they want before it's too late.

Please note that this list is not complete by any means, so if you spot any missing titles, or title that are there but shouldn't be, then please leave me a comment and I'll make the necessary changes.

Titles which feature superior audio on HD DVD:

- The Ant Bully (TrueHD)
- Happy Feet (TrueHD)
- Lady in the Water (TrueHD)
- Nip/Tuck: The Complete Fourth Season (1.5 Mbps on HD DVD, 640 Kbps on BD)
- The Phantom of the Opera (TrueHD)
- Superman Returns (TrueHD)
- Training Day (TrueHD)
- The Wicker Man [remake] (TrueHD)

Titles which feature VC-1 encodes on HD DVD but MPEG-2 on BD:

- The Fugitive
- Good Night, and Good Luck
- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
- Rumor Has It
- Space Cowboys
- Training Day

Titles which are limited to 1080i output on BD:

- Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (replacement programme expected)

Titles which feature more extras on HD DVD:

- 300
- Blood Diamond
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
- Pan's Labyrinth (New Line)
- Troy: Director's Cut

Titles which are currently only available on HD DVD:

- The Adventures of Robin Hood
- Batman Begins
- Caddyshack
- Casablanca
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
- Constantine
- The Dukes of Hazzard
- Excalibur
- Forbidden Planet
- Grand Prix
- The Matrix Trilogy
- Mutiny on the Bounty
- The Perfect Storm
- Poseidon
- Troy (theatrical cut)
- V for Vendetta
- Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

It stands to reason that, with PiP now working on Profile 1.1 Blu-ray players, Warner will begin to release titles originally delayed on Blu-ray because the functionality wasn't there, including Batman Begins and The Matrix Trilogy. Older catalogue titles such as Casablanca and Mutiny on the Bounty reportedly sold poorly on HD DVD, and have no technological reason not to have been released on Blu-ray, so it may be that Warner will simply write them off as expensive mistakes until high definition media has a larger market hold.

Update, January 7th, 2007 02:25 PM: Added Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, which on BD is limited to 1080i output rather than full 1080p (thanks to Jayson for pointing this one out).

Update, January 7th, 2007 08:01 PM: Added Training Day to the audio section and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory to the "not available on BD" section. Thanks again, Jayson.

Update, January 10th, 2007 06:51 PM: Removed Million Dollar Baby from the "Titles which feature VC-1 encodes on HD DVD but MPEG-2 on BD" section, as it is in fact a VC-1 encode on both formats (thanks, Anthony).

Update, January 11th, 2007 08:59 AM: Added various titles to the audio section (thanks, Anthony).

DVD debacle

It's funny, all this hoo-ha over the Warner Blu-ray announcement, and what did I end up doing yesterday? I went out during my lunch break and bought some standard definition DVDs. In my defence, they were practically giving them away, with the bulk of them £3.99 and several included in a "Buy two, get a third free" deal. I ended up with Y Tu Mamá También, Little Children, Munich and Factory Girl, with these titles chosen for a combination of reasons, ranging from "I've wanted to see this but never had the opportunity" to "People said this one was good" to "I can't think of another title to get, so I'll pick one at random." Care to guess which was which?

The Giallo Project #9: The Frightened Woman

Alternative titles: Femina ridens; The Laughing Woman; Director: Piero Schivazappa; Starring: Philippe Leroy, Dagmar Lassander; Music: Stelvio Cipriani; Italian theatrical release date: August 24th, 1969

Note: this review contains a number of major spoilers.

"From an aesthetic point of view, your position is perfect. You form a long, supple, curving line against a series of upright lines. You're feminine like that!" - Dr. Sayer

Well, nearly five months after my last entry, I finally decided to stop prolonging the inevitable and get this project started again. A can only apologise for the extended delay, and hopefully future updates will be a lot more frequent than they have been so far.

Initially, I wasn't sure whether or not to include this film in the Giallo Project, given that its affiliation with the form can only really be described as loose. However, I think that it does share many elements with the "woman in peril" domestic thrillers that Lucio Fulci, Sergio Martino and Umberto Lenzi were known for during the early days of the movement, so in a sense it would be wrong to ignore it just because it doesn't fit the template of the typical giallo. The plot essentially concerns Maria (Dagmar Lassander), a reporter, who accepts an invitation from the enigmatic Dr. Sayer (Philippe Leroy) to visit his apartment on the pretext of giving her some files for a paper she is writing. Maria discovers too late that Sayer is in fact a lunatic who believes that women will take over the world and render men redundant unless something is done to curb their emancipation.

