Lucio Fulci's City Of the Living Dead

Having covered so many of Lucio Fulci's great 80s horror classics, City Of the Living Dead's absence has probably stood out like a bit of a sore thumb.  Well, I'd been planning on doing it, but then, in the beginning of February last year, Code Red announced a new edition with a fresh 2k scan of the OCN.  Given the troubled state of the previous CotLD blus (more on that below), I decided to wait.  Eventually, it was announced that Scorpion would be handling it instead of Code Red, and then radio silence.  Meanwhile, Arrow announced a fresh 4k scan from the OCN.  And, well, here it is October 2018, and I don't know what's happening with Code Red/ Scorpion, but they're gonna have a hard time topping this!

Update 8/26/19: Another new version! And it's... deliberately worse than the preceding release?  Yes, it's Code Red/ Dark Force's curious Retro Drive-In Double Feature of The Gates Of Hell (a.k.a. City Of the Living Dead, of course) and Psycho From Texas, not to be confused with Code Red/ Scorpion's disc, which is apparently still forthcoming.

Update 6/13/20: "Forthcoming" shmorthcoming; it's here!  Did they wind up topping the Arrow after all?

Update 3/24/24: And we swing back around to Arrow for their brand new "true 4k" UHD release.  We all knew this was coming, right?  Well okay, so how much better did things get?

City Of the Living Dead, a.k.a. The Gates Of Hell, is either the first or second in Fulci's loose trilogy of end of the world, undead horror.  City and The Beyond are a definite pair, but then it's more of a looser fit to try and tack on Zombie, House By the Cemetery, or maybe even Manhattan Baby.  But certainly, as with any of those others, Fulci's assembled his A-Team here: writer, Dardano Sacchetti, cinematographer Sergio Salvati, composer Fabio Frizzi, effects by Gino de Rossi and Cathriona MacColl in the lead.  And he's assembled a pretty great cast, including Christopher George, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, Janet Agren and Michele Soavi.  There was no way this wasn't going to be somewhere in his upper echelon.

I'm also partial to the horror free for all style of story being told here.  You've already got Sacchetti's love for blending genres mixed with a healthy dose of Lovecraft's undeniable influence.  And yet it's still got a little more thematic unity to it than The Beyond, where each scene could practically be from a different movie.  Here, anything can still happen - dead people appearing and disappearing at will, bleeding walls, an air raid of maggots - but it all sort of feels like it fits within the premise.  There are certainly... flaws in the characterizations.  MacColl is alternatively dogmatically determined to prevent the apocalypse she saw in her visions or willing to forget the whole thing and go get a coffee instead.  Bob's tryst with his self-inflating sex doll is completely out of place.  But coherence isn't really a highly regarded commodity in 80s Italian horror in the first place, and combined with the utterly mad plot-line, it's hard to define anything as out of place or ill-fitting here.  Anything can happen when the gates of Hell are open.

Now, City of the Living Dead is hardly debuting on disc here. It was first released in 1998 by a cool cult label called EC Entertainment.  Then Anchor Bay gave it a wider release in 2000, which was later repressed by Blue Underground in 2007.  In 2010, Arrow and Blue Underground released blu-ray editions for the UK and US markets, respectively.  I wound up getting the BU blu because it had marginally better picture quality, but I still copped the DVD version (in fact a 2-disc set) of the Arrow disc for all the unique special features.  But despite having the superior transfer of the two, BU's disc was still plagued with scanner noise that a lot of Italian films had baked into their scans around that period.  So I'd been anxiously awaiting the 4k scan from Arrow's re-release in October 2018; it was the City of the Living Dead we'd all been waiting for.

But the story hasn't ended there.  In 2019, there was this random BD from Code Red and Dark Forces, which didn't have much to offer but could at least be considered an amusing diversion.  That was followed by a serious new contender, Scorpion's long-awaited 2020 BD, which rivaled, if doesn't dethrone, Arrow's.  And now we've entered the proper 4k era, with it debuting on UHD in the US from Cauldron Films.  Their edition was a bit pricey though, so personally I held out for the inevitable Arrow UK release, which I just got my hands on and streets next week.

