Breaking Mrs. Dalloway Out of DVD Prison

Here's a perfect little case study for why everybody should go region free: Marleen Gorris's/ Viriginia Woolf's excellent Mrs. Dalloway.  And it's not just the fact that it's only available as a region locked import blu.  Even if you took a "I'm fine sticking with the DVD for this one," because for some reason people think the most important films to see in HD are big action films, even though explosions, movement blur, constant cutting and shaky camera actually hide lower resolution issues more than any kind of footage.  In fact, steady and languid shots that stay focused on close-ups of fine detail are where you're really going to notice unwanted compression.  But fine, Mr. Stubborn, you still insist you're fine with just standard def for dramas and comedy.  Even then, you're not going to be okay with the US option and you'll need to import a region 2 DVD.

Marleen Gorris is probably best known for her previous film, Antonia's Line.  That's the one that won the Academy Award.  Well, I haven't seen it since the 90s, and I remember it being a good movie, but my recollection is that it was pretty schmaltzy from an era where critics seemed to be singling out charming, cutesy foreign films along the lines of Like Water For Chocolate, Amelie, Little Voice, Chocolat, A Very Long Engagement and so on.  Maybe that's not fair; I haven't seen it in decades, and it's not like I'm trying to say those movies suck.  My point simply is: Mrs. Dalloway is not that.  If you're not super familiar with Virigina Woolf, you could be forgiven for expecting just another feathery, period romance, like Notting Hill for grandmothers starring hopelessly out of touch British aristocrats.  No.  The very first scene is a graphic, slow-motion depiction of a man being blown apart by a landmine, as if Morris is specifically saying to us: whatever delicate little box you've got this movie pigeonholed into, my film is not that.

Mrs. Dalloway, the film and the character, is packed with complicated layers.  Even the structure of the film is bouncing around three disparate stories, seeking out their unexpected connections.  A romanticized past, and an anything but romanticized present filled with regret and thoughts of a life lived wrong, and then a contemporaneous young WWI soldier suffering extreme PTSD returned to a genteel London.  The first is a young and wealthy Mrs. Dalloway and her friends, unwittingly making decisions that would set the course for the rest of their lives.  Then Vanessa Redgrave plays the Mrs. Dalloway who's lived out those decisions, now lost in revery and indecision for over what might have been, her greatest potential now being in a dinner party she endlessly frets over.  Will anyone attend?  All that's put into perspective when she observes Rupert Graves at the end of his rope, permanently traumatized by the sides of life she's never had to acknowledge in her carefully shielded experiences.

Perhaps inspired by Emma Thompson's break out success with Sense & Sensibility, not to mention her own involvement in the development of Upstairs Downstairs, Mrs. Dalloway's screenplay was actually penned by actress Eileen Atkins.  There's plenty of terrific, ever-reliable supporting players including Robert Hardy, Alan Cox, Cersei Lannister herself Lena Headey and a particularly sympathetic Michael Kitchen.  And it's all set to an unforgettable theme, with elegantly photographed English locations.

Mrs. Dalloway debuted on DVD back in 1999 from Fox Lorber Films, and if you're a regular on this site, you've probably learned to wince at DVDs that date as far back as the 90s.  They tend to be pretty grubby, and this is no exception.  I'm talking about non-anamorphic widescreen, the whole bit.  First Look reissued it in 2004, but unfortunately it's the same transfer in new packaging.  Meanwhile, over in Region 2 Land, Artificial Eye released a properly anamorphic edition with a little making of doc and the whole bit in 2003.  And that's been the whole story until the HD age, when one country released it on blu, Germany, courtesy of Alive and Alamode Film in 2013.  Of course, you know what region that makes it.

1) First Look DVD; 2) Artificial Eye DVD; 3) Alive BD.

