Twilight Zone The Movie (1 Viewer)

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

Finally a dvd review, with screenshots galore at dvd beaver.com !!Judging from the screenshots , the transfer looks just as good as the upcoming poltergeist dvd transfer!!

 

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

Anyone that gets their dvd today, can you confirm if the dvd comes in a slipcover?????

 

[Scott D S]

My DVD came in a slipcover. Not too shabby, except for the Best Buy price tag stuck on top of it.

 

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

Thanks, that pretty much confirms that all of them should have the slipcover.

 

[Harry-N]

Yep. Best Buy. Slipcover. Sticker. ^What he said.

Harry

 

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

I ordered mine online,ive had good luck so far with any dvd thats supposed to come with the slipcover, so im hopefull my twilight zone dvd will.The most recent being the monster squad dvd, and it had the slipcover.

 

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

Anybody nice enough to post a pic of the dvd with the slipcover on? I would really appreciate it, plus it would hold me over till my copy arrives here in Greece, in the next couple weeks.Im dying to see it, lol !

 

[Craig Beam]

Isn't the slipcover identical to the actual cover...?

 

[Harry-N]

In layout yes. All pictures and verbiage are identical to the regular cover. But, the slipcover has that silvery/hologram-ish look to it like many of these do, where it reflects different colors depending on the angle of the light source like a CD.

There's also another sticker on the slipcase printed white-on-red in a Twilight Zone-ish font, "FIRST TIME ON DVD"

Harry

 

[Harry-N]

I just got a chance to sample a small portion of the new DVD. Picture looks good, and the new 5.1 soundtrack sounded pretty good too, but I wasn't crazy about the gimmicky thing they did with Burgess Meredith opening movie narration ("You're travelling through another dimension..."), making it move all over the soundfield, sort of following the on-screen artifacts. Thankfully, the original 2.0 soundtrack is faithful to the original in that respect. Still, I guess it'll be interesting to check out that expanded soundtrack in more detail, but I might end up preferring the old original one, which I always thought was a pretty good one. The sound of the bullets bouncing around in WWII France were always a good demonstration of stereo back in the LaserDisc days.

Harry

 

[Harry-N]

I've now had a chance to watch the whole movie. It was good to see it all again from start to finish. Even though I've owned the LaserDisc for all these years, they get tougher and tougher to look at in the DVD/HDTV age.

A couple of other observations:

The opening logo has been modernized. The version on the LD had the red stylized "w" as the opening strains of "Midnight Special" are heard, whereas the DVD version starts with the wavy yellowish shot of the WB lot while that song is playing.

This is the first widescreen release of the film in home video that I'm aware of. In comparing it side by side with the LaserDisc, it's clear that the old prints were "Full Screen" open-mattes, while this 1.79:1 matte seems to be framed correctly for theatrical presentation. I say "correctly" since it's obvious in the old full-frame version that there was too much sky showing in the opening segment. Supposedly happening in the pitch black of night, it was filmed around a sunrise or sunset, which is more obvious in the full-frame than in the matted widescreen version since there's more sky visible.

The video on the DVD itself is much sharper and correctly colored. Blacks are much deeper than the LaserDisc version and the flesh tones are more natural. They were quite reddish on the LaserDisc.

Other than the opening sound changes, I found the overall 5.1 audio track to be quite good. In addition, there's the 2.0 track, and 1.0 French and Spanish tracks, along with English, Portuguese and Chinese subtitles.

I recommend this disc to anyone who cares for the film, and it's a great way to complete one's TWILIGHT ZONE collection.

Harry

 

[Frank@N]

I was at BB to get Poltergeist for $10 and Meatballs SE for $9.

I would've got TZ for something similar (even though I've never seen it), but I passed on paying $16.

There's no way people are going to pay more than $10 for a 25 year-old movie with no extras.

Sorry TZ, maybe some other time...

 

[Harry-N]

At my Best Buy it was $14.99 + tax. That doesn't seem too out of line to me for a film that I've long wanted on DVD. But then I'm a TWILIGHT ZONE fan.

Harry

 

[Travis Brashear]

I beg to differ. Maybe we shouldn't, that's certainly debatable, but some of us will...and did...

 

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

If its a movie I really want like this one, that took a whole decade to reach dvd, then yes ill pay a little extra.

 

[Frank@N]

Since we're talking about price, was $14.99 really even a sale price for TZ?

Does the case say $19.99, for example.

Look at the Wall Street 2-disc, a couple weeks after release BB put it in the $8.99 sale.

I will get TZ, I'm waiting a bit.

 

[TravisR]

No, it's not a sale price. It's marked $14.99 on the sticker.

 

[stephen^wilson]

I know it might be a minor point but I really hate it when studios,Warner being a major offender,replace the studio logo at the beginning of the films.To me the logo can give a good indication of the period a film was made if you didn't know exactly and I just feel that sometimes a little piece of the movie is missing when this happens,Imagine if Universal replaced the logo on Smokey And The Bandit 2.I loved the fact that the police car chased the bandit round the Universal globe and I would miss it if it were gone.MGM are guilty of this practice as well,replacing the cool late 70's/early 80's United Artists Logo on their movies with a newer version in the 90's.

 

[Christian Preischl]

Stephen,

while it will never stop me from buying a film I want, I still agree with you 100%. It's an annoying practice and I wish studios would stop doing it.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

I just received my copy on HD-DVD and have yet to open it.

You mean they changed out the original logo?!

I complained about them doing this with Dog Day Afternoon
a few years back and I had thought that perhaps they got the
message that from a historical standpoint it was a horrible thing
for them to do.

It has been years since I saw Twilight Zone, but I think
it's one of those movies where the logo became an integral part
of the opening song. If I remember correctly, the 70s WB logo (which
is a puffy "W") appears across the opening notes of "Midnight
Special." I would hate to think Warner replaced that with their
modernized logo.

I know Warner reads these threads and I hope that they understand
that these logo issues, though sounding awfully "anal," are a sincere
effort to keep a historical perspective on these releases.

Read my thoughts on this subject here