1) 1998 EC DVD, 2) 2000 AB DVD, 3) 2007 BU DVD, 4) 2010 Arrow DVD,
5) 2010 BU BD, 6) 2018 Arrow BD, 7) 2019 DF BD; 8) 2020 Scorpion BD.

So EC's a pretty collectible little label, and I've read that some of their DVDs were actually better quality than many later reissues.  That's not the case here.  Their Deluxe Collector's Edition is non-anamorphic, interlaced and a generally pixelated affair, slightly mis-framed at 1.75:1.  The Anchor Bay DVD may not be pretty, but it corrected all of that: anamorphic, non-interlaced, 1.84:1 and more filmic.  And the BU DVD is the exact same transfer, no differences.  Pretty straight-forward so far.

Then the fine folks at BU (and Arrow) come back with their blu, finessing the framing to a perfect 1.85:1, clearing up the image and bringing us into the world of HD.  Unfortunately, they've got that scanner noise.  Now, I don't have Arrow's 2010 blu, just their DVD, but my understanding is that Arrow did some additional tampering with the image in an attempt to undo the noise (certainly their DVD has a weirdly smoothed look to it), and BU left it alone, hence the latter being the preferable option.  But of course, neither one is too hot, which brings us to Arrow's new addition.

2010 BU BD left; 2018 Arrow BD right.

This movie was always a pretty rough looking feature, so fans hoping for a wealth of new, fine detail from this 4k scan might initially be a little disappointed.  It's still framed at 1.85:1, but restores all the original film grain and thankfully, yes, is free of the noise.  If you're not clear on what scanner noise is, or how to spot it, check out this enlargement.  See how all the grain looks very blocky and pixelated?  That's not actually grain, but noise on top of the image.  It's artificial detail, nothing to do with what was actually being photographed.  See how it makes all the lines (of his face, the bookcase behind him, etc) all jagged and oversharpened?  Arrow's blu may actually look a bit softer by comparison, but that's the actual, natural image.  And since the noise is random, not part of the core image like film grain is, it looks even worse in motion, like you're watching the film through a jittery window screen.  So Arrow's new blu may first appear a little underwhelming, but it's a very welcome upgrade.

And Dark Force's disc?  Well, it's what Code Red likes to describe as a "grindhouse" version, which is to say that it's an HD scan, but taken from a very beat up source, in this case an old film print.  So it's got lots of vertical, green chemical lines, dirt, flecks, spots and cigarette burns at the reel changes.  The idea of this sort of presentation is that it's a throwback, enhanced by the fact that this BD is a double-feature, and in between there's about fifteen minutes of vintage commercials and trailers.  I don't know if the slight novelty value that provides really sells me on the notion of purposefully collecting lower condition films, but if that's your bag, now you have the option.  And it is still a decent HD scan of 35mm, matted to 1.85:1, and preferable to the older DVD releases... arguably even Blue Underground's disc with its scanner noise issue.  Well, maybe not; but at least it looks like film.  The framing is more zoomed in than any of the other blus, losing some info along the sides and bringing it back to where the DVDs were, and the coloring leans excessively blue.  But it's not really missing much detail.

2018 Arrow BD left; 2020 Scorpion BD right.

The big question then came between Arrow's transfer and Scorpion's.  It's not just the same transfer ported over to a region A release.  Scorpion's case itself describes it as a "NEW 2020 4K color grading and restoration of the film from a 4K scan of the original camera negative."  So it's not the same.  But note that it's a new "color grading and restoration," not another new scan.  Look at the second set of shots; Scorpion's frame is a lot cooler than the distinctly warmer one from Arrow.  They've taken a fresh stab at the colors, and they might actually be genuinely better.  Slightly boosted contrast and dark levels also help you make out detail better.  Numbers on a clock that were far from the camera and blended into the face around it are now visibly distinct.

