Writings > DVD Image Comparisons > The Girl Who Knew Too Much

Black Sunday

Region 0 (USA) The Mario Bava Collection - Image Entertainment
vs. Region 1 (USA) The Mario Bava Collection Volume 1 - Anchor Bay

Details

Bit Rate

Image

Anchor Bay

Screen Captures

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Image | Anchor Bay

Example 2

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Image | Anchor Bay

Example 3

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Image | Anchor Bay

Example 4

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Image | Anchor Bay

Example 5

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Image | Anchor Bay

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Image | Anchor Bay

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Image | Anchor Bay

Example 8

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Image | Anchor Bay

Comments

This is so close that I'm not going to call it either way. The new Anchor Bay disc is minutely more contrasty than the Image version, giving the illusion of a slight detail boost, and some print damage has been cleaned up. Both exhibit noise reduction artefacts in the form of "crawling" grain during camera movement. As with The Girl Who Knew Too Much, the sound on both releases is effectively the same, although the AB version is 2-channel mono rather than single-channel. There is also little appreciable difference between the extras, although the newer release does gain a US trailer, TV spot and Barbara Steele biography while losing the rather informative text-based notes on the Italian version of the film. All things considered, they more or less cancel each other out.

If you already own the Image Entertainment DVD, I don't see much point in rushing out to pick up the Anchor Bay release. However, the fact that it is packaged in The Mario Bava Collection Volume 1 with four other Bava titles, many of which do contain noticeable improvements on their predecessors, means that many people will no doubt end up with this disc anyway.

Summary