One of the elements that continues to fascinate me with films such as these, and indeed was one of the driving forces in my decision to undertake a PhD on the subject, its their strange air of ambivalence towards violence, modernity and sexuality, to name but a few. After 87 minutes of Dr. Sayer berating women for their desire to be "socially and sexually self-sufficient" and lamenting the possibility of a future in which such a state should come to pass, I'm still not sure where writer/director Piero Schivazappa stands on the issue. The film came along at the height of the women's liberation movement, and as such it's tempting to see this as the knee-jerk reaction of a filmmaker who, like many men in the 60s and 70s, was growing increasingly paranoid as a result of women's burgeoning independence. Obviously, Dr. Sayer is completely insane and unstable, but it wouldn't be the first time a director used a lunatic to convey his message. The matter is also muddied considerably by a plot twist in the final act which turns the tables, presenting Sayer as the victim of an entrapment scheme cooked up by Maria and another woman. Still, it does conclude with what seems to be a completely sincere call to arms for women not to take any crap from men, so frankly I have no idea!

Whatever Schivazappa intended, the film is clearly an exploration of control. The majority of gialli that feature a female protagonist can be broken down into simple stories of a helpless woman falling into the arms of her handsome rescuer: it's the ultimate male fantasy of the Good Man saving the damsel in distress from the Bad Man. The difference, here, is that there is no Good Man, only one man and one woman, with the roles of victim and aggressor becoming increasingly blurred as the film progresses. At one point, Maria asks Sayer why he is holding her against her will when he could have all the women he wants. The answer is that he isn't interested in a woman who is with him by her own choosing: he has to break her will, to give her no choice. This is why Sayer reacts with such horror to Maria's suicide attempt: his desire for control over her is so strong that he can't bear the thought of her dying on her terms rather than his. In the shifting power dynamic between the two characters, meanwhile, there seems to be an implication that man wants to enslave woman but is ultimately utterly dependent on her. Sayer is obsessed with his own virility, continually exercising, checking for grey hairs, and so on. Of course, the ageing process is something that can't be stopped, so perhaps Schivazappa is saying that any attempt to resist the tide of change is ultimately futile. I don't know, and that's part of why I find this film so interesting.

Above: Woman's path curves while man's is straight and regimented?

Whether all this theorising and analysis interests you is beside the point, because there is plenty of visual aural and eye candy to satisfy even the most ardent theoryphobe (did I just coin a new term there?). It's beautifully shot - that much is clear even on the horribly faded and blurred copy I watched, where every shade of colour seemed to be a muddy brown - and incredibly late 60s in its styling. The characters seem to live inside a surrealist painting, one populated with art deco architecture and furniture, and even a fascinating vagina dentata contraption, one large enough for a man to step inside and be swallowed by. There is a fascinating contrast between the classical paintings that adorn Sayer's workplace and the anarchic, tripped-out world of his bachelor pad. Likewise, I'm intrigued by the manner in which Sayer is continually associated with rigid, straight lines while Maria is shown in the context of smooth, flowing curves. Intriguingly, this aesthetic is also used to highlight the shifting balance of power. At the start, while Maria is Sayer's prisoner, she is frequently framed within or partially blocked by horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines, whereas later, as the nature of the captor/captive relationship is altered, the framing and architecture become more freeform.

I'm ultimately not entirely sure how I feel about The Frightened Woman. It's a visually arresting and often thematically interesting piece of work, but it does strike a few bum notes, among them Maria's readiness to forgive Sayer for locking her up and abusing her mentally and physically when she discovers that this is the first time he has ever done this to a woman (although even this is muddied by the late revelation that she was actually the one who set out to ensnare him). Likewise, after the reconciliation between the two characters, there is a lengthy stretch in which the film more or less collapses until the final climactic twist is unveiled. Still, it's an interesting, unique piece of work, and Lassander and Leroy do well to carry it across the finishing line between them. This is probably one for repeat viewings, and is definitely worth a look if you haven't seen it before.

Next time, I'll be looking at another fringe case, Elio Petri's Oscar-winning Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion.

Run Blu-ray run

I'm a bit behind with reporting this, but, as the saying goes, "better late than never". Run Lola Run, one of my favourite films, is to get the high definition treatment courtesy of Sony Pictures' Blu-ray release on February 19th. As High-Def Digest reports, it will come on a single layer BD-25 disc with an AVC encode, German (and English, pfff) Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio and the main extras from the standard definition DVD, including the excellent commentary by Tom Tykwer and Franka Potente. It also features the hilariously bad tag-line of "Fast cash, crazy fate & true love"... although, given the recent hilarity of the blurb on the Resident Evil: The High Definition Trilogy box set, which Lyris received yesterday, I'm now more convinced than ever that someone at Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's marketing department is taking the piss.

