Arrow Video - City Of The Living Dead

[Pete]

At the end of Voices from Beyond there is a dedication to Clive Barker.

[nekromantik]

Originally Posted by Daemonia

I wouldn't call DVD 'bootleg quality'. However, when you play a comparative release of a DVD and a BD side-by-side, the jump in quality is very noticeable. And I will say that quite a few DVDs now look quite poor when I play them back on my HDTV. You realise just how compressed some of these films are! Don't get me wrong, DVD is still a great format - but as a film lover, any increase in quality is worth the upgrade IMO. Isn't that what we're all striving for - the absolute best presentations as possible of our favourite films..?

Personally, Blu-ray has reignited my passion for collecting. I enjoy the thrill of collecting almost as much as watching the films themselves. And seeing what can be done with these old films when processed for HD is remarkable. I challenge anyone to show me better presentations of The New York Ripper, Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue and Day of the Dead than the current crop of DVD releases. They look, on Blu-ray, as if they were filmed this morning. For the first time I realised that NYR isn't a hack job and is actually very well shot. I think BD can breathe new life into these old films. Nobody thought things would get better than DVD - well, they have, and reviewers are now watching these older films and finding them freshly revelatory in HD. Watching NYR on Blu-ray really was like seeing it for the first time - it's that much better than any DVD of it I've seen!!

exactly
plus people dont forget that movies shot on 16MM or 32MM have higher resolution then Bluray even. 16MM has 1800 lines max while Bluray has 1080.
The reason some old movies look bad on Blu is the simple fact that they were shot with old tech and was not cleaned up or remastered properly. The reason you think it looks bad is cause on Blu it shows when a movie is not in good shape. So it can look bad or awesome depending on the transfer. If you wanna see Blu shine, then watch Star Trek 09 on blu on a 1080P screen. You will be amazed. Or Night of the Creeps if you wanna see how good a older movie can look when done properly.

You can compare HD video with MP3, if you got a 128k MP3 and use cheap headphones you wont notice much difference between 128 and 320 but when you use better headphones you will notice just how bad 128 sounds compared to 320 as the better equipment gives the true image or sound of your media.

[Vampix]

I don't doubt new movies look fantastic on Blu-ray, but I love old horror movies and I simply haven't been blown away with the quality of Blu-ray on these older titles.I have the Night of the Creeps DVD release which looks great and features the same extras.I wasn't tempted to buy the Blu-ray cos I'm not that much of a fan of the film, and the DVD was cheaper! I do however have the Arrow BD sets of Dawn & Day of the Dead and a few other films released by different companies cos I love these particular movies.I personally wouldn't replace an excellent quality DVD release with an equivalent Blu-ray release unless it was something I really loved! I just don't have the money to spare!

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

DVD is a format that is nearing the end of its life (as is all disc storage, with the future undoubtedly one in which media will be stored on hard drives rather than discs) and it is also one that has a competitor with much better audio and visual quality.

I have nothing against DVD, and continue to buy them, but I would much rather have something released on Blu-ray so I can see the film is near to its optimum quality is possible. You only need to take something like 2001: A Space Odyssey to see how good an old film will look when you take it at its highest resolution. If it is possible for The Beyond to be released on Blu-ray then that would be fantastic. If it's too expensive to fully remaster the film and put out on BD then a DVD with as many extra features as possible will do just fine.

[Calum]

Originally Posted by silverferox

CITY was shot on 16mm, apparently. See here (scroll down to the comments section): http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/dvd_r...iving_dead.htm

I put my trust in DVDBeaver over IMDB!

I'm a big fan of DVD Beaver but that review doesn't mention the Dardano Sacchetti extra at all and spells Florinda Bolkan's name wrongly (it's spelt correctly on imdb ).

And I need to stress: that's not a dig at DVD Beaver - I'm a reader myself and I am totally humbled that they said nice things about the disc and I love their site and their excellent review - but I'm just pointing out that even they will have the odd flaw (and as a reviewer myself I can say none of us are perfect!!!).

Trust me, saying City of the Living Dead was shot on 16mm is one of them.

[springjack]

I'm a big fan of DVD Beaver but that review doesn't mention the Dardano Sacchetti extra at all and spells Florinda Bolkan's name wrongly (it's spelt correctly on imdb ).

It may not review the extra but it is mentioned...

• PENNING SOME PAURA - interview with screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti (16:9; 18:12)

[ecc]

Originally Posted by Nosferatu

Why no Blu-ray release? I don't think it matters that the HD masters don't exist as City of the Living Dead were shot on 16mm and looks fine on high-definition.

I already own The Beyond but some new features and a poster, a booklet and fine cover art might persuade me to double-dip. It's a shame if it doesn't get the same treatment as City of the Living Dead though.

It doesn't matter whether it was shot in 16mm or 35mm. Either format can be transferred in high definition. The point being made is that back in the early DVD days, rights holders didn't automatically make new SD video masters in prep for DVD release and with BluRay and HDTV, licensors are not going to automatically start doing HD masters of all their materials in anticipation of BluRay interest and non-studio DVD companies might find it risky to produce a BluRay if an HD master is not readily available.

And I need to stress: that's not a dig at DVD Beaver - I'm a reader myself and I am totally humbled that they said nice things about the disc and I love their site and their excellent review - but I'm just pointing out that even they will have the odd flaw (and as a reviewer myself I can say none of us are perfect!!!).

As for the shooting gauge of the film, I got the 16mm claim from the same places the rest of you heard it and it was believable when seeing the Paragon tape and the Anchor Bay disc and hearing about how filtered and scrubbed the Italian disc transfer apparently was. I'll update the review when I get confirmation.

I did mention the Sacchetti interview in the item specs but I re-edited my comments and moved lines around so many times to keep it as concise as it is and I honestly can't recall if I mentioned it at all or if I deleted a sentence or two but it took me about 8 hours to go through both Arrow discs and the Anchor Bay disc (my copy of the old Vipco disc played fine on my player but froze in my DVD drive so I spent an hour trying to rip it to my hard drive to make caps and had to give up including it in the comparison). I also had to narrow down the number of caps from each disc to 7 (the master is like seeing the film fresh so I made about 40 or so caps).

Gary at DVDBeaver told me he just received the Arrow BluRay so he will be adding comparison caps and review info on the Blu soon.

[ecc]

Updated DVDBeaver link with BluRay caps - http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/blu-r...ad_blu-ray.htm

[nekromantik]

It looks good!

[Daemonia]

Aaarggh! Me want! Me want it now!