Firstly, this might be a good time to throw in a reminder that a non-anamorphic DVD isn't just annoying for the extreme window-boxing, and the way it makes modern players distort its aspect ratio.  A non-anamorphic widescreen DVD is inherently lower resolution.  So while a DVD generally sits at 720x480 pixels, in this particular case, it has been shrunk down to 535x293, in order to fit the film's proper aspect ratio into the fullscreen box.  And if those numbers seem a bit off, that's because they still don't get the AR exactly right, coming in at 1.82:1.  Artificial Eye's disc not only doesn't have the non-anamorphic issues, it widens out the image to 1.86:1, most noticeably adding more picture on the left.  You'll notice only AE's disc has an extra tower to the building behind them in the second set of shots.  But there's a bit more on the left as well.  It seems to be slightly horizontally squished, however, since Alive widens the image a tad further, to 1.87:1, but still loses that extra info on the sides.  Frankly, they're all slightly off, and a fancy new restoration could probably fit all that info and slivers more into a proper 1.85:1; but these framings are serviceable enough.

Meanwhile, each disc climbs in resolution.  Alive's blu looks like an old master, with only sporadic film grain and a bit of softness to it.  But it's certainly clearer and sharper than AE's DVD, which in turn preserves more detail than First Look's.  The colors also become increasingly less faded, with First Look appearing particularly low contrast with decidedly gray blacks.  The blu is single-layered, 1080p.

All three discs feature a fine Dolby stereo mix.  The back of the blu-ray case has the DTS Master Audio logo, and all the websites seem to credit this disc with DTS-HD, but what's on the disc itself seems to actually be a lossy AC3 encode.  None of the releases offer English subs either, so if you need those, tough luck.  First Look does, however, throw in Spanish subtitles, and Alive naturally has German, along with a complete German 5.1 dub, which is also in AC3.  So, no, that doesn't explain the DTS thing either.  😕

Extras are nothing special, but not nothing at all.  First Look just has the trailer, but Artificial Eye has the trailer plus a fifteen minute 'making of' featurette.  It's promotional and nothing amazing, but it's genuinely informative and worth the watch, catching interviews with many of the cast and crew filmed on location.  Thankfully, Alive keeps the featurette, but despite promising the trailer on the case, loses it, instead only offering a bunch of bonus trailers.  But the featurette's the main thing; as long as that's present, I'm happy.  AE's DVD also includes reversible artwork, and technically so does Alive, as they do that typical German thing, where the reverse is the same thing minus the garish ratings square.

So as you can see, it's not the most amazing blu-ray in the world.  But I think the odds of this getting a fancy 4k restoration are pretty low, and this is the best we've got.  More to the point, however, the US DVD is intolerably poor.  So if you care about this film (and you should), you've got to break those region 1/A chains.

Controversial Blus: Psycho From Texas

Oh boy, I have been super excited at the prospect of finally getting Psycho From Texas since Dark Forces first announced it, and... I guess we got it?  PFT arrives for the first time on blu, as volume 6 of Dark Force's Retro Drive-In Double Feature series, paired with The Gates of Hell (I've also just updated that page, so for a proper comparison of Gates/ City Of the Living Dead, click that link).  Dark Force's response to fans' concern that this release could wind up being an upscale, "[w]e do not divulge our process but we create new high def masters from the best available remaining elements and have a team of the top technicians to restore and do the color correction on them resulting in what will be the BEST AVAILABLE VERSION ON THE MARKET. Trying to harbor on details of how we achieve that is immaterial," [my emphasis] does not exactly inspire confidence.  But advance word of their color correction at least seemed promising, and it's not like there's any other blu-ray release of this film on the horizon; so at the very least, their claim of this being the best version on the market is probably true.  So fingers crossed, this double-dip will be worth it.

2014 Code Red DVD top; 2019 Dark Force BD bottom.

Well, I guess the first hurdle to get over is whether Psycho From Texas is worth adding to your collection in the first place.  Originally released as Wheeler in 1975, Psycho is a bit of a hybrid slasher horror and crime drama.  It shirks the typical Hollywood story structure largely because it's actually based on a(n uncredited) true story.  On April 11, 1967, two middle-aged men in El Dorado Texas broke into the house of George James, then kidnapped him, forcing him to write checks before he eventually escaped and his captors were arrested.  And I have to say, once I learned that they were telling a true story, a lot of the filmmakers' decisions started to add up and it does make the proceedings more compelling.

