[Garysb]

Amazon informed me that Sybil has been delayed until July 18.

[Ethan Riley]

Pain in the butt!

[JohnMor]

Well, perhaps we can get some of the other 15 personalities earlier to hold us over?:wink:

[Richard Michael Clark]

Anyone know of any reviews yet?

[JohnMor]

I gotta say that I am VERY disappointed in Warner Bros' cheap trick of saying "Sybil Therapy Session" as an extra for what amounts to a 2 minute featurette of the screenwriter detailing how he slowed down the actual therapy tapes to transcribe them.

Now I don't believe anyone has a right to hear someone else's private therapy tapes, so I understand if they were never made public. But the implication on the packaging is that there will be at least an excerpt of the actual tapes. And I can't believe WB would stoop to that kind of cheap trick.

It was great to see Sybil's paintings though.

[ScottDombrowski]

It does totally lead you to believe there is an actual therapy session or, like you said, an excerpt or something, although I did wonder how they would have been able to put that on the DVD. Aside from that, it was great to see the full-length version of Sybil. It seems they took out just about the entire first hour when I last saw it on cable. I thought the picture quality was really good, very clear! Haven't seen any online reviews yet.

[Mark B]

Just picked this one up, and am thrilled with the quality of the transfer.

The misleading therapy session extra was a bit distrurbing, but I must say it was nice to see "talking heads" type documentary features that don't have hyper editing and crazy camera angles. Each participant is allowed to express lengthy and comlpete thoughts, resulting in a nice and thorough background to the making of this amazing TV movie.

[Paul_Scott]

rented this out via Netflix last week and saw it for the first time.
absolutely riveting. Not to mention, bone chilling at many points. This was honestly more disturbing than most horror films I've seen.


thought the transfer was fine considering the films age. At some point, I'm sure i'll end up buying this.

[Mike Frezon]

My wife and I spun this over the last two nights and were riveted...just as we were when it first aired in the late '70s.

Where to begin? What a tour-de-force for Sally Field.

As Paul pointed out, the film was quite disturbing at points, but one could argue it was also uplifting in its portrayal about how the human psyche could develop such a creative and unique way to cope with such unthinkable horrors.

It certainly seemed a little "long" by today's standards of directing and editing. I felt some of the landscapes and city scapes used throughout the story (especially near the beginning) added little to helping advance the storyline. But that definitely also gave the movie 'that '70s feel".

Does anyone remember how it was originally presented on TV? It was a mini-series, right? I have this memory of it being quite a lauded event spread out over a short amount of time. How many nights did it air?

It really is amazing how that type of performance can last in your memory over such a long period of time. I hadn't seen the film in nearly thirty years, but some of those scenes of Sybil (as "Jenny") doubled over frantically rambling about "the people...the people..." were as if I had seen them only a week ago. Quite memorable.

[Mike Frezon]

So, tonight I took a look at the bonus features on disc 2.

Paintings by the real Sybil were fascinating. Quite good.

The hour-long doc was not very well done. In fact, the lighting on the Joanne Woodward segment was horrid. They took a pale elderly woman with white hair and put her in a room with light walls and light furniture and practically pointed the sun at her! She actually washed out of some of the shots. Weird.

Anyway, there were just five people interviewed for the set...the guy from Lorimar who oversaw the production, the screenwriter, Woodward, Sally Field and the wife of the director (who is now deceased). The doc was broken into three segments, the research, the casting and the production. The stories of the five principals didn't always mesh too well and sometimes were downright repetitive.

There were some interesting stories about the incremental development of the story to get some of the gruesome scenes past NBC's Standards and Practicies department. They felt as if they could reveal the horrific stuff if the audience was prepared for it...along with the character of Sybil. Also, the director shot many of the scenes in one take...because he didn't think edited scenes would climax as dramatically as if the two main characters built the tension themselves.

Then, you get to the credits at the end and the first people listed are the interviewees who took part. And, they spelled Joanne Woodward as Joanne Woodard! Unbelievable.

My wife, who was moved by the DVD, couldn't believe I sat through the whole "boring" thing.