2024 Arrow UHD.

But now of course we're talking about 2160p; so once again, it's a whole new ball-game.  The film has been again scanned and restored in 4k, this time in HDR10 and Dolby Vision.  And yes, the 4k resolution clearly puts it ahead of even the last Scorpion BD.  Edges that get pixelated and jagged are now smooth and natural curves, though you may have to zoom in or have a really large screen to appreciate it.  The contrast is a little lower, making fine detail stand out a little less, but it's all still there, and probably more authentic for it.  Film grain is clearer, though still subtle, and much better resolved.  Even on the Scorpion, a lot of it was getting lost to the 1080 compression, and it's here now.  The new scan does tighten up the framing a little bit.  It's still 1.85:1, but shaves thin slivers off the edges compared to the Scorpion disc, though nothing you'd see outside of a direct screenshot to screenshot comparison like this.

By the way, if you're wondering how Arrow's UHD compares to Cauldron's, the answer is: essentially the same, because Arrow is using Cauldron's master, who are credited in their accompanying book.  So strictly in terms of PQ, it's fairly academic which UHD you go with, though as we'll see, their are differences in other departments.

Another sweet thing about Arrow's release, meanwhile, was that it included both the Italian and English audio tracks.  All the previous editions only had the English.  EC had the mono with optional English and Dutch subs, while AB and BU (2007) had stereo and 5.1 mixes, but no subs.  Same goes for the old Arrow, except their blu also had a 7.1 mix in DTS-HD.  BU's blu also had that 7.1, plus the 5.1 and mono, as well as English, French and Spanish subs.  The  newer Arrows (the 2018 BD and the UHD) have the English 5.1, stereo and mono, all in DTS-HD, plus the Italian mono in DTS-HD, with two optional English subtitles tracks (one for the Italian and one to go with the English audio).

Predictably, Dark Force only includes the English dub with no subtitle options.  But Scorpion, thankfully, lives up to the standards Arrow set, including all three English tracks in DTS-HD, the Italian mono (again in DTS-HD) and both sets of English subtitles.  As with the 4k scan, I think Scorpion's just using the same stuff as Arrow, this time without any 2020 adjustments.  Audio and subtitle-wise, they're the same.

Major things have been happening in the special features department, too.  In short, the new Arrow handily trumps all that came before it.  Their new interviews are longer, better edited and in higher quality video than any of the previous editions.  Plus, they have the old audio commentaries, which are okay, but completely redundant if you watch the interviews, which are better paced.  So the old Arrow, the BU blu, and the new Arrow blu all talk to a bunch of the same people, and they all tell the same anecdotes the same way every time.  So, while I understand (believe me, I do!) the collector's impulse to say I need all these discs because they all have unique extras, you truly honestly don't.  Specifically, here's what the 2018 Arrow has:

*The old audio commentary with Catriona MacColl and journalist Jay Slater. I know he's a bit infamous and had one of his commentaries pulled from a Shriek Show disc and all, but he's perfectly charming here.
*The old audio commentary with Giovanni Lombardo Radice and writer Calum Waddell
*On-camera interview with Dardano Sacchetti, who's surprisingly negative towards the film
*On-camera interview with Catriona MacColl
*On-camera interview with cameraman Roberto Forges Davanzati
*On-camera new interview with production designer Massimo Antonello Geleng
*On-camera interview with Sergio Salvati
*On-camera interview with Giovanni Lombardo Radice (again, with these improved interviews, Arrow could've tossed the old commentaries, but I appreciate them erring on the side of inclusion)
*On-camera interview with Gino De Rossi
*On-camera interview with Venantino and Luca Venantini, played the boy and his father (yes, they're also father and son in real life)
*On-camera interview with Fabio Frizzi
*On-camera interview with Carlo De Mejo (this one's from the old Arrow release, and has an annoying editing style that's difficult to watch, but it's the best we're going to get since he's passed)
*On-camera interview with expert Stephen Thrower, who starts out repeating some pretty basic info, but gets pretty interesting as he gets deeper into things.  I wish he'd gone even deeper into how this film is an anti-fascist piece from Fulci, because other aspects, like the cops abusing the bohemians in NY and the fact that everyone is being punished for being Salem witch burners really play into that message, too.  But that's not a criticism, because Thrower has a lot of great stuff to say, which just inspired me to think about it and add my two cents here.
*On-camera interview with Andy Nyman, director of the recent film Ghost Stories
*A video essay by Kat Ellinger (who did a better job on Mondo Macabro's Who Can Kill a Child?, but here feels a bit lost) about Fulci's input in the zombie genre, which spends a lot of time just listing names and titles of classic zombie films, before eventually coming around to making a point
*Perhaps this disc's biggest gem: behind-the-scenes 8mm footage of this film's USA shoots with audio commentary by Davanzati, who shot it all
*Alternate Gates of Hell opening credits
*Two trailers, a TV spot and a couple radio spots
*Four image galleries
...And, this set comes packaged in a nice hard slipbox with reversible artwork for the inner case.  Also inside is a double-sided poster, six lobby cards and a 60-page booklet by Travis Crawford and Roberto Curti, plus Arrow's usual card for another film in their catalog (I got Don't Torture a Duckling).

