I was recently in contact with Mr. Robert A. Blair, President of VCI Home Video, with regards to defective DVDs I purchased of Mario Bava's BLOOD AND BLACK LACE and John Moxey's THE CITY OF THE DEAD.
The correspondence (between my brother and I on the one part, and Robert Blair, Tim Lucas and Kevin Christopher - the discs' producer - on the other) was quite copious with e-mails being sent back and forth trying to reach an amicable solution. I was finally given the two replacements (and an extra VCI DVD of my own choice - Guy Green's THE MARK - to boot!) for free!
Today I have contacted him again thanking him for his generosity and informing him that I was finally satisfied with both my BLOOD AND BLACK LACE and THE CITY OF THE DEAD DVDs. I thought of mentioning, in passing, this petition requesting a Special Edition DVD re-release of John Carpenter's DARK STAR.
Quote:
"Dear Bob,
We have finally watched the last disc you sent us, the replacement copy of THE CITY OF THE DEAD (in one full 6-hour stretch!), and we are happy to report that it also plays fine on our Pioneer DVD.
We are also glad that HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM is coming around Halloween. Although we have never watched it, we are aware of its reputation and are confident that you will do it justice on DVD.
By the way, we would like to bring to your attention a petition that is currently going the rounds in several online Forums requesting you to re-release John Carpenter's debut feature, DARK STAR, as a Special Edition DVD (
http://www.petitiononline.com/DStarDVD/petition.html). We have duly signed it ourselves and we believe that this great little film deserves such a treatment, and especially now that Special Edition DVDs of Carpenter's ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, HALLOWEEN, THE FOG and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK have been announced or are already in preparation.
Once again thank you for your personal interest in our case, which went beyond the call of duty and far exceeded our expectations."
Here is his reply with regards to DARK STAR:
"Hello:
I'm so glad to hear that CITY OF THE DEAD played OK. Whew! Hope you enjoyed it.
I was not aware of any petition online regarding DARK STAR, but as a matter of fact, I just received today a hand written letter from someone who knows how to get in touch with Dan O'Bannon and was lobbying us to do a new special edition version. He said O'Bannon would like to see it redone as well and would agree to doing a commentary for us. I know Dan, having personally worked with him on the very first "special edition" VHS version back in the early days of home video. I tried to contact him a couple of years ago before we started to work on our current DVD disc, but I guess he has moved and has a new phone number, because the old phone number didn't work anymore. Anyway, I'm hoping that I will soon be in touch with him again and will be able to do a new digital video transfer with an accompanying commentary and possibly a video interview as well.
This is one of my all-time favorite films and I'd like to see it done right too!"
So, I guess there is some hope for this project after all!!