Consider this, one of the few HD discs announced so far this year that I'm actually interested in, pre-ordered.

Setting the record straight: The Psychic

A week ago, I wrote a post on Severin Films' release of Lucio Fulci's DVD of The Psychic, criticising its image quality based on flaws which I believed indicated a PAL to NTSC video standards conversion. The truth is actually more complicated than that, and I would like to apologise for misleading anyone in any way.

However, rather than asking you to take my word for it, I thought it would be better if I let someone else explain it - someone who knows more about this subject matter than me and has had first hand experience with video encoding.

David Mackenzie says:

Michael has given me this disc for my input. It's a very strange one and sadly, I have to say that it is definitely a poor disc. The opening shot of the car driving clearly shows a lot of motion judder and also some interpolated frames (strange for a Progressive disc). The frame rate is 29.970fps, and not the correct (for telecine'd film) 23.976fps.

For those that would like to get into technicalities, this is not a video standards conversion in the typical sense. I can understand why it would be mistaken for one because of the aforementioned doubled frames in the opening shot, but it's different. It is actually worse than a traditional standards conversion. With typical PAL 50i->NTSC 60i conversions, better Deinterlacing hardware (in high-end TVs, projectors, DVD players, video processors etc) can attempt to recover much of the original resolution, albeit with the caveats that standards conversions bring to the table (slight motion blur).

However, this disc is a badly done Progressive one. That means that no matter how good your video processing hardware is, it's never going to look much better than this. The video for this film has not been handled correctly. The entire film has a lot of aliasing (which is probably why it was mistaken for a 50i->60i standards conversion in the first place) which appears to be the result of it being run through a crude Deinterlacing process. This creates jaggies and causes a loss of resolution. On the up-side, there's no motion blur for most of the film.

Mike also showed me the French R2 PAL release. It's MUCH better (despite having some more film damage). It doesn't have the jagged lines, and there's no motion blur on any scene.

I realise that companies releasing "cult" foreign material on DVD have enough problems to worry about - rights issues, tracking down good masters, etc., and I realise that not everyone is a video enthusiast, so smaller labels won't necessarily know what to do in every case. That said, proper conversion between the formats is not at all difficult 99% of the time, so it's a problem everyone could do without.

With that in mind, if anyone at Severin would like to contact me, I'd be more than willing to explain how to convert a PAL master tape into NTSC Film (23.976fps progressive) using the correct method.

- David Mackenzie
Hardware Reviewer and DVD author

It's sweepstakes time!

Top 10 films of 2007:

1. Black Book (Netherlands/Germany/Belgium: Paul Verhoeven)
2. Zodiac (USA: David Fincher)
3. The Lives of Others (Germany, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
4. Planet Terror (USA: Robert Rodriguez)
5. Sicko (USA: Michael Moore)
6. Hot Fuzz (UK/France: Edgar Wright)
7. Ratatouille (USA: Brad Bird)
8. Death Proof (USA: Quentin Tarantino)
9. Black Snake Moan (USA: Craig Brewer)
10. Mother of Tears (Italy/USA: Dario Argento)

(Also posted at DVD Times)
 

Top 10 optical disc releases of 2007:

Black Book (Blu-ray, Sony Pictures, USA)
Blade Runner: 5-disc Complete Collector's Edition (HD DVD, Warner, USA)
Cars (Blu-ray, Disney, USA)
Casino Royale (Blu-ray, Sony Pictures, Finland)
Children of Men (HD DVD, Universal, USA)
Hot Fuzz (HD DVD, Universal, UK)
Mulholland Drive (HD DVD, Studio Canal, France)
Ratatouille (Blu-ray, Disney, USA)
Silent Hill (HD DVD, Concorde, Germany)
Les Triplettes de Belleville (HD DVD, France Télévisions Éditions, France)

(Also posted at DVD Times)

 
Notes: These lists are based solely on what I myself have seen of the films and discs released in 2007. I make no claims as to them being all-inclusive. Some of the films listed were still playing in UK cinemas in 2007 despite being released in 2006. The top optical disc releases were chosen from a combination of the quality of the films themselves, the audio/visual presentation and the extras.

The Year in Review, 2007

Well, another year has been and gone. We're all a year older, but probably not much wiser. As usual, I'm going to do a brief run-down of various events and issues that I've touched on in my news posts over the year. It's generally not my style to comment on current affairs, so I won't be saying anything about the murder of Benazir Bhutto, Tony Blair's departure from office or anything like that. This year, I've decided to split things into several sections.