So, the Anchor Bay and old BU discs are barebones, with just a trailer and slideshow.  You can forget them anyway.  The EC DVD actually has a unique extra: MacColl and David Warbeck speaking at Eurofest '96.  A portion of this did wind up on Grindhouse's Beyond blu-ray, but this EC version includes about six or seven additional minutes of them on stage.  Small potatoes, but like I said, I understand the collector's impulse.  😉

Blue Underground had some good stuff, it's just basically all been rendered redundant.  On camera interviews with MacColl and Radice perfectly mirror their other interviews and commentaries, and their half hour 'making of' carefully goes over each of the film's infamous set pieces, which again are all covered as well or better on Arrow's new blu.  Their "Memories of the Maestro" featurette is more unique, interviewing various cast and crew about their memories of Fulci, but it's all 100% taken from Paura vol. 1, meaning it's the exact same footage; so if you have that either by itself or as packaged with 88's blu of Zombie 3, you've already got that content.

You might be a little more tempted to hang onto the 2010 Arrow blu (or DVD set).  Again some of it, including the commentaries and Carlo De Mejo interview, have been ported over.  But there's a lot that hasn't.  Most of it, though, is older interviews with the same people saying the same things in lower quality.  This includes on-camera interviews with Radice and MacColl, of course, plus a shorter talk with Sacchetti and a brief introduction to the film by De Mejo.  But it has a couple unique features, including an interview with Fulci's daughter, Antonella, and one with Luigi Cozzi which feels like they just threw it on there because they had recorded it a while ago and had no better release to stick it on.  Most compelling is probably a silly featurette called Fulci In the House, which is more of an overview of Fulci's career and pretty disposable except it interviews a few interesting people like Joe Dante and Lloyd Kaufman.  It also includes a booklet by Waddell, a poster, lobby cards, one of Arrow's old window sleeves and reversible artwork.

Dark Force's disc doesn't really have any CotLD-related extras, but of course it has the entire other film, Psycho From Texas, which gets its own coverage here.  It also has the aforementioned 15 minutes worth of drive-in ads and trailers, and comes in a very cool, glow-in-the-dark slipcover.

Scorpion basically has everything the new Arrow has, with a few exceptions.  It's missing two featurettes: the Carlo De Mejo interview and more disappointingly, the 8mm behind-the-scenes footage.  They've also replaced the two audio commentaries with two different ones.  They've recorded a new expert commentary with Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson, which is up to their usual standards, though I'm not sure fans will learn anything new from them at this point.  And they've included the commentary by Salvati and Davanzati from the old Italian DVD No Shame put out in 2004.  That commentary has never been in English before (Scorpion has it subtitled), so it's essentially brand new for all of us English speakers.  So I'd say, overall, it's a step backwards in the featurettes but a step forwards in commentaries, essentially making it a tie.  Scorpion doesn't have all the swag of Arrow's limited edition, but it does come in a slipcover and includes reversible cover art, using The Gates Of Hell title (I have to say, I get a little kick now out of having The Gates Of Heaven and The Gates Of Hell now right next to each other on my shelf).

