UHD Review A Few Words About A few words about...™ Halloween (1978 - Scream Factory) -- in 4k UHD (3 Viewers)

[dpippel]

Wait a tic... aren't we ALL "on the internet?"

 

[Lord Dalek]

2.35 / 2.39 / 2.40 are essentially the same thing - one shouldn’t be concerned about the differences between them. The spec used to be 2.35 but was changed to what is now called 2.39 or 2.40 (depending on who is doing the labeling) to hide potential splice marks at the top/bottom of frame.

To the naked eye there is literally no difference between 2.35 and 2.40 whatsoever. You can't possibly imagine the shear number of advertised 2.35:1 transfers that were actually 2.40 and vice versa. Its literally a chicken shoot created by the whims of the telecine operator.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Wait a tic... aren't we ALL "on the internet?"

... or maybe we are all in the Matrix.

 

[dpippel]

 

[WillG]

On second thought, I canceled my Amazon pre-order. I’m gonna try out BestBuy or Target to see if I can buy it in-store. If I strike out I’ll place an Amazon order, but after how long it took for my Star Trek set, I want to secure early possession if I can. I don’t want Amazon delays to get my order to me after October 31st. I’m hoping BestBuy and/or Target are still setting up special horror display shelves for the Halloween season like they typically do. I don’t know if they still do such things but I’ll find out on Tuesday.

So what’s the deal, these are supposed to be released tomorrow, but as I look at my Amazon orders status, it just shows we will email you with expected delivery date. Also I would seriously doubt that if Amazon doesn’t have stock you’re going to find these at B&Ms either (especially the sequels)

 

[Tommy R]

So what’s the deal, these are supposed to be released tomorrow, but as I look at my Amazon orders status, it just shows we will email you with expected delivery date. Also I would serious doubt that if Amazon doesn’t have stock you’re not going to find these at B&Ms either (especially the sequels)

Over in the thread for the 4-Movie Star Trek 4K set, there were people who claimed they found them at certain in-person stores while the rest of us waited a few weeks for Amazon to ship our orders. I got mine about 3 weeks after the street date, I’m not sure if anyone is still waiting. So I suspected the same sort of thing to happen with these Halloween releases.

I’m not normally impatient with delays and usually just wait until Amazon gets it to me, but with these I really want to actually watch some of them this month, as it’s October and they’re Halloween movies, and a delay could mean not getting them this month. I’m not counting on finding them tomorrow, but if I do it’ll be a nice surprise.

 

[TravisR]

So what’s the deal, these are supposed to be released tomorrow, but as I look at my Amazon orders status, it just shows we will email you with expected delivery date. Also I would seriously doubt that if Amazon doesn’t have stock you’re going to find these at B&Ms either (especially the sequels)

I've got the same status. Frankly, I'm sick of it. I'm aware that things are messed up with manufacturing and shipping right now but all these companies are aware of those delays so they need to start changing release dates to a point in time when they can actually meet their pre-orders. Every remotely popular catalog title this year has more or less been MIA on the release date. People can say I'm impatient and explain the reasons why everything is late now but I understand that and it isn't my point. This isn't an isolated event so they need to start being able to meet their pre-orders before shipping things and constantly leaving out huge segments of the fans.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I don’t really know what the solution is, and I won’t go over the causes since I know they’re well known at this point, and believe me, I share your frustration. This is a hobby that’s perfect for when the world is shut down and you’re at home more often than not and it’s frustrating to not be able to fully enjoy it at a time when it would be most useful.

But short of not announcing products at all until after they’ve been manufactured and delivered to distributors, which isn’t likely to happen but probably the only possible solution given that supply chain issues are likely to persist until next year at the minimum, I don’t really see it getting better in the immediate future unfortunately. For the most part the causes for these delays happens after the product is announced but before it’s released - their manufacturers commit to fulfillment dates, their shippers commit to delivery dates, and then something goes wrong and it’s too late to pull the plug entirely so stuff just kinda trickles out as best it can. Not that it excuses anything but I’m kinda amazed that releases are still happening - it seems somewhat absurd that there’s a diaper shortage and my neighbor is waiting six months for an appliance and the corner pizza place can’t get a much needed new oven at all and discs are still kinda mostly eventually coming, you’d almost think someone would say “your hobby isn’t as important as my need to eat” and divert resources further away from hobby and luxury goods.

 

[TravisR]

I don’t really know what the solution is, and I won’t go over the causes since I know they’re well known at this point, and believe me, I share your frustration. This is a hobby that’s perfect for when the world is shut down and you’re at home more often than not and it’s frustrating to not be able to fully enjoy it at a time when it would be most useful.

But short of not announcing products at all until after they’ve been manufactured and delivered to distributors, which isn’t likely to happen but probably the only possible solution given that supply chain issues are likely to persist until next year at the minimum, I don’t really see it getting better in the immediate future unfortunately. For the most part the causes for these delays happens after the product is announced but before it’s released - their manufacturers commit to fulfillment dates, their shippers commit to delivery dates, and then something goes wrong and it’s too late to pull the plug entirely so stuff just kinda trickles out as best it can. Not that it excuses anything but I’m kinda amazed that releases are still happening - it seems somewhat absurd that there’s a diaper shortage and my neighbor is waiting six months for an appliance and the corner pizza place can’t get a much needed new oven at all and discs are still kinda mostly eventually coming, you’d almost think someone would say “your hobby isn’t as important as my need to eat” and divert resources further away from hobby and luxury goods.