 
Life Itself

Life™ was somewhat different for me this year. The biggest change was, fairly obviously, that, at the end of March, I landed myself a full-time job, working for the NHS on their Smoking Cessation programme. I spent four and a half months working thirty-seven and a half hours a week in an office, entering data and phoning people to ask them whether they had managed to successfully stop smoking, and, while I'm not about to claim that this was the most unpleasant way anyone could ever spend four and a half months, I won't deny that I was extremely relieved to see the back of the place in August, at which point I went into a part-time Library Assistant position at the Gallery of Modern Art. To say that I find this job vastly preferable to my previous one would be the understatement of the year, and that's not just because I work fewer hours.

On a not entirely unrelated note, my application for funding for my PhD was unsuccessful, but my four and a half months of back-breaking (I kid) labour with the NHS was enough to pay for my first year of part-time study, and more besides. I started the PhD, on portrayals of gender in the giallo (following on from my MLitt dissertation on the same area), at the end of September and, while illness in November prevented me from making as much headway as I would have liked, the work that I've done so far has certainly gone a long way towards getting me back into the swing of things, academically speaking, and I look forward to properly delving into my subject of choice over the next twelve months.

 
Zeros and Ones

The big technological issue of 2007 was the ongoing battle between the two rival high definition home video formats, HD DVD and Blu-ray, and the perpetual game of teeter-totter in which each format continued to vie for supremacy, engaging in a conflict of words as much as sales. A war in which what your opposition doesn't have is every bit as important as what you do have, the biggest surprise was undoubtedly Paramount's shock decision, in August, to ditch Blu-ray entirely and concentrate on HD DVD. With no end to the format war in sight any time soon, 2008 looks set to be another interesting year.

For me, my most significant purchase was that of a Japanese Playstation 3, reneging on my single format stance and embracing neutrality. Personally speaking, the balance continues to lie firmly in favour of HD DVD in terms of exclusive titles (a fact only compounded by the aforementioned Paramount decision), but I can't deny that it's nice to be able to own and watch high definition copies of Casino Royale, The Descent and Ratatouille.

I also bought three additional pieces of hardware: a new desktop PC in May, an Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive in July (to replace my clunky and oversized stand-alone HD-A1 player), and a Blu-ray enabled laptop in October. In the case of the latter, my original intention was to use it primarily for PhD work, although, in reality, I've got just as much, if not more, use out of it as a convenient means of taking screen captures from Blu-ray discs.

 
At the Pictures

Perhaps largely due to my period of full-time employment, I watched somewhat fewer films this year than in the previous two years. By my calculation, I watched a total of 164 films, 77 of which were ones that I hadn't seen before, down from 216 (99 new) in 2006. Still, I did manage to see several significant films, including the great - 2001: A Space Odyssey, Babel, Black Book, Black Sabbath, the Final Cut of Blade Runner, Blood Diamond, Children of Men, Full Metal Jacket, Grindhouse, Hot Fuzz, Inside Man, Life of Brian, The Lives of Others, Pan's Labyrinth, Ratatouille, Sicko, This Film is Not Yet Rated, Zodiac - the reasonably good - 1408, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Brokeback Mountain, Brotherhood of the Wolf, The Bourne Ultimatum, Chicago, Crank, The Game, Hard Candy, Idiocracy, Mission Impossible, Mission Impossible III, Mother of Tears, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Red Road, Syriana, Tideland, Transformers - and the guff - Aeon Flux, Fantastic Four, The Fountain, Futurama: Bender's Big Score!, Hostel, House of the Dead, The Matrix Revolutions, Mission Impossible II, Norbit, Paprika, A Scanner Darkly, The Simpsons Movie and the remakes of Poseidon and The Wicker Man.

Best new film I saw in the year? Either Black Book or Children of Men. Worst? Without a shadow of a doubt, Norbit.

I bought or otherwise received 118 films on disc, 42 of which were HD DVDs, 31 Blu-ray discs and 45 standard definition DVDs. I wrote 44 reviews for DVD Times, down from last year's 66. Of these, 16 were for HD DVDs, 12 for Blu-ray discs and 16 for standard definition DVDs.

 
Bibliothèque

I read the following books: Legion by William Peter Blatty, The Naked Drinking Club by Rhona Cameron, Casino Royale by Ian Fleming, The Day of the Jackal and The Odessa File by Frederick Forsythe, Carrie by Stephen King, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, The Red Dahlia by Lynda La Plante, Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin, Almost Blue by Carlo Lucarelli, The Dead Hour by Denise Mina, The Mephisto Waltz by Fred Mustard Stewart, Odette by Jerrard Tickell, Mercy Alexander by George Tiffin, and The Devil Rides Out, Gateway to Hell, Strange Conflict and To the Devil - a Daughter by Dennis Wheatley. Which, now that I think about it, is a heck of a lot more than I'd expected.

