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Synapse Films uncovers Halloween's complete original camera negative! (1 Viewer)

Ruz-El

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Sounds neat!

Does this mean possibly another version of halloween though? Wasn't the Divamax version from the camera negative?
 

Adam_S

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Are they referring to discovering all the dailies that were printed? rather than just the final locked negative of the feature film?
 

Gordon McMurphy

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Is this "great" news? The neg trims? Great for bloopers, but with this type (low budget horror) of film, there won't exactly be startling dramtic scenes. It was a pretty tight shoot and I would imagine that there weren't many, if any, deleted scenes. Like The Fog, it may be the case that the alternate scenes are less scary than what ended up in the final film. Watching stuff like that can tarnish a film's beauty in one's mind sometimes. I generally steer clear of bloopers and raw outtakes for films that I greatly admire. They are great for comedy movies, but they often can become flies in the ointment in one's mind when later watching the movie, proper.

A great find, though. But, there would surely have to be negotiations with many parties - and how can Synapse make a claim to this footage? Who does it really belong to? Frankly, it would be weird to see a Halloween: The Outtakes DVD from Synapse with hours and hours of outtakes. 30 minutes of the most interesting material could be worked into a future Anchor Bay edition (and God knows they'll find a way to revisit that jewel in the crown) but a stand-alone release would be misguided, I feel. There has been an overkill with Halloween releases over the years and the latest documentary was the last straw for me; I love the original, but I feel that Carpenter's other films now need to get more props, especially Prince of Darkness. Universal even left out quite a lot of deleted scenes from their The Thing remastered DVD, to the regret of fans; some of that stuff is excellent, plus the deleted scenes that are on the DVD, are in pan and scan, from an old analogue source.

So, while this footage sounds interesting, it might actually be quite dull, overall, especially for non-die-hard fans.
 

Gordon McMurphy

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I admire the filmmaking of Halloween and I used to be obsessed with it as a teenager, but for me now, it is definitely one of, if not the least interesting of Carpenter's films. Great camerawork and music, but there's nothing else going on, really - not much to think about, unlike Prince of Darkness, which is a film that can haunt the mind for days afterwards. I feel that The Thing is his masterpiece, though it is a film that definitely was a team effort, starting with W.D. Richter's superb screenplay and aside from the astonishing, ever-powerful special effects, it is that great body of fine actors that holds it all together.

I will still be interested to see what shows up on DVD from those outtakes, though; but I with a little imagination, I can picture what it generally is. Halloween is one of those tight, compact, neat little gems that I am very familiar with and have assimilated into my mind and I wouldn't want to encumber or distort that collective image in my head with outtakes and bloopers. Lawrence of Arabia would another film in that regard. John Houseman saying, "Shit!" in the outtakes of The Fog is funny, though and Pleasance was a tempestous, cranky person, so there could be some interesting stuff with him.
 

Vincent_P

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I don't see where in his postings Don has claimed that Synapse owns the footage or would be releasing it. In fact, he mentions who he's contacted Malek Akkad re: the footage and Akkad gave him permission to go through it and log it. Don helped LOCATE and save the footage from the garbage heap, but he never claims any legal rights to release it anywhere.

Vincent
 

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