A Few Words About A few words about...™ Deep Red -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Robert Harris]

It's a very bad day in Black Rock.


I've just spent some quality time with three new releases:


Spartacus, from Warner's new Stanley Kubrick Collection, Dario Argento's Deep Red, from Blue Underground, and Radley Metzger's '70s soft-core, Euro-fantasy The Lickerish Quartet from Cult Epics.


I was momentarily hopeful that something unusual might have occurred, and that Universal might have finally done right by Spartacus, but alas, the disc included in the new (and beautiful) WB boxed set, is the same garbage released last year. And this is not the fault of WB.


Unfortunately, Spartacus looks especially bad when compared to either of the other two films, but let's deal with Deep Red here.


Photographed in budget (and film) saving Techniscope - 2 perf, to be distributed on standard 35mm scope, Blue Underground, which gives us both the uncensored U.S. as well as the longer Italian version, once again provides a very film-like experience, harvesting a wonderful HD image from the original elements.


I always find a bit of dark humor in the fact that there are currently three entities which time after time, are able to bring the most out of the Blu-ray format by doing quality film to data work. Columbia/Sony, Fox and Blue Underground.


There must be a message here somewhere.


For those fans of Mr. Argento's work, and there are many, this is yet another Blue Underground release set to please.


Recommended.


RAH

 

[Ruz-El]

Sad to hear about Spartacus. I'm hoping Criterion gets a chance to take a shot on it. I'll be holding onto my DVD version.

 

[Vincent_P]

Robert,


Agree re: DEEP RED, a gorgeous presentation! I have a question about it, though. I (and others) have noticed that during viewing of the longer "Director's Cut", there are slight 'bumps' and even occasionally a few frames missing at the points where footage not included in the shorter "International Cut" occurs (this isn't noticed at scene changes but when individual shots are extended). It has been theorized that perhaps two separate elements were used to create this master and edited together, resulting in the 'bumps'. My question is, in the case of a film that's prepared to be released in multiple versions like this, are there "alternate" ways that the negative itself is cut that could explain these little anomalies? There don't seem to be differences in the color timing or densities where the "Director's Cut" footage occurs, just those little bumps, which suggests to me that (notwithstanding the alternate English-language text inserts on the "International Cut") a SINGLE source was used for the "Director's Cut", but that maybe there was something on the negative to differentiate the two versions and maybe that resulted in those little bumps?

Thanks in advance if you can shed any light on this,


Vincent

 

[Robert Harris]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vincent_P

Robert,


Agree re: DEEP RED, a gorgeous presentation! I have a question about it, though. I (and others) have noticed that during viewing of the longer "Director's Cut", there are slight 'bumps' and even occasionally a few frames missing at the points where footage not included in the shorter "International Cut" occurs (this isn't noticed at scene changes but when individual shots are extended). It has been theorized that perhaps two separate elements were used to create this master and edited together, resulting in the 'bumps'. My question is, in the case of a film that's prepared to be released in multiple versions like this, are there "alternate" ways that the negative itself is cut that could explain these little anomalies? There don't seem to be differences in the color timing or densities where the "Director's Cut" footage occurs, just those little bumps, which suggests to me that (notwithstanding the alternate English-language text inserts on the "International Cut") a SINGLE source was used for the "Director's Cut", but that maybe there was something on the negative to differentiate the two versions and maybe that resulted in those little bumps?

Thanks in advance if you can shed any light on this,


Vincent

Vincent,


Always a pleasure chatting with you!


When a film was cut during that era, it was literally cut. Scissors mid-frame, a frame off the cut. But this was 2 perf, so in order to get it to splice they had to remove two frames.


The longer cut was put together several years ago by the original distributor. Today, we would cut to leader off-frame, scan and not lose the second frame.


This is precisely the same problem that we had with reconstructing the desert picture.


RAH