There has to be a date where a company knows how many copies they will have in stock to ship out and still make the release date. For catalog titles, if they know they won't meet their pre-orders for that date, they should push the release date to a date that they can meet. That'll probably result in a last second date change but I'd rather that than a lucky few getting their copies, everyone else getting shut out, and the retailers and company simply shrugging their shoulders about when I may finally get my copies.

 

[Malcolm R]

Not to mention Amazon, at least, does not seem to follow a FIFO (first in, first out) model when fulfilling orders. There seem to have been reports of people who placed pre-orders months in advance still waiting while those who ordered a day before the release sometimes promptly receive their disc.

 

[Kaskade1309]

Somehow I got away with only ever buying the first film ONCE on DVD. Anyone know how this edition rates among all the different “color-timings”? Lol! View attachment 114526

I went ahead and pre-ordered the first and second 4K discs. Halloween II is probably the best horror sequel of all time, IMO. I still have never seen 3 all the way through. I remember watching maybe a half hour of it on tv years ago (and I still remember the silver shamrock song). 4 is kind of a guilty pleasure for me, but not something I’d buy on 4K. 5 wasn’t very good at all, but worse sequels came later…

That's the one that came out AFTER the much heralded 1999 THX edition; many feel this DiviMax transfer sucked out all the autumn colors and made everything too bright and green -- much like what Anchor Bay's first Blu-ray looked like.

 

[Kaskade1309]

We just received our Scream Factory 4K of Season of the Witch, and while not perfect (it's still super-soft in many places), the HDR grading gives it a bit of punch. Guess it's time to retire my Universal DVD from 2004...

The most awe-inspiring part of the third film on UHD Blu from Scream was the Atmos/TrueHD mix -- what a treat to finally hear this soundtrack mixed into SOME kind of surround format!

With regard to the first Halloween: We are thinking of getting this to replace our Anchor Bay Blu-ray from 2007 (and maybe just completing the set with four and five after that), but I am seeing screen shots and YouTube videos that are making it out like this 4K transfer from Scream is way too bright and super-green, thus the color timing issue ONCE AGAIN with regard to how this is supposed to look like FALL...

Can anyone confirm if the new Scream transfer looks really bright and makes everything appear as if it's summer (in California)?

 

[Robert Harris]

I know that info. Not sure others do. My concern was that they took the image and stretched it a bit from 2.35 to 2.39 instead of matting it. I am a bit concerned about the compression. One cap I saw had lots of macroblocking artifacts. It could have been exacerbated by that pic compressed online, though.

If someone “stretched” an image from 2.35 to 2.39, the difference would be imperceptible. Projection optics were probably not within those tolerances.

 

[moviebuff75]

Good to know. I am still worried about the compression artifacts. Did you notice them when viewing?

 

[Robert Harris]

Good to know. I am still worried about the compression artifacts. Did you notice them when viewing?

Compression artifacts can be caused by multiple culprits, and do not necesarily stem from the disc.

 

[TravisR]

So what’s the deal, these are supposed to be released tomorrow, but as I look at my Amazon orders status, it just shows we will email you with expected delivery date. Also I would seriously doubt that if Amazon doesn’t have stock you’re going to find these at B&Ms either (especially the sequels)

About an hour ago, I got an e-mail from Amazon with a new delivery estimate of October 26 for III and 5 (yesterday, they told me that the first one would arrive on October 25. Leaving II and 4 still in limbo). Based on previous experience, I fully expect to get them before that but it's still frustrating to have pre-ordered 5 items months ago and none of them are going to be on time.

 

[Kaskade1309]

Anyone have any feedback about the 4K transfer's color timing/tone?

 

[TravisR]

Anyone have any feedback about the 4K transfer's color timing/tone?

Using the very imprecise science of looking at screencaps and a clip from You Tube, it looks good to me. You can see the green of the grass and leaves but the transfer is not amping up those colors. You have to keep in mind that the movie was shot in March in California so it has never truly looked like fall in Illinois.

Once again, going off of screencaps and You Tube is a terrible idea to judge what is or isn't right but there's nothing that I've seen to get worried about.

 

[Kaskade1309]

Using the very imprecise science of looking at screencaps and a clip from You Tube, it looks good to me. You can see the green of the grass and leaves but the transfer is not amping up those colors. You have to keep in mind that the movie was shot in March in California so it has never truly looked like fall in Illinois.

Except it always DID to me when watching the 1999 Anchor Bay THX DVD, which is why I was concerned about this transfer...

I know Carpenter and Cundey shot this in warm weather in California and that filters and other stuff were used to simulate fall in the midwest, but the 99 transfer always looked "right" to me and it's why I never warmed up -- no pun intended -- to other versions like Anchor Bay/Starz' first Blu-ray release (which I own) or the other Anchor Bay DVDs.

I provided some screen comparisons a couple of posts back showing just how red those leaves got in the sequence depicting Michael by the hedges on the THX edition; so it WAS possible to get these scenes looking a bit more fall-esque, even though the resolution on that disc is still 480i...

 

[darkrock17]

Halloween never really looked like it was fall, they had to spray paint leaves fall colors and then have a crew member who would use a leaf blower to blow the leaves into a shot and then when the scene was done wrangle all the leaves up again to reuse them throughout the entire shoot.

To me it doesn't matter that it doesn't look like fall, because you're too invested in the story to really notice about the weather and those pesky palm trees that pop here and there.