And for Arrow's new UHD?  We swing back to the the 2018 BD selection.  But coming from the Scorpion, it's nice to get the behind the scenes footage back.  And a nice surprise is the restoration of the 2010 Arrow extras, like the Antonella Fulci interview and even the Carlo de Mejo intro, that had been dropped from the 2018 BD.  Plus, while this new release's artwork is a little questionable, in terms of packaging, it's the most satisfying yet.  A black amary case (with the six lobby cards and ad card) with reversible artwork sits alongside the book and poster in a solid slipbox, which itself slips inside a match slipcover.  Frankly, I'm glad to move away from the J-card that's too big to fit inside its box that's taped on with that little clear circle on the front.

It's worth noting that Cauldron added a new expert commentary and a new featurette visiting the Bonaventure cemetery, which are exclusive to their release.  Honestly, any of the more recent special editions are so loaded, that I can't imagine any of them will leave their owners pining for the exclusive bits of any of the others, but if you're a die-hard completist, unfortunately, Scorpion, Arrow and Cauldron all have a few bits none of the others do.  In fact, so do Blue Underground and even EC.  But this new Arrow has the most and best overall collection of extras.  Plus, not that the revisionist remixes are particularly important, but it should be noted that of the two UHDs, only Arrow includes the stereo and 5.1 in addition to both of the mono tracks.  So anyway, I'd say Arrow's new UHD is the one to get.  But if you've already got one of the more recent previous editions, this may not be a high priority title to upgrade.

Julie Darling a.k.a. Daughter Of Death

How do I keep bringing up Julie Darling without actually covering Julie Darling?  Shame on me.  Well, that's about to change because here we go with another messed up Bad Seed story.  There has been take after take of The Bad Seed premise, even an official made-for-TV Bad Seed remake in 1985.  But most of those are pretty bland and generic.  Me, I'm a fan of the more off-book indie interpretations with some edge to them.  And that's Julie Darling, alright.  The Bad Seed with edge.

Update 12/4/17 - 10/20/23: Julie Darling is back in 4k thanks to a new BD/ UHD combo pack from Dark Force Entertainment.

The opening credits play over our precocious little angel's pet boa constrictor slithers around the house.  Her mother hates it and brings in a handy-man to get rid of it.  So when the handy-man breaks into the house later to rape her mom, Julie gets her gun... but then decides maybe she'd rather just let things play out, and sure enough mommy croaks.  But if she had issues with her mom, Julie really can't stand her new stepmother, The Howling II's Sybil Danning.  But what are the odds that handy-man will break in and inadvertently solve all her problems a second time?  Pretty slim... at least without a little encouragement and a lot of clever planning.

There's a real taste of Richard III in Julie Darling, where we're invited to delight in just how far our wicked protagonist is prepared to go to get what she wants, using the people around her like pieces on a chessboard.  It's also another "only in the 70s," non-PC affair, where about half of the supporting characters are hookers and pimps, and the other half are kids.  The fact that it's oddly foreign may have something to do with that, too, being a Canadian and German co-production.  Most of the cast is speaking English, but Julie's best friend is very clearly dubbed.  So to call this one a bit strange is certainly an understatement, but it's also rather good.  Most of the acting - with the unfortunate exception of the woman playing Julie's mother - is on point, and the story is smart and ambitious.  The girl playing Julie is unquestionably the all-star, Oscar nominee Anthony Franciosa plays her father and even Sybil Danning gives a nice, grounded performance.  Great locations and a minimal but effective score help seal the deal.

Outside of a couple no frills, full frame overseas discs, Code Red is the only company to give this a legit DVD release.  They're far from the only domestic company to give it any kind of release; there's a whole sea of weird, junky bootlegs on Amazon and other sites.  But Code Red's was the first legit release here in the states.  Even better, their 2010 DVD was also a nice, loaded special edition.  Then, in 2017, Code Red upgraded that to blu, and now in 2023, it's been upgraded to a new BD/ UHD combo pack from Dark Force.