 
Song and Dance

I snagged the following CDs: The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Ennio Morricone), Blood Diamond (James Newton Howard), Cars (Randy Newman), The Descent (David Julyan), Grindhouse: Planet Terror (Robert Rodriguez/John Debney/Graeme Revell), The Iron Giant (Michael Kamen), Kingdom of Heaven (Harry Gregson-Williams), Mother of Tears (Claudio Simonetti), The Professional (Eric Serra), The Secret of NIMH (Jerry Goldsmith), Serenity (David Newman), This is the Life (Amy MacDonald), V for Vendetta (Dario Marianelli), Veronica Guerin (Harry Gregson-Williams), Why Bother? (Peter Cook and Chris Morris).

 
Well, all in all, I think that's it for another year. Look back on it, it reads a bit like a shopping list with the occasional personal titbit, but I suppose that's the way of things in our evil capitalist society. Anyway, here's to a great 2008 and yet more wanton spending.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of December

• 28 Weeks Later (R2 UK, DVD)
• Blade Runner: 5-disc Complete Collector's Edition (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• The Bourne Ultimatum (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Four Flies on Grey Velvet (R0 Germany, DVD)
• Halloween: Unrated Director's Cut (R1 USA, DVD)
• Inside Man (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Jackass Number 2 (R2 UK, DVD)
• Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 5 (R1 USA, DVD)
• Masters of Horror: Season 1, Volume 3 (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Masters of Horror: Season 1, Volume 4 (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• The Psychic (R1 USA, DVD)
• Running Scared (R0 Germany, HD DVD)
• Sicko (R1 USA, DVD)
• Tekkonkinkreet (R2 UK, DVD)
• Tideland (R0 Germany, HD DVD)
• Veronica Guerin (R2 UK, DVD)
• Wolf Creek (R0 UK, HD DVD)

A pretty shockingly large line-up to send off 2007. I guess I should count myself lucky that several of these were either free or Christmas presents.

Murder to the tune of standards conversion

Update, January 5th, 2008 07:03 PM: Although many of the points expressed in this post remain valid, it has been brought to my attention that I made certain technical errors, and as such would like to clarify my points and apologise for any confusion. I have added a new post which will hopefully set the record straight on the matter.

Aaaargh! Curse you, DVD gods! Why was I not informed of this beforehand? I received my copy of Severin's DVD of Lucio Fulci's Seven Notes in Black (released under the far more mundane title of The Psychic) today, and, within seconds of popping it into my DVD drive, I knew that something was wrong. Where was all the detail? Why were the horizontal lines jumping about? What was with the ghosting?

That's right: The Psychic is a PAL to NTSC standards conversion, and not a very good one at that (if "good" can ever be used to describe a standards conversion). Why did this happen? Why was this not spotted? Many reviewers complained about poor audio quality on the check discs they received - so much so that Severin delayed the title's release and pressed the disc again with the sound corrected. How ironic (although not particularly unsurprising) that nothing was done about the poor image quality.

Popping in my French Collector's Edition release (which unfortunately doesn't include English audio or subtitles), the transfer is so much better it isn't true. This is a real disappointment, and I'm saddened that Severin have opted to take such shortcuts, especially given that their earlier release of Fulci's Perversion Story featured a very strong native NTSC transfer. The sad part is that it makes me considerably less likely to take a chance on picking up future releases from Severin, at least until I have heard reports from trusted sources.

Cripes, has no-one heard of a little thing called standards?

Update, December 29th, 2007 07:19 PM: My mistake - it seems that Fangoria did notice that this was a standards conversion. They appear to be the only ones.

Post turkey syndrome

Well, Christmas has come and gone once again. The dust has settled, the unruly guests have left the house and things are beginning to get back to normal. I previously posted about the games, HD DVDs and DVDs I had ordered for Christmas, so I'll simply link you to that rather than repeat myself. To my surprise, I also ended up with a new comfy chair and a pair of headphones from my parents. Oh, and a Terry's Chocolate Orange.

Of the movies I received, the only one I've had a chance to watch yet is Tideland, and I'm still trying to work out how I felt about it. Like virtually every movie released these days (and I know I'm beginning to sound like a broken record here), it's at least half an hour too long. In many ways it feels like a less impressive version of Pan's Labyrinth, infused with the touch of Terry Gilliam rather than Guillermo Del Toro. Rather predictably, it starts out better than it ends, as I felt was also the case with Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but it's nowhere near the stinker that the critics suggest. Transfer-wise, Concorde's HD DVD is relatively good, but suffers from noticeable filtering and edge enhancement. In fact, it looks decidedly similar to second-tier Warner titles like The Matrix Trilogy and V for Vendetta. Most reviewers will probably rate it highly.