2014 Code Red DVD top; 2019 Dark Force BD bottom.

Then things get even clearer once you know that additional scenes of sex and violence were shot and added to the film five years later to spice it up and take it from a PG to an R, hence the retitling to Psycho From Texas.  There's a great write-up over at Cool Ass Cinema that tells the whole story of how this film was also then taken from the director and re-edited by the production company.  And yes, it's this spiced up and recut version we have on disc today.  I'd imagine the original version was far more Fargo than Friday the 13th.  So that's another reason everything feels a little strange.  For conventional audiences, this can easily be dismissed as a flat-out bad movie.  But for the enthusiast, who will appreciate the quirks and shirking of conventions, there are enough positive qualities to make this film worth examining.

2014 Code Red DVD top; 2019 Dark Force BD bottom.

John King III clearly dived deep into his performance as the titular Wheeler, also the titular psycho, in a film that's primarily interested in exploring his motivations and inner workings.  This is partially a character study and possibly a study of how a true crime unraveled.  The guy who plays his partner is genuinely creepy, too, once things get dark; and this film isn't afraid to get as grim and sleazy as its real life counterparts presumably did.  But it has a sense of humor, too.  Plus, PFT is one of scream queen Linnea Quigley's earliest film appearances (she only entered the picture in the additional 1980 scenes).  But on the other hand, some of other performances have a clunky, amateurish feel, some of the humor is highly questionable, and the movie is saddled with a somewhat charming but undeniably cheesy country soundtrack that lays thick and heavy over the on-screen action.  Plus the fact that one character chases another through the woods for nearly a half an hour of screen time (admittedly, they do cut away to other scenes during this part) is a real test of audiences' patience.

2014 Code Red DVD top; 2019 Dark Force BD bottom.

Psycho From Texas more or less debuted on DVD in 2014, as part of Code Red's 2-disc Six Pack Volume 3 collection (follow that link for a more in-depth look at that release and the five other films).  I say "more or less" because, strictly speaking, Linnea Quigley has been selling autographed DVD copies of Wheeler (which I'm guessing is a rip of the old Paragon VHS) on her website long before that.  And now in 2019, Dark Force has joined forces with Code Red, and used their same master "featuring extensive scene by scene color correction," to deliver this film's blu-ray debut.

2014 Code Red DVD top; 2019 Dark Force BD bottom.

Both releases present the film at 1.78:1, although the DVD has minor pillarboxing in the overscan areas, and is very slightly squeezed, leaving 1.76:1 of actual picture.  Dark Force fixes that and shifts the image slightly, revealing an extra sliver of info along the top.  As you can see in the first set of shots, the credits suggests this transfer has been slightly misframed, so I guess that shift corrects that by 1% or so.  For anyone really curious about this movie's framing, like I was, I grabbed a shot of the fullscreen transfer from the 2011 documentary Screaming In High Heels[left], where you can see slightly more vertical information with the mattes removed, but it crops substantially more off the sides.

Anyway, all the framing and the prolific print damage is identical across both releases because they've not only used the same source 35mm print, Dark Force has used the same scan Code Red made for their DVD.  The mystery is whether that scan was truly HD, which would determine whether Dark Force's blu is truly an upscale or not.

2014 Code Red DVD left; 2019 Dark Force BD right.

And to that end, well, I've gotta say, I don't see any restored detail on the blu, and it has the same, soft look.  Though grain is a little stronger in spots.  That said, there's no question that the color correction makes a big difference, and really enhances the quality of the image.  Everything from skies to flesh tones are much more natural, shadows are deep and what was faded is now (mostly) vivid.  It gives a nice, bolder separation to elements in the image that at least lends it the illusion of boosted resolution.  Dark Force is right that this is the best available version on the market, but that doesn't mean this isn't an SD image upscaled for an HD disc.  And as we can see when we get in close, there's some weird combing going on around the images (look at the hairline, or under the eye), like they used some kind of sharpening filter.  Perhaps that's the process they don't want to divulge.  Well, at least it's dual-layered.