1) Code Red 2010 DVD; 2) Code Red 2017 BD;
3) Dark Force 2023 BD; 4) Dark Force 2023 UHD.

As you can immediately tell, each release is taken from an all new master.  Specifically, the DVD is a "HiDef transfer from the original 35mm interpositive," the 2017 blu is a "2016 2k scan from the original interpositive" and the new Dark Force discs are using a "new 2023 HD 4k master from the original 35mm internegative," "with HDR" in the case of the UHD.  Damage across all four discs is mostly pretty sparse, but a yellow vertical line does like to run through a lot of the picture, as you can see on Sybil in the first set of shots above.  But the new scans are genuine improvements.  The 2017 blu is a lot clearer, with the DVD being even softer than your standard DVD/BD, SD/HD distinction.  It's a really marked boost in sharpness.  The only thing even more noticeable than that is the all new color correction, which makes a world of difference.  Colors are much more robust and distinct, and they're also decidedly more natural, with white walls looking white instead of pink or orange, and just in general like a tinting haze has been lifted from the screen.

And the colors were redone again in 2023, and the improvement isn't quite as marked, because we're starting from a better position, but things do look more authentic now, especially on the 4k, where the brights look a little more natural, yet the primary colors are somewhat stronger.  Small detail and grain look pretty similar between the 2017 and 2023 editions, with just a slight improvement to rounded on the UHD and a little less noise throughout (note the film dirt on Sybil's lip on the 2017 release that's removed from the 2023).

All three cases list a 1.85:1 aspect ratio on the back, and that's wrong every time.  Both Code Red discs feature nearly identical 1.78:1 framing.  There are tiny shifts vertically and horizontally, but you'd never catch it outside of a direct comparison like this.  But for whatever reason - and this is true of both the DVD and the first blu - the opening credits are slightly pillar-boxed for a taller 1.67:1 aspect ratio.  Feel free to speculate on why that is.  Is the film supposed to be in 1.66, and Code Red just likes producing 1.78:1 transfers?  Working my way through the Code Red catalog, there seems to be something to that...  Supported by the fact that Dark Force has kept the film at 1.67:1 throughout the entire film.  This gives us more vertical information, but is a little tighter on the sides.

All four discs just give us the original mono, which is great.  The last thing we'd need here is some attempt at a revisionist "upgrade" mix, and it's presented losslessly in DTS-HD on both BDs and the UHD.  There's a little bit of natural hiss throughout and a few crackles that sync with damage on screen.  But the music and dialogue is robust and easy to discern.  And for a pleasant surprise from Dark Force, they've added optional English subtitles to the film for the first time.

Extra features are essentially the same across all three releases, but fairly substantial.  Basically, Isabelle Mejias (who plays Julie) and Sybil Danning each give us separate intros to the film, audio commentaries and on-camera interviews.  And boy oh boy, does Isabelle not like this film, and she really wants to make sure we know it.  It can be a little frustrating for fans, who are after all, probably the only people who'll be watching these extras.  But once you get past that, she is a good sport, forthcoming and informative, and even pretty funny.  Sybil Danning is more of an affable supporter all-around; and as is the case with many Code Red special features, when they start to run out of things to say about Julie Darling, the moderators grill them about their entire filmographies.  There's lots of great content here from both women, but over two commentaries and two interviews, it starts to get a little dry and redundant.  I wish they would've edited them together or something to turn them into a single commentary and featurette, which would've been a lot tighter and more fun.  But as it is, it's still a lot of great stuff, and any serious fan who grew up with Julie Darling will lap it all up.

Apart from that, both Code Red discs have different sets of bonus trailers, and Dark Force's comes in a stylish slipcover.

So if you own any of those cheap imports or bootlegs, or even Code Red's DVD, it's definitely worth upgrading to at least the 2017 blu.  If you already have that, triple-dipping to the UHD could be a lower priority, since the difference in PQ isn't as vast now as it was in previous generations.  But if you're upgrading from an older version, or just need the very best there is, there's no question that the latest DF release is the definitive way to go, especially if you have a use for subtitles.