Oh, and continuing in the Gilliam vein, Lyris got the Blu-ray release of Life of Brian. We watched it on Christmas Day itself, which seemed strangely appropriate, but were less than enthused by its transfer. You can read his thoughts at the NTSC-UK forum, and I'm sure he'll do a more in-depth post on his site at a later date.

I've also been dabbling with the two games I got, The Witcher and Unreal Tournament III. The former looks like it could be a very strong game, but I haven't been able to devote sufficient time to it yet in order to really get into it, while I must confess that I'm having a lot more fun with Unreal Tournament III's level editor and the hours of video-based tutorials that come with the Collector's Edition than I am with the game. Don't get me wrong, it seems to be a solid enough package, and I'm happy to report that not every level is as colour-free as the ones included in the demo (although there has been a definite tendency to dull things down across the board in comparison with its predecessors), but the whole thing is too mode-based for my liking. I've never really enjoyed the more mission-based modes like Capture The Flag and Warfare in FPS games, so the fact that there are far fewer Deathmatch maps this time around, and the single player campaign seems to consist almost exclusively of non-Deathmatch missions, means that I don't think I'll be retiring Unreal Tournament 2004 from my hard drive any time soon.

It's an Argento kind of Christmas

Mother of Tears (or La Terza Madre, or The Third Mother) is, as most of you probably know by now, the third entry in Dario Argento's loose "Three Mothers" trilogy, the first two instalments of which, Suspiria in 1977 and Inferno in 1980, constitute two of the finest horror films ever made. Arriving in 2007, Mother of Tears shows up a good 25 years later than most of us would have liked, but the question is, has the wait been worth it? Argento, after all, has famously stated on numerous occasions that the reason for the extended delay was that he didn't feel ready to tackle the final part. Therefore, either the end result is something he really believed in, or he simply got tired of putting off the inevitable.

The answer to the question, if what you're looking for is a natural conclusion to what was begun with the previous two films is "No." Mother of Tears is a very different beast - unsurprisingly, given the 27-year gap between this and Inferno. If you view it as a standalone film, or at least a different twist on the same material, it starts to look a bit better, but, even so, Argento makes a number of decisions that are questionable at best, downright baffling at worst.

The plot involves student Sarah Mandy (Asia Argento), an intern at the Museum of Antique Art in Rome. She and co-worker Giselle (Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni) find themselves in the possession of a coffin containing various artefacts: an ancient dagger, various demon statues and a shroud imprinted with strange symbols. A drop of blood and an ill-advised incantation unleashes the demons and a screeching monkey on the unwitting Giselle, who meets a particularly bloody end. Sarah elopes but finds the police incredulous, while, below the streets of Rome, the Mother of Tears (Moran Atias), awakened after hundreds of years of slumber, unleashes a campaign of madness and destruction.

It's pretty clear from the outset that Mother of Tears doesn't exist in the same fairytale world as its predecessors. Gone is the lush primary colour scheme, as is the strange, indescribable sense of otherworldliness with which every frame of these films was infused. This third outing takes place very much in our own world, continuing that same realistic look that Argento has continued to explore since the 90s. Frederic Fasano's cinematography reminds me very much of Benoit Debie's work on The Card Player crossed with the blander look created by Ronnie Taylor for Sleepless. It's strange that Argento claimed this film to have the style of his 70s outings, because nothing could be further from the truth. The colours do begin to creep in, in a decidedly subdued form, during the climax, but they are generally restricted to a handful of brief shots.

At least the film has the Italian flair that was sorely missed in Argento's Masters of Horror episodes, his most recent directorial projects prior to this. Lush architecture and classy ladies abound... although that most definitely does not apply to the gaggle of witches who fly into Rome aboard a jet liner and look more like a group of goth posers on their way to a late night rave than evil incarnate. The scenes in which they menace various fellow passengers really do rank among the most risible that Argento has ever directed, and that includes anything in The Phantom of the Opera, Jenifer and Pelts. What's worse, though, is the utter banality of Mater Lacrimarum, who is talked up as an ancient evil but turns out to basically be a Page 3 girl with too much make-up. In Inferno, Mark Elliot encountered her in a lecture theatre as an alluring, mysterious presence who whispered silent words to him, causing his perception of time and reality to be altered. Here, she's a plastic-breasted, cackling joke with bad hair who struts around in the nude with her shaved pubic region on display while her followers enjoy a rampant orgy.

