Update Megaweek, Day 6: Unleashing the Ultimate Sect

Oh, man.  How many years has it been since Code Red first announced their special edition of Michele Soavi's The Sect on blu?  Since that time, it's come out as a perfectly respectable edition in the UK from the fine folks at Shameless, Germany from Koch and Japan from Happinet, then switched hands to Scorpion Releasing, and come out as a budget single disc edition.  But I kept the faith and resisted all of those releases, holding out for the ultimate 2-disc special edition that was always just around the corner.  And now it's finally here!

Update 3/27/18 - 4/27/26: It's Update Megaweek and we're finally adding Severin's 2023 4k Ultra HD release of The Sect to this page.  And, at the same time, we're doing The Church, too - big Soavi day!

Now, I'm going to hold off official, final judgement until all four of Soavi's "main" films get proper, special edition blus to really lock in an official decision.  But most of my life, I've always been in the minority, holding up The Sect as my favorite.  Stage Fright certainly has the style to set it apart from the bulk of the genre, but still plays too much like a generic slasher to top my list.  The Church is a blast, but a bit sloppy, and unluckily stands in The Demons' shadow.  Dellamorte Dellamore was my favorite when I was young, but since then feels a little too comic bookish (fair enough, because it's based on a comic, of course; but still not my ideal sensibility).

So they're all great films, but The Sect winds up nestled in that sweet spot for me, still a more adult horror movie, full of atmosphere and completely wild imagery.  It feels more unrestrained, free to go where ever it wants, as opposed to his previous films, where he pushed against the envelope.  The Sect doesn't have an envelope.  It's just whatever Soavi wants it to be at any given moment.  Is Satan a hippy?  Is your face a lock that needs to be opened with a key of giant scary hooks?  Will a rabbit lead you down a hole that contaminates your drinking water with blue alien slime?  Will a bug crawl into your brain and make you dream about turning into a giant before a crucified bird monster pecks you to death?  Sure, all that can happen in The Sect!

With all of that said, I can just as easily see why this is some fans' least favorite film.  If you want a coherent, logical plot, you're out of luck.  It's confusing, seemingly arbitrarily weird, a little too reminiscent of Rosemary's Baby, and let's face it, the Alice In Wonderland theme is obvious and heavy-handed, and for all it's creative imagery, it can get pretty talky.  But even if it's at the bottom of your list, I think you have to admit it's still got a lot going for it.  There are undeniably cool scenes, and Soavi's camera is always crawling around, hunting out exotic new angles.  We get a pretty nifty performance from Herbert "Inspector Dreyfus" Lom from The Pink Panther movies.  And Pino Donaggio's score pumps the film full of cool energy.  At worst, it's a fascinating failure, which is still more than you can say for most movies.

So, like I said, I've held off on buying the previous blu-rays of this film, but I do have the original 2002 Cecchi Gori DVD from Italy, which until recently was the definitive release of this film for fans around the world.  So we've got that, Scorpion;s limited edition (to 3000, mine's #1892) 2-disc set that came out a few months after the 2018 single disc release.  The difference isn't just that second disc.  And then we've got Severin's 2024 BD/UHD set, which follows up their 2023 limited edition, where the difference is just swag.

1) 2002 Italian Cecchi Gori DVD; 2) 2018 US Scorpion BD;
3) 2023 US Severin BD; 4) 2023 US Severin UHD.

The Cecchi Gori DVD was pretty sweet it its day: uncut, anamorphic widescreen, with both English and Italian audio.  What more could you want?  Well, in this new era of HD, we want more.  Like for instance, not a soft, splotchy mess.  There's a weird kind of noise to the whole image, not interlacing, but this kind of pattern like you're watching the film through a screen door.  I remember the first edition of the Upstairs Downstairs DVDs looked like that too, until they corrected it with the remastered 40th Anniversary boxed set.  Or here, I've actually got an example of it already on the site with I, Claudius.  Look closely at the old screenshots from the original Image DVD.  All part of the ride in the olden days of DVD.

Anyway, both CG and Scorpion present the film in 1.78:1, although the DVD has a bit of feathered edging around all four sides and despite the DVD case claiming 1.66:1.  Even though they have the same AR though, we see Scorpion has unveiled a healthy amount of information around all four sides.  The case tells us that this is a brand new 2017 2k scan (so a fresher one than even the 2016 blus?) with over 45 hours of color correction.  And that color work really pays off, because it's beautiful.  I mean, it's clearly superior to the blander DVD, but even on its own terms as a contemporary blu, it's an attractive image.

1) 2002 Italian Cecchi Gori DVD; 2) 2018 US Scorpion BD;
3) 2023 US Severin BD; 4) 2023 US Severin UHD.