Stay For the Sinner's Blood

"Can any woman see the climax without feeling the knife?" is a question I often ask myself.  It's also the tagline for a gonzo sixties sleazefest called Sinner's Blood, new on blu-ray from Dark Force Entertainment.  Think Last House On the Left without the Bergman influence.  I had put off checking it out because I'm not a big fan of biker flicks in general, and 60s exploitation tends to feel pretty tame once you've seen stuff from the following decades (I can still remember as a kid renting Blood Feast after hearing for years what an insane gore-fest it was and what a disappointment that turned out to be).  But this really isn't a biker flick, though there is a biker gang in the movie, and it sure ain't tame. 

Not that Sinner's Blood is some kind of a gore fest either.  It's a sleazy sex and violence fest, full of rape, incest and drawn out, sadistic stabbings.  It's also so off-beat, unpredictable and at times curiously chipper, that it's oddly compelling even if you're not just in the market for envelope pushing.  I've read people try to describe how it doesn't really have a plot, so much as it is a succession of things that happen, and I think I've put my finger on it, because there is a straight-forward story in a sense, with events all leading into each other, and even some dare I say "subtle" foreshadowing.  It's because there really isn't a protagonist.

Two girls arrive in a small town from Chicago to stay with their aunt and uncle after their parents die.  They're both hotties, of course, but one is a heavily telegraphed good girl and the other is obviously the bad girl.  They seem like our leads but they slowly fade into the background, acting more as catalysts for everyone they run into.  Because every man, and even some of the women, go completely ga-ga over them.  And everybody in this town is a total nutcase, from the local biker gang with a homicidal loose cannon in their ranks to the town preacher who screams at people that they're animals.  So dangling this additional temptation in front of them all is just a propulsion for them to spring into murder, voyeurism, betrayal, LSD freakouts and the least titillating orgy you'll ever witness.

What a weird piece of Americana.  You could write it off as just softcore porn, because clearly this film is just dying to linger on as many bear breasts as possible.  But it's such a weird story going on, clearly with some kind of demented artistic vision pushing it along.  And sure, there's an amateurish level to it all where actors sometimes stumble over their lines and the production values are cheap.  But the cast is also really going for it, and they're clearly making an effort to come up with creative camera angles and pack the story with locations, tons of characters, weird dialogue and all sorts of things some hack rushing out a cheap sex flicks for a quick buck would never bother with.  Mind you, I'm not arguing that this is a good movie; but it's not unworthy of your time.  It's a heck of a time capsule and you'll never be bored.

Sinner's Blood has been a grey market staple for ages.  There's an old Genesis Home Video DVD with a copyright 1987, that only makes sense when you realize their back cover is a copy of the old VHS tape.  There's also a Cheezy Flix DVD.  All 1.33 VHS rip stuff, until Code Red picked it and decided to do it properly in 2012, giving it both a "brand new 1.78:1 (16x9) transfer from the only surviving 35mm print" and an additional "full frame version with a new scene from a 3/4" tape" on the same disc.  It was the definitive go-to edition until now, as Dark Force have released it on blu-ray as Volume 20 of their Drive-In double feature series (paired with Rivals, already fully covered here).  Now it's got a "new 2K scan from 16mm blown up to 35mm original internegative with extensive restoration and color correction."

1) 2012 Code Red DVD (print); 2) 2012 Code Red DVD (tape); 3) 2023 Dark Force BD.

So before I say anything else, I want to say Sinner's Blood has never looked half this good before.  This is a huge revelation.  I'm going to point out some flaws, but if you're a fan of this movie, this is an essential double-dip, putting everything that came before it to shame, even Code Red's DVD, which clearly put in the effort of giving us two transfers.