I wonder perhaps if what hurts the film most is the budget. The mystical shroud worn by Mater Lacrimarum (when she's wearing anything at all) is basically a red T-shirt with glitter writing on it, while the various vignettes showing Rome's inhabitants going crazy, committing rape, murder, vandalism and the like, are on too small a scale for us to really believe that the whole city is in chaos. That, too, might explain the overly conventional colour palette, although I find it hard to believe that some of the look of Suspiria and Inferno couldn't have been achieved digitally. Speaking of computer effects, there is some really bad CGI on display, the worst being a demon that suddenly appears in the lens of a photographer's camera in the opening scene, accompanied by an obvious musical stinger. And the last said about the film's final shot, the better...

Ignoring all that, though, there's plenty to appreciate provided you can get over the overwhelming sense of disappointment that this really isn't a patch on its predecessors. Asia Argento turns in a good performance and makes for an engaging and reasonably resourceful protagonist, while Valeria Cavalli is sympathetic as the white witch who helps Sarah realise her inner potential. I also have no problem admitting that the reappearance of Varelli's book on the Three Mothers and its familiar opening narration (complete with Emereson-esque music) sent a chill down my spine and evoked a wonderful sense of nostalgia in me. Most of all, there's a certain sense of infectious glee to the film's complete lack of restraint. Unfortunately, there's a feeling of leering sadism to the death scenes (case in point: a lesbian character dies by having a spear rammed into her nether regions and out through her mouth) that I just didn't get from Suspiria or Inferno, which had a far more artistic bent to their killings, while the lingering on Sergio Stivaletti's not entirely convincing prosthetic effects is dangerously close to latter day Fulci. Still, if you like over the top gore, there's much to appreciate, with an opening murder in which a character is strangled by her own intestines particularly standing out. There are fewer great set-pieces than in most of Argento's films, but an extended sequence in which Sarah has to evade both the police and the aforementioned goth witches, hopping from train to train, is definitely memorable.

Compared to its predecessors, Mother of Tears is crude and in many respects sloppy. I suspect it was always a foregone conclusion that it would fail to live up to the grandeur of Suspiria and Inferno, but even so I think it could have been better than it is. It's fun while it lasts, but it doesn't really stick with you. Essentially, it's more of a thrill ride in the vein of the Final Destination films (now there's something I never thought I'd say) than the mesmerising experience of the first two films, but I had fun and I can't say it bored me for a second.

DVD image comparison: Four Flies on Grey Velvet

I've put together an in-depth comparison between the various releases of Four Flies on Grey Velvet that I own: two VHS-sourced copies and the recent film-sourced release put out by Retrofilm.

I've decided to do things slightly differently for this comparison. Given that there is yet to be an authorised release of the film on DVD, several copies are floating around, with various bootleggers repackaging the same versions and putting them out under their own labels. As such, this is less a comparison between specific releases and more one between the various different "editions" that are floating about.

Until recently, it was generally accepted that there were three major versions doing the rounds:

1. A truncated English language version, presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. This release is very dark and, during the climax, it becomes virtually impossible to see what is happening. I refer to this as the OAR English version.
2. A composite version, taken from a French print with English audio overlaid in most instances. This release is cropped to approximately 1.85:1 and is much brighter, but with the whites blown out. This version carries a Luminous Film & Video Works watermark during the opening credits, so I refer to this as the Luminous version.
3. An English language version cropped to 1.33:1. This verion supposedly features the best quality out of these three releases, but, as I haven't seen it for myself, I can't comment.

A fourth version, a Region 0 PAL DVD, surfaced in December 2007 from German label Retrofilm. The first release of the film to be taken from a film source rather than an nth generation video copy, there was initially some speculation that this was a legitimate release, but, although there have been arguments on both sides of the fence, it does at this point seem that Retrofilm's copy is unauthorised. It is, however, quite clearly the best available version by some considerable margin, as you will be able to see from the screen captures here.

FedEx flies

That's right, it's Four Flies on Grey Velvet. This particular order actually came from Xploited Cinema, not D&T. I ordered a second copy for two reasons. First of all, my impatient side got the better of me and I decided that I wanted to order from a supplier that had a courier shipping option, to ensure that it reached me before Christmas. Secondly, there was at one point a rumour doing the rounds that D&T had already sold their entire allocated stock and wouldn't be getting any more, so I decided to hedge my bets and order from a supplier which had already stated that it would be getting a decent number of copies. As it turns out, my D&T order shipped only slightly after the Xploited one, but all that this means is that I'll have an extra copy to pass on to a lucky duck... for a price, of course.

