DVD Review HTF REVIEW: The Cat People/The Curse Of The Cat People (RECOMMENDED). (1 Viewer)

[Mark Zimmer]

There's a goofy box like a CD longbox, about 13" tall. There's nothing inside the top, so it's very fragile and susceptible to damage. I think these were intended for places like Sam's Club that want the bigger boxes to cut down on pilferage, but they seem to have gone other places as well. I've seen both versions side by side at Best Buy.

If anyone is missing Robert Wise's comments on Curse of the Cat People, be aware that he discusses it in depth on his commentary to The Body Snatcher.

 

[Damin J Toell]

If you brighten up a dark scene in just about any film, you're bound to see more detail. That doesn't mean that a brighter look is proper or that the additional detail is meant to be seen (e.g., Citizen Kane's newsreel screening room showing identifiable faces of actors whose characters should not be there, as the faces are meant to be obscured).

DJ

 

[Steve...O]

From what I read on another website, there was a packaging error on this set which caused some folks to get the longbox without the inner case. My Costco set was longbox but I also got the normal case which meant I could safely discard the longbox.

Supposedly Warners was making the standard case available to anyone who requested it, but I don't have first hand confirmation of this.

Steve

 

[Joe Karlosi]

I'm one of those, Steve, yet in the case of I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE and THE BODY SNATCHER, what I've seen in the past was better. On these two films.

 

[Michael Elliott]

Agree on ZOMBIE but with THE BODY SNATCHER (IMO) we're seeing it the correct way for the first time. Even if you look at those screenshots and think the Warner is "too dark" it's still better than the drained darkness of previous releases.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

Though the dead horse has been beaten more than enough, I have seen copies of THE BODY SNATCHER which most assuredly were not "drained" of darkness. They had accurate detail and levels of gray/black. Exactly like those nice CAT PEOPLE pics above in this thread.

 

[Michael Elliott]

I'm still trying to find that source. I certainly don't doubt you since earlier this year watched PSYCHO on the big screen and the print there was a lot better than the old and current DVD. Whatever print you have must have came from a private collector but the LD, VHS and TCMs prints look exactly like those screenshots posted earlier.

People could say these films kicked off the film noir genre and looking at the 1945+ RKO noirs they are just as "dark" as TBS.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

We haven't seen any screenshots of the Laserdisc anywhere yet (we don't know that the HK disc was taken from laser; I doubt it). The last time you and I spoke, you hadn't seen the LD. Yet either way, screenshots have often been deemed 'unofficial' to really get the true impression of a transfer (this happened with the recent BEN-HUR debate here at HTF, where different people saw different quality at home on their own). I'm going by seeing the actual different sources for myself by running the Warner disc at home on one machine and other copies simultaneously, on another. Going back and forth throughout the entire film, not only choosing one or two desired frame grabs.

As for VHS, that's a whole other story. But there were different VHS tapes available; mine was from Nostalgia Merchant.

 

[Michael Elliott]

And from a Google search the Nostalgia video was released nearly a decade before the Turner release. People (here and elsewhere) have said that TBS looked better after messing with their TV settings. Those "unofficial" releases could be exactly that. The LD could have been darker but whoever made those releases might have had their settings down. Until someone does post screenshots from the LD then we won't know. However, in the other thread you did say the HK disc looked better. That is your opinion and you are most certainly intitled to it. Those screenshots show both the Warner disc and the HK disc so that others can see what they think. Again, going from Google there was only one HK release.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

Yes, I will continue to say that the actual HK disc looks better to me. Those linked screenshots of the HK disc are only a couple of frames out of an entire feature, and they do not at all correspond with the way the HK disc looks at home for me, with my own eyes. Screenshots rarely ever do. Heck, the Warner shots don't even look so dark there!


And we'd still never know, as the only true way of judging for yourself is via the actual discs at home on your own equipment.

 

[Henry Gale]

"Jane Randolph, a B-movie actress in the 1940s who was best known for her role in the film noir "Cat People," died May 4 in Gstaad, Switzerland, after surgery on a broken hip, her daughter said. She was 93.

Under contract to the RKO studio in 1942, Randolph was cast as Alice Moore, the young woman terrorized during a nocturnal swim in “Cat People,” the first of producer Val Lewton's horror films."