One is fullscreen (1.29:1, counting the rolling video bar along the bottom), and the other is widescreen (1.77:1 with very slim pillarboxing).  You can see why he included a full-screen option, since the widescreen version doesn't just matte the film vertically, but loses picture from all four sides.  Dark Force's transfer is 1.33:1, including even more picture around all four sides, though it feels excessively open matte, frequently with a lot of head room.  I wouldn't be surprised, though, if this is sort of a NotLD situation, where the filmmakers were still green enough to have framed for fullscreen simply because they weren't professionally seasoned enough to plan for theatrical matting.  I don't think it's true, though, what Dark Force said in their video promoting this release about going 1.33 "because that's technically the shape of a drive-in screen."  It's not, almost all drive-ins are widescreen (and certainly, the Midway and Santee drive-ins, highlighted on this disc's cover and menu screen respectively, had 2.39 screens).  So that's a little weird, but hey, this new blu still looks great.

Sure, it has plenty of dirt, scratches and hair in the gate, but it's still far less damaged than the green emulsion-riddled print Code Red used.  And critically, Dark Force didn't use a print but an internegative with far more detail and clarity.  Some of the close-ups on this disc look amazing.  And oh god, forget about Code Red's fullscreen transfer, which is so blockly, it looks like it was ripped from an old 240p Youtube post.  It's interlaced, too (the widescreen version isn't, and of course Dark Force's isn't), but you can barely tell because the image quality is so bad.  And yes, Dark Force's color correction is another big improvement, looking far more accurate and attractive than Code Red's faded, red and yellow leaning transfers.  It does have a weird flaw in a few shots, though, where the darkest parts of the shot are actually brighter than they should be, making a character's dark pants, for example, look like they're glowing.  You can see it a bit around the legs of the girl in the plaid shirt in the first set of comparison shots, and more extremely in that shot of the looking through the hole in the wall.  The above close-up is a perfect example, where it gives a greenish hue in the shadows of his hair, his collar and the eye further from the camera making them stand out in a way those areas shouldn't.  That gets a little distracting, I've gotta be honest.  And the older transfers don't have this problem.  But I still wouldn't trade Dark Force's new restoration for the old ones in a million years.

No subtitles this time (despite them being on Rivals), but Dark Force has bumped the mono audio to DTS-HD.  It still has crackles and light hiss, but it sounds better than Code Red's, which didn't have subtitles either.  Well, Code Red's widescreen transfer has less his, but the dialogue isn't as clear.  And their fullscreen version sounds awful.

Dark Force's disc is also the longest, most uncut version going, along with Code Red's fullscreen version.  If you were wondering what that "new scene" reference was about on the Code Red case, their widescreen version is missing some footage.  It cuts the first line of dialogue, replacing it with an Exclusive International Pictures title card not on either of the other editions.  It's also then missing the Cinema International Pictures logo that's cut later into the opening credits.  But the key differences are that the widescreen version cuts a lot of the lesbian scene out, as well as the final scene of violence/ nudity (which makes the film's ending even more confusing than it normally is), both of which are intact in the two fullscreen versions.  So it's not really a difference of a single "new scene," but several cuts.  And judging by the running times on the backs of their cases, the Genesis and Cheezy Flix DVDs are more heavily cut.

Code Red also hooked us up with a couple extras.  Well, one really.  They interview one of the lead actors, John Talt, who plays the emotionally disturbed creeper (if that narrows it down at all?).  And it's a fun one.  He does call the film terrible multiple times, but he has some good memories and insight into the film, which is good because anyone who sees this movie will definitely be coming out with questions.  Besides that, there's just a couple bonus trailers for other Code Red titles.

Sadly, Dark Force drops the interview.  So the new BD doesn't have any extras apart from the drive-in interstitials, where they play trailers and theater advertisements between the two features, which is admittedly fun.  But it's a real shame about the interview.  That's some value lost right there, and it feels like an unforced error not to slap it on.  It's not like none of the Drive-In series can have extras; Who's Child Am I?/ Weekend Murders had an audio commentary and on-camera interview.  Oh well.

This release does come in a colorful slipcover.  And it's two totally demented films looking better than they ever have before.  I only picked this release up for Rivals, but Sinner's Blood drew me in so much, I picked up the Code Red DVD just for the interview.  So at the end of the day, I'd say this is a high recommendation for the very niche audience that would be interested in these movies, but certainly not for, you know, sane people.