You're probably looking for my opinion on the quality of this release, and I'll start out by categorically stating what it is not. It is not, by any means, a bells and whistles, zim-zam, whizz-bang, no holds barred restoration of the film. The materials used, an English language print (presumably theatrical), show no small amount of wear and tear, with speckles, scratches and tramlines visible for the duration of its running time. The colours and black level are also inconsistent, with several scenes looking overly pink and the overall saturation level seeming too high most of the time. Additionally, given that the English language print is a few minutes shorter than its Italian counterpart, some material has been spliced in from a VHS source, and at these points the quality is much poorer than the rest of the film (although still, by my estimation, an improvement on the two bootlegs I own). A handful of other minor flaws, including the title card being misplaced (it appears at the very start of the film here, rather than in its proper place after Michael Brandon, Mimsy Farmer and Jean-Pierre Marielle's names have been displayed), and the occasional instance of the entire frame floating slightly too high or low, resulting in the top or bottom of the next frame being visible, show that this is release is very much rough around the edges.

With all that on board, let's move on to the positives, and luckily, there are many. Although the detail is far from spectacular, I'll be absolutely honest and say that it compares favourably to many giallo releases I've seen from Blue Underground and NoShame in terms of overall sharpness, and it exhibits none of the obvious edge enhancement that the former go in for. Provided you lower your explanations slightly and don't expect a flawless, crystal clear image, I can't imagine you being disappointed by this release, which is by far the best the film has ever looked outside of an actual cinema. The sound is not bad either - noticeably strained, but once again a lot better than my previous copies. You can actually see and hear what is going on throughout, particularly in the second half of the film, which, in many copies, was virtually incomprehensible due to it being so dark and fuzzy.

I'll be doing an in-depth comparison between this and the two other releases I own before too long, in addition to a fully-fledged review (this, The Five Days of Milan, Jenifer and Mother of Tears are the only Argento films about which I have yet to write in depth), but for the time being, feast your eyes on these screen captures:

DVD debacle

One of the neat things about writing for DVD Times is that, every so often, we have a disc clear-out, where unclaimed or spare review copies are given away for free to any reviewer who wants them, without the need to review them. This morning, I ended up with sealed retail copies of 28 Weeks Later and Tekkonkinkreet. I know that both these titles are available on Blu-ray, but given that I have no idea whether I'll consider them to be worth the asking price (I'm in the minority that didn't think much of Weeks' predecessor, 28 Days Later), I figured this would be a good opportunity to sample them before deciding whether to commit to buying their high definition variants.

*cough* I also ended up with a check disc of Jackass Number 2. *cough*

O Weinstein, where art thou?

When DVDs of Planet Terror and Death Proof, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's respect entries in the Grindhouse double feature, were released in the US this year, I made a point of not buying them, as I assumed that the Weinstein Company would release both on HD DVD before too long. Unfortunately, with no new Weinstein HD releases since June, one can only assume that, unhappy with the low sales, they got cold feet and decided not to release anything further on the format.

Worry not, however, for German distributor Senator are picking up the slack with separate HD DVD releases of both films in the New Year. Death Proof will be out first on January 7th, with Planet Terror to follow on March 10th. Both films will feature 1080p VC-1 encodes (Death Proof will be in its original theatrical ratio of 2.39:1, while Planet Terror will, like the DVD, be reframed to 1.85:1, as per Rodriguez's intentions) and English and German audio tracks (DTS-HD 5.1 and Dolby Digital-Plus 5.1 for both), with optional German subtitles. No word yet on the extras for Planet Terror, but Death Proof appears to include everything from the DVD, so I don't see why its stablemate will be any different. In addition, both will come in a nifty "steelbook" case, presumably similar to Europacorp's Ultimate Edition DVD of Danny the Dog, Dark Sky's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and that horrible "Definitive Edition" of Suspiria.

Four flies on shiny plastic

Get your kreditkarten at the ready, check your email for your benutzername und kennwort and hurry over to D&T Mailorder Shop, because they're taking pre-orders for the German DVD release of Four Flies on Grey Velvet. Due to ship on December 21st, this obscure piece of Argento history can be had for a mere €24.99.

In other Argento-related news, DesertRain at Dark Discussion reports that the man himself is already working on his next project. Entitled Giallo, it will be shot in Turin and star Asia Argento, Ray Liotta and Vincent Gallo. Filming will take place between January and March. Some brief early information on the project is available at Shock Till You Drop - unfortunately, it seems that, as with his Masters of Horror entries, he will be working from someone else's script.