Both discs feature the original mono track, though it's in uncompressed DTS-HD on the blu.  There are no subtitles on either release.

The Gates Of Hell

There are no real Psychos From Texas extras, but of course we get more than just the one movie.  Code Red's Six Pack, of course, features the five other movies and a bonus trailer.  And Dark Force's is a double-feature with The Gates Of Hell.  Again, you can see a proper comparison to multiple other releases of that film on its own page, but here's a quick screenshot.  In brief, it's a decent scan of a 35mm print.  It's fairly damaged, with lots of green chemical lines, and it leans pretty blue.  Naturally, it falls short of Arrow's recent restoration of the OCN, and has none of the special features or alternate language options, but at least it has a naturally filmic transfer that's clearly a higher quality scan than PFT is sporting.

The only other feature on the disc is the option to watch this in "Damon Packard's Drive-In Mode," which plays both movies in a row as a double feature.  And in between the two films, this feature adds about fifteen minutes worth of vintage drive-in ads and theatrical trailers.  This release also comes in a very attractive, glossy glow-in-the-dark slipcover.

2014 Code Red DVD top; 2019 Dark Force BD bottom.

So, when all's said and done, how happy am I with this?  Well, the color correction really does help a lot, so this is a genuine upgrade.  But considering how expensive this release is, I really can't recommend it to anyone except die-hard Psychos From Texas fans (all four of us).  The Gates From Hell half of this double-bill really is pointless considering the film's already been restored from the OCN, but the fact that it's a higher resolution scan just points up how frustrating this situation is.  Imagine if they'd spent that money to re-scan Psychos instead.  Even if there's no better source than the print Code Red used in 2014, it would still look better than what we've just been given.  But what-if's aside, this is less of a jump from DVD to Blu than it is a jump from one DVD to a better DVD.  If you need the best available version on the market, this is it.  But in Wheeler's case, that ain't sayin' much.

Update #4, Every Secret Thing's Extra Secret Upgrade

Every Secret Thing has finally arrived on DVD. After having one of those experimental deals where it was available for streaming at the same time it played in theaters, Amy Berg's film adaptation of the award winning novel by Laura Lippman has now hit the home video market via Anchor Bay's brand new DVD. And blu-ray, of course, right? Nope, just DVD. Hmm. Well alright, let's put a pin in that and focus on what we've actually got here.

Update 8/10/15 - 8/20/19: Here's one I bet you guys weren't expecting to see return for Update Week! It was a real bummer when this movie turned out to be DVD only, but in 2018, one country heard us... Italy! Can't say I expected that either, but let's not question a good thing. Every Secret Thing is in HD and it's... English friendly enough.  I'll explain.

This film appeared on my radar early, when one of my favorite filmmakers - Nicole Holofcener (Lovely and Amazing, Enough Said) - mentioned in an interview that one of her upcoming projects was going to be something different, an adaptation of this dark crime novel. First time producer but long time, Oscar winning actress Frances McDormand had acquired the rights, and wanted Holofcener after Nicole had directed her in Friends With Money. Holofcener didn't wind up directing the film - that went to documentary filmmaker Amy Berg, who'd made a film I was very impressed with: Deliver Us From Evil, and one I was disappointed by: West Of Memphis. She's done a couple other documentary films, too, but they all seem to be in various states of unavailability (...at least as of 2015. In 2016, her documentary Janis: Little Girl Blue has been probably her biggest success yet, and is readily available all over). So, anyway, that was a pretty interesting choice, Holofcener still had full screenplay credit, and I was interested in what McDormand would choose to produce, so I've been eagerly awaiting this one.

