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.

Hideous Beast Whose Craft Had Seduced Me Into Murder: The Black Cat (DVD/ Blu-ray Comparison)

Last year, Arrow released a big, fancy box set of two Italian horror films: Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key and The Black Cat, two very loose adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe's famous short story. Fancy but also pricey; and while Your Vice... is an interesting movie and definitely worth a watch, I only really wanted the Fulci film. So I waited, and happily, this Spring, Arrow has released The Black Cat as a stand alone blu in both the US and UK, and it's not even missing any of the features from the set!

So, how out of whack with Lucio's film from Poe's story? Well, a good deal, naturally, but maybe not as much as you'd expect. All the barebones and iconic images are basically in here. Guy has a weird relationship with his cat, hangs it in a little noose, there's a fire and the cat's shadow is burnt into the wall, guy kills a lady and walls her up, and the cats here the cat mewing behind the wall and the guy is found out. All that follows through. But for a full-length film, you've gotta flesh things out, so there are a couple more characters who get killed, a more convoluted story and there's a little more mystery. Now horror icon Patrick Magee is the cat owner, and a medium who talks to the dead. He still goes after his (now ex)wife, but also her kids, and whoever in the village who he feels has wronged him. Mimsey Farmer (Four Flies On Grey Velvet) is an American photographer who stumbles into his spree and Fulci icons David Warbeck and Al Cliver are the cops on the case. Oh, and this time the cat isn't just the victim of its owner's cruelty, it goes around hypnotizing people and murdering them on his behalf. That's a big change.

It's also a big part of the fun, though. If there was one reason to go to the theaters and see this movie, it was to watch a cat kill people. My favorite scene has always been when the cat manages to open a heavy, gated door in pursuit of a local villager. So what if literary purists might get mad, Fulci's a people pleaser, and he's gonna give us what we want. There's a lot of great atmosphere to this film. It may not be as bonkers as House By the Cemetery or City of the Living Dead, but it's got a great style to it. The locations are spot on and the soundtrack, particularly the main theme - this time by Pino Donaggio rather than Fulci regular Fabio Frizzi - is evocative, even if it isn't very Fulciesque. Magee is a perfect Poe villain right out of the box, even if our hero characters are a little dull. It doesn't have the great, outrageous moments of his best work, but it's a stylish and entertaining little horror film, and you can recognize a lot of the maestro's signature touches. It's a good time just so long as you don't tie it down with too many Fulci-specific expectations.

I was after Arrow's blu-ray because my old 1990s DVD from EC was in serious need of an upgrade. Most fans would've already replaced it with the 2001 anamorphic DVD from Anchor Bay, or the 2007 reissue from Blue Underground, but their being completely barebones left me too apathetic to bite. So when Arrow announced their special edition, I was ready. So I've got my old EC disc and now the new 2016 Arrow blu, plus I even borrowed a copy of the Blue Underground DVD, so we can see just how this film's come along.

EC DVD top; Blue Underground DVD mid; Arrow blu-ray bottom.

Oh boy, look what an upgrade I got, jumping from EC to Arrow! Others got some decent mid-ground in the middle with their AB/BU DVDs, but there's still no question Arrow's is the new king by a large margin. I mean, let's look at this. EC's is non-anamorphic, interlaced, and almost looks like a widescreen videotape that's been digitally compressed on disc. It also has less picture on all four sides than the BU DVD, clocking in at about 2.08:1 instead of the film's proper 2.35. The BU DVD is anamorphic, non-interlaced and a lot clearer, but it's still not as detailed or clear as Arrow's blu, and Arrow has managed to uncover even more picture on all four sides than BU, particularly horizontally. You could actually make a case for BU having a nicer array of colors than Arrow (both of course trumping EC's, which look downright muddy), but it's no match for the clarity of image which really brings this picture to life, replacing digital noise with authentic film grain.

Audio-wise, Arrow's DTS-HD track is of course the best for being lossless, but they have another major advantage in this department: they provide both the English and Italian versions. The previous editions only featured the English dub and no subtitles. But Arrow has both and two subtitle options: English and English HoH, so fans should be happy about that.

Another reason to be happy is the extras. Anchor Bay and Blue Underground came with nothing but the trailer, which was pretty disappointing. Even EC had done better - they included the trailer, as well as a 46 minute Q&A with Fulci and Warbeck from 1994's Eurofest. Plus, it had a photo gallery and a nice fold-insert with alternate artwork and Fulci's filmography. But don't