THE DEVIL BAT restored! (1 Viewer)

Special thanks to 3-D Film Archive friend and all around great guy Glenn Erickson for this review of my restoration of THE DEVIL BAT on Blu-ray.http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s4280bat.html

Another project the would have never seen the light of day without your hard work! Us film collectors owe you a debt of gratitude!!!

Keep up the great work Bob!

That's very kind, thank you John!

Ordered without a second thought. Thank you

Thank you Allen, please let us know your thoughts on it.

Rest assured, it will never look better!

That's wonderful news, and a wonderful review!

I hope it's o.k. to add the Amazon link below. I think Ron told me once that the forum will get credit for any Amazon links to products posted here. So I added the link, and pre-ordered it.
The Devil Bat: Kino Classics Remastered Edition [Blu-ray] (1940)

I almost pre-ordered this today. Now I will place my order.

Thank you very much!

Please feel free to ask any questions and let us know what you think.

Congrats Bob, hopefully it sells well for you.

Note to Kino. This is a nice step in the right direction. Kudos.

This may almost make me forget about *cough* Bird of Pardise *cough* and um *cough^ White Zombie *cough*.

Devil Bat isn't exactly a favorite of mine, so it's not on the front burner, but I will make plans to purchase it sometime next month. I looked at the big screencaps on another site and wow they are sharp and detailed. This is definitely not looking like a *cough* title.

It's just terrible that Amazon includes reviews from previous versions of The Devil Bat, so otherwise unsuspecting customers will be turned away from a great release.

I agree Patrick, those old Amazon reviews are VERY misleading!

The practice of merging comments for everything of the same title has been a disaster on Amazon since the very beginning. Just a total mess.

I even found someone's "review" of a book in the Movies section not long ago. In fact, I was searching for something in Books one day and found this situation in even worse shape than what we're used to seeing in the Movies section. It was so confusing, I thought the whole database of comments should be nuked and started over.

And now, to make matter worse still, you find multiple LISTINGS of the same DVD or whatever in search results.

I hope the contrast is better on this than Kino's unspectacular bds of BLACK SUNDAY and THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF (Redemption via Kino).

I still will keep my Navarre DVD as it has extras with Bela Lugosi Jr...and I will get the Blu Ray to compare the image quality

Ordered faster than NOW, Bob!

Thanks for all your hard work on this. Now how about some more great PD titles in Furmanek Blu? Hint: QUCKSAND from 1950, an unjustly forgotten NOIR classic. Get to work!

Thanks for the suggestion Glen and I'd love to BUT...

My days of dealing with public domain are over. I got burnt badly on AFRICA SCREAMS, JACK AND THE BEANSTALK and SCARED TO DEATH and I don't want to repeat that experience.

I hope that you understand!

I do, Bob, and it's unfortunate that the situation evolved as it did, but not so surprising. That's why I never expect a Blu for CARNIVAL OF SOULS from Criterion. I still hope you'll change your mind if the right balance comes along with elements and distributor.

We're lucky that some public domain titles, including QUICKSAND, at least came out in relatively decent editions and that some of the more marketable horror titles are finding their way to Blu.

My compulsion is forcing me to comment on this part of the review:

"RH Smith offers a nice appraisal of some of the problems of early horror fan criticism and mentions the Famous Monsters connection as well. He says he started collecting the magazine with issue number 86. Hah! Why I (cough, cough) started with issue #32! You know, back when all of Forry's articles had only been recycled twice each. Had my father found my stash of FMs he would surely have thrown them out."

Well, I'm so old I started collecting Famous Monsters of Filmland with issue #1!

That day in early 1958 is frozen in my memory, when my older brother came home after school, having stopped at the corner drugstore, and announced to my 8-year-old ears there was a magazine down there called Monsters (he hadn't noticed the much smaller "Famous" above or "of Filmland" below).

I said, "And you didn't get it?!"

And he said, "It costs 35 cents!"

Which made my eyes bug out, because up to then the most we spent on periodicals was 10 cents for a comic book. We even found the 25 cents for Mad Magazine exorbitant.

But we came to our senses and he did get it soon thereafter, and the rest is history.

Also, the reviewer implies that already by Issue #32 the magazine was full of reprints, but I think that awful state of affairs began with Issue #36.

As for speculating his father would have thrown them out, that was typical back in the alleged "good old days." On the bus to day camp in 1959, I saw a bunch of boys crowded around another boy, fascinated by what he held in his hands, which was Famous Monsters #4. It had clearly been retrieved from a wastecan where it had been deposited by an irate parent after said parent had done his or her best to crumple and mangle it.

I was very fortunate to have parents who loved old movies and encouraged my reading and never believed for a minute that things like "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" were anything other than classic movies based on classic literature.

Of course, "The Devil Bat" is another story, but I love that movie too and I wish I could see every old horror movie in a great print on Blu-ray.

That's the risk you take with mastering anything in public domain from superior 35mm materials.

Prior to my work on these four titles in the early 1990's, all the versions out there were from 16mm. The AFRICA SCREAMS releases were horrible. It took a long time to find good 35mm elements and I was happy to do it and see them restored.

It's funny, I never did any of this for the credit, it had to be done. But when you see somebody else take your master and profit from it and also take credit for your work, that's when you see red!