And I'm not at all disappointed. It's technically a mystery, and it will genuinely have you guessing right up until the last minute as surprising but very fitting things are revealed. But it's more of a quiet drama that just happens to circle around a few characters who were involved in a crime. We find our two leads, Dakota Fanning and Danielle Macdonald, who's particularly good, as two young women who've just returned home after being released from juvenile for a crime they committed against a baby when they were young children. Yeah, this film's pretty heavy. Anyway, their new lives seem to be dysfunctional enough - and they've grown completely distant from each other - before it turns out a very similar crime has just happened again, and naturally they're the two biggest suspects. Diane Lane hits it out of the park as Macdonald's mother, and rapper Common, formerly Common Sense, is surprisingly effective, too, as the baby's father. Some impressive child actors, too. Only Elizabeth Banks, as one of the two police detectives on the case, feels awkward and miscast. She actually gives a pretty respectable performance, but she just doesn't fit into the otherwise very natural, real environment, but rather like a very television CSI/ NCIS/ SVU idea of a cop. Everything else, however, is natural, touching, smartly written and completely pulls you in.

So, I was pretty surprised to see this not get the standard DVD and blu-ray double release. When I first saw it was DVD only in the US, my first thought was to hit up the foreign Amazon sites and see what was coming from Artificial Eye or Studio Canal or anybody, but... nothing (at the time). I guess it has to do with the early streaming release, DVD labels figure it devalued the film's home video rights, which I can see. A lot of people might've just bought it on ITunes rather than waiting for a DVD or blu that hadn't even been announced as coming yet. And Anchor Bay's sole DVD is pretty featureless and selling for only $7.88, brand new, on Amazon. The whole thing's just weird.  In 2018, though, one of those foreign Amazons finally paid off.  Specifically, Amazon.it, as it's now on blu over there from Koch Media!

2015 US Anchor Bay DVD top; 2018 IT Koch BD bottom.

Just having a DVD was disappointing. The slightly letterboxed 1.85:1 (more like 1.83, really) transfer is fine, of course. As a brand new film, I'm sure the filmmakers just handed AB a finished digital transfer ready to be slapped onto a disc. But not having a blu-ray option is a real bummer, especially considering its already been available online in HD all this time. Like I wrote about That Guy Dick Miller, casual viewers who just catch this streaming on Netflix or where ever get to see it in full quality, but serious fans who pay for the collector's edition are left to watch this all compressed? Boo.

So thank goodness for the Italians.  The slightly off aspect ratio is corrected to a proper 1.85:1.  The framing hasn't changed; turns out the DVD was slightly squished.  So that's fixed.  Otherwise, of course, it's the same master, but this is now a true HD image with an obvious boost in clarity.  The DVD had a frustrating softness and unfortunate artifacting, which is nicely smartened up on this 1080p dual-layered BD.

Both discs feature the original 5.1 English audio, which is now in lossless DTS-HD on the blu.  The blu-ray also features a 5.1 Italian dub and optional (removable) Italian subs, which the DVD naturally eschewed.  The DVD did have optional English (and Spanish) subtitles, though, which we lose.  But as long as you're not hearing impaired, the Italian BD is English friendly enough.

The only area we didn't see a gain in is the special features, and the DVD's already pretty dry. It comes in a nice slip cover and even has an insert, which is admittedly just advertising the book, but at least it hides the cut out of the "eco friendly" case with relevant artwork. But beyond that and a couple "bonus" trailers that autoplay on start, there's actually one very worthwhile extra. A seven+ minute collection of deleted scenes. These are actually pretty great, two or three in particular really add a dark but resonating shade to the lead character, and it's a real shame they were cut from the film. For pacing? The film actually flows very breezily and could definitely have stood to take on a couple extra minute of footage as good as this. I won't give the details away, though I suspect fans of the novel are already familiar with them and were missing them on screen... fans of this film should definitely seek these scenes out.

That's it, though. Not even the film's actual trailer. The "Deleted Scenes" option looks very lonely and isolated sitting alone in a vast emptiness of negative space of the "Special Features" sub-menu. I suspect whoever designed the menus anticipated a lot more things going into that space when he submitted it to his employers. Yeah. It's alright, guy, we all did.

