Let's Talk Scream of Stone

I've been getting caught up in new releases lately, and while I certainly intend to always cover them (and am planning another one for my very next post), I don't want to lose sight of the lesser known, but no less essential discs included in my mission statement.  And one title I've had on my list to address here is Werner Herzog's 1991 drama Scream of Stone.

Frankly, it's a very trite sports movie about two rival mountain climbers competing over a girl, but it stars Donald Sutherland and Mathilda May, the world's most gorgeous nude space vampire from Lifeforce.  Herzog regular Brad Dourif also appears in a supporting role, where he gets to play a hardcore eccentric.  And you might notice the poster says it's "based on an idea by" Reinhold Messner.  That's a mountaineer who'd worked on the 1985 documentary The Dark Glow Of the Mountains with Herzog, and who would go on to write a book called Scream of Stone in 2020 (about the same mountain, but it's not this story).  Anyway, Dark Glow is easily the superior film.  This, on the other hand, seems to mostly exist as an excuse for Herzog to travel to South America and capture stunning mountaineering footage in exotic and challenging locales.  So it's kind of a dud overall, but aspects of Scream of Stone will always hold up as genuinely impressive and worth seeing.  Besides, what kind of film fan isn't a Herzog completist in 2025?

Scream of Stone debuted on disc in 2004, from the UK label Cinema Club (the same ones who released Return Of the Living Dead 3 uncut when everybody else put out the R-rated version).  Unfortunately, even for its time, it left a lot to be desired: non-anamorphic, PAL, single-layered and looks like it was struck from a video tape master.  There have been a couple subsequent DVDs released around the world: one from the Netherlands, another in Australia (from a company called Payless, which should tell you something), a third in Italy and a fourth in Korea.  I don't have any of them to compare, but they're all marked as 4:3 on the back of their cases, so I think it's safe to assume they're roughly equivalent.

2004 Cinema Club DVD.

Again, Cinema Club's DVD is non-anamorphic, and it's window-boxed to a weird 1.50:1 AR.  It looks like a tape rip, bit it still sports film damage as well.  I guess this was mastered from a tape of a worn film print.  It's plagued with all sorts of ugly haloing and fuzziness.  But hey, surprisingly, the picture isn;t interlaced!  So that's one thing.  The audio track is a rather hissy English 5.1 mix, which surely can't be right for a low budget, German flick from 1991.  There are no subtitle options except for a few burnt in ones when a local native is approached for a quick scene.  And naturally, there are no extras, not even a trailer.  The fact that these DVDs is all we've got is made all the more frustrating because we know an higher definition master exists from 1.66:1 clips shown in Herzog's 2019 documentary, Nomad: In the Footsteps Of Bruce Chatwin.  Here's a quick comparison:

2004 Cinema Club DVD top; 2020 Music Box BD of Nomad bottom.

Ready to be even more frustrated?  There is a better version out there!  It's still a DVD, but it's dual-layered in 1.85:1 and is actually a nice little special edition, with a commentary by Herzog, The Dark Glow Of the Mountains as a special feature, storyboards, photos and yes, the trailer.  Some pressings even come in a slip cover.  Art Haus released it in 2005.  But it's not English friendly!  Yes, this movie is in English - the English audio here matches the actors' lip movements - but apparently the AH DVD is a German dub with no subtitle options.  Womp, womp.  So this Cinema Club is still the best we can get unless we're fluent in German.

Look, I know this isn't Herzog's best work, but this movie is just sitting here waiting for Shout Factory or somebody to give it a proper blu-ray release.  The master already exists, an audio commentary by Herzog is just sitting there waiting to be licensed (and they've ported over other Art Haus commentaries in the past).  Come on, guys.  There's gotta be enough die-hard Herzogians out there to support at least a small run!