Now, the Severin discs are 1.85:1, which is basically Severin's framing just matted a little tighter.  This is a 4k scan of the original camera negative, and the boosted resolution shows, with tiny detail easier to make out than ever.  Grain is actually still a little splotchy at points, but it's better captured and rendered here than ever before.  But I do have a complaint: their BD looks decidelyy pale, with faded colors and light contrast.  Fortunately, their UHD, with Dolby Vision HDR, looks much better, with stronger contrast and lusher colors.  So, I think it's an issue, but honestly, I don't really care about redundant transfers on lower gen discs of a set, so I'm not really bothered about that.  But anyone just buying this for the 1080p version, take note.  Besides that, I only have one, far more iffy concern.  It looks like some portions of the film might be missing a blue night filter?  Look at those second and third set of shots, they're totally different.  But the BD's aforementioned washed colors must shoulder some of the blame; and maybe this really is the correct color timing, and Severin took the liberty in their color correction?  It's interesting to note that Severin credits their Church transfer as Soavi approved, but not this one.  Anyway, I can't call it for sure, but the longer I look at it, the more my opinion shifts from Scorpion's side to Severin.

And if Zeder had you worried, here's a shot of Scorpion's subtitles.  They're perfect, and no they're not dubtitles.  And that's the first big distinction between this 2-disc release and Scorpion's single disc that came out last month.  That version didn't have subtitles, only the English audio.  Scorpion's disc gives you the full language options with both the original Italian and English mono tracks in DTS-HD 2.0.  And this is a film where you want the Italian audio option; it has the better performances.  Try comparing the scene where Lom collapses in Kelly Curtis's house and she starts shouting for help.  In English, she sounds like a disaffected high schooler reading Shakespeare in a classroom.  In Italian, it's a convincing performance.  Admittedly, Tomas Arana's part is better in English; but overall, the Italian rules the day.

Cecchi Gori had both audio tracks, too (in fact, they have both Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 options for the Italian track), but it only has Italian subtitles.  So we English speakers had to stick to the dub.  I should also point out that there is some hiss to Scorpion's audio tracks.  It's not bad; and shouldn't bother you at all once you've grown accustomed to it.  The nearly wall to wall soundtrack covers up most of it.  But it's there and you won't exactly need to be wearing high frequency headphones to pick up on it.  And the old DVD doesn't seem to have it.  It's fine, though.  I guess Scorpion decided it would be more destructive or revisionist to run it through some noise filtering.  Cecchi Gori was happy to remix the whole thing into 5.1's after all, so they're hardly being true to the original mix like the blu is.

Now, Severin also has both 2.0 tracks in DTS-HD - yes, with the same hiss - and also with optional English sub and dubtitles.

But language options aren't the only difference between the two Scorpion blus!  There's a whole wealth of new extras.  Now the old DVD just had the trailer and a negligible stills gallery (and a cool looking insert).  Scorpion already topped that with their single disc edition, which included on-camera interviews with Soavi and Arana, plus the trailer and some bonus trailers.  Well, that stuff's carried over, of course, but we also get an audio commentary by Troy Howarth, who did an excellent job on Arrow's Phenonema disc, and an on-camera interview with Dario Argento.  As you can see, while this is definitively a Scorpion release now, Code Red still gets credit for the extras they created, including an intro with Arana and Banana Man.  And these aren't cheap, no frills interviews.  They're well shot in HD, cleanly subtitled (as opposed to the mess on that Zeder disc) and thoughtfully edited with clips from the film.

And that's just the first disc!  The second disc gives us two and a half hour's worth of additional interviews with cinematographer Raffaele Mertes, set designer Massino Geleng, screenwriter Gianni Romoli, Pino Donaggio, Giovanni Lombardo Radice and film historian Fabrizio Spurio.  And yes, these are all the same high quality as the ones on the first disc.  The only difference is the subtitles are removable here, but burned in on disc 1 (the extras, not the movie!).  Just something I noticed.  Anyway, this 2-disc set comes in a nice slipcover and features reversible artwork, utilizing the same poster image you see on the Cecchi Gori cover.

And just like with The Church, Severin has carried over most, but not all of those extras, and also come up with a bunch of new stuff.  This time, the loss is a little less disappointing, too.  They've dropped the commentary, the Arana interview, and the Banana Man intro.  The Arana interview is no big deal, because Severin has conducted their own talk with Tomas.  And they've created new interviews with effects maestro Sergio Stivaletti, expert Alan Jones and a fun featurette where Soavi takes us on a tour of a creepy basement on his family's property, which inspired the one in the film.  The initial limited edition also included a booklet, slipcover and soundtrack CD.  They also sold a t-shirt and a pendant of the film's spiral seal that you could order in a bundle directly from their site.

Scorpion clearly set their sites on the very top A-list releases by companies like Arrow and Criterion when they released these Italian titles.  And the result is Soavi's films finally got the treatment they've always deserved.  I mean, it's amazing The Sect never even got a standard Anchor Bay DVD back in the day.  It took until 2018, but we finally gotten The Sect release we've always wanted. Better yet, we have options!  You can spring for Severin's fancy 4k or stick with Scorpion's blu - either way, Sect appreciators are winning for the first time in a long time.