And Koch?  Well, we finally got that trailer, though it's only got the Italian audio.  And the deleted scenes?  Gone.  We've actually regressed in this department, the one real disappointing aspect of this blu.

At the end of the day, the blu is really the only way to go.  And the ideal situation is to cop both.  I know it seems crazy to buy a second disc just for seven minutes worth of extra content, but considering just how cheap the DVD is (as of this writing, it's down to $2 something used on Amazon), it's not much of a hit to take.  Then you can just take the DVD out and slip it in the blu-ray case alongside the BD.  Because I'll be very surprised if we ever get anymore of a proper special edition than this.  But hey, start with the blu and see how compelled you are to add on.  It's a good little film, though.

Update #2, Vestron's Injection Of Fresh Nano-Plasmic Energy Into Beyond Re-Animator

Well, I've done the first two Re-Animator films, I might as well finish up the trilogy with 2003's Beyond Re-Animator. Especially since there's an interesting story in its DVD releases, what with the US edition, as the title says, being cut. And, on top of that, the UK disc from Arrow has a completely alternate set of extras. Oh, and the transfers are different as well. Really, the two releases are world apart, so I think it's definitely worth taking a look at them now.

Update 9/23/15 - 8/18/19: Deep diving into the pros and cons of two different DVD editions doesn't seem so important now that there's a blu-ray on the scene, does it?  That's why Update Week is here!  And, actually, one of those DVDs might still have something unique going for it...

Admittedly, Beyond Re-Animator is the weakest link. The original's a classic, so the sequel was bound to be a step down; but it was still pretty great film. This one's another step down from there. But it's once again produced and directed by Brian Yuzna, with great effects by Screaming Mad George. And most importantly, Jeffrey Combs is back again as Herbert West. It's a bit more of a B-movie than the other two, with more juvenile humor and less intelligence. We've got a new young guy to take the place of Bruce Abbot and a leading lady who I think is dubbed for most of her performance, which throws her acting pretty well off. This was filmed in Spain, like all of Yuzna's work from this period, but they actually get some pretty high production values out of their prison location and manage to drum up some strong local supporting cast members. There's not much Lovecraft left in the story, and there's a bunch of added nonsense about capturing peoples' souls in little blue tubes that adds nothing; but if you stop comparing it to the first two films and just look at it as a stand-alone film in its own right, it's still a good time. A great lead character, wild effects, creative set pieces... I would not have been mad at all to see more Re-Animator films along these lines. But it does help if you see the uncut version, as opposed to what was released in the USA.

I don't want to oversell the uncut version, mind you.  The differences boil down to seconds, not minutes, of screentime. But they're minimizing the most extreme moments of the most wild and over-the-top parts, which since this film doesn't have the quality of writing as the previous entries, this film is really hinging on. It reduces the intensity of one of the most violent, impactful scenes towards the climax and cuts out one of SMG's fun exploding guts shots earlier on. It also trims bits from a couple of the other cool effects sequences, like an exploding eyeball. Really, who wants to see a movie like this, but then be protected from the full exploding eyeball effect? Who is the R-rated cut for?

So, while on paper the differences look pretty minimal, it really is a more enjoyable film uncut. The improved highlights go some way towards make up for the film's other weaknesses, rounding up to a slightly better film overall.

So Beyond Re-Animator was a new release film when its DVD came out in 2003. And since it didn't exactly get a full theatrical run (although it did have a cable TV premiere on the Sci-Fi Channel), most of us were seeing it for the first time on Lions Gate's 2003 special edition DVD. I don't think most of us realized it was cut at the time. But in the UK, this film was reissued by Arrow as part of a 2011 Brian Yuzna collection, which gave it a different transfer, new extras, and yes, a complete version of the film with the censored bits included. But then the blu-ray age rolled in, and it was time for a blu-ray, which came in the form of an addition to Lions Gate's Vestron line.  HD, uncut, and all new extras?  Sounds promising!

