The Hanging Woman
I've been trying to sit down and watch this for ages now and finally achieved it! Two things to cover there, the film and the presentation:
1. It's a wonderful film - cheesy Gothic of the highest (lowest?) order. Insanely plotted with a great ambience, some of the acting is a little creaky, but the characters are pretty well developed. I heartily enjoyed it. I was particularly impressed with Paul Naschy as a necrophiliac gravedigger for the simple reason that he looked like me! It was, at times, a bit disconcerting, it was like seeing myself a few years ago on the screen!
2. Troma's disk raises some issues for someone as anal about film presentation as I am. IMDb claims that the film was presented in Widescreen ie 1.85:1, and many folk online have bemoaned that Troma offer a full-screen rendering. However, the framing looks absolutely fine throughout at 4:3, shots have clearly been composed for the Academy ratio. Further more, zooming in to 1.85:1/16:9 seems to work really rather well. I presume this is an unmatted print and that very little video information has been cropped from the sides. Bearing in mind where such a film was expected to be shown in 1973, I think it was intended to be shown with variable ratios to suit any kind of fleapit with dodgy equipment. Thus, I wouldn't be too het up about it being in 4:3, it works. More worrying is that it is clearly from a VHS (or dodgy U-matic) master complete with grain and distortion to the picture early on. Matters improve as the film progresses, though.
I think this is a film worth seeing if such things are your bag, and I suspect Troma have done the best they could. So, snap it up!