1) 2003 LG US DVD; 2) 2011 Arrow UK DVD; 3) 2018 LG US BD.

So the aspect ratios are slightly different... the UK version is a bit pillarboxed to 1.76:1, while the US DVD and Blu-ray are both full 16x9 at 1.78:1.  What this really means to the viewer is the fact that the UK transfer has more picture information on all four sides.  So it's not just the little sliver along the top and bottom from the aspect ratio change, the Lions Gate releases are also a little zoomed in, losing even more picture. The US and UK colors are a smidge different, too.  Apart from that, though, the transfers are pretty identical, and are most likely taken from the same root master.  The two Lions Gates definitely are.  But, of course, being in HD makes a difference, especially when the DVDs have a lot of smudgy compression noise that the BD gets to clear away.  A new scan would unquestionably help; grain is soft.  But this is definitely the cleanest and sharpest its ever looked.

Both DVDs offer the same 2.0 and 5.1 audio tracks, although the UK disc also has a Spanish dub, whereas the US DVD has Spanish subtitles instead. Vestron, meanwhile, dumps the 2.0 (why?) but bumps the 5.1 up to lossless DTS-HD.  Also, both US discs include English subs, but Arrow does not.

Despite being cut, Lions Gate was pretty did a pretty good job with their extras package. It wasn't quite the fully loaded special edition you expect for the bigger titles, but it's pretty solid. Firstly, and primarily, is an audio commentary by Brian Yuzna. Yuzna's always a good commentator, even by himself he maintains a good balance between informative and entertaining, and doesn't drift off into dead air like so many directors tend to do. Then there's a good little making of featurette that runs just over 17 minutes with a lot of on-set interviews with Yuzna and pretty much the entire cast. There's also some cool behind-the-scenes footage of everything from pre-production to shooting George's Mad effects. Those are the main things, but there's also a goofy but amusing music video for a dance track called "Move Your Dead Bones," and the trailer is hidden as an easter egg.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the ocean, Arrow has the audio commentary, too. And yes, I checked both; it's the same commentary. The trailer's also on there, but disappointingly, they don't have the featurette. That making of, in one form or another (some just play the interviews as separate little pieces) is on pretty much every Beyond Re-Animator DVD around the world apart from this one. But, on the other hand, only the Arrow DVD has this really sweet, almost hour long feature where Yuzna looks back at the whole Re-Animator trilogy. There's also a 12 page booklet with notes by Calum Waddell and a poster, plus the Arrow cover has reversible artwork, which I strongly prefer.

And Vestron?  They've got the best package of all, with everything from the US DVD (yes, even the music video), plus all new on-camera interviews with Jeffrey Combs, Brian Yuzna and Lovecraft expert ST Joshi, who adds some particularly fresh insight.  And they've got an isolated score track + audio interview with the composer Xavier Capellas, two stills galleries including some wild production illustrations and the international trailer (in addition to the domestic theatrical trailer that was on the other discs).  Vestron's release also comes in their usual, slick slipcover.  It does not, however, have Yuzna's Re-Animator retrospective interview from the Arrow disc.

I have to say, I'm really surprised nobody anywhere has released this film on blu yet.  Huzzah!  It's here.  It may not be an ideal 4k showcase, but it's at least a passable entry for the modern age.  And thank goodness it's uncut.  Plus it's got a sweet collection of special features.  You could hang onto the Arrow disc for that retrospective, but between the commentary, featurette and new on-camera interview, you can't really say Vestron doesn't deliver enough of Yuzna's perspective. In fact, it starts to get repetitive.  So I would say Vestron's release, while it could be more impressive, is easily the definitive go-to release for Beyond Re-Animator, and is a more than satisfying package considering it's a second-tier film at best.  Like, if another label's going to come in with a new 4k scan, great, but I could think of a ton of films I'd rather they direct those resources towards first.  I wasn't happy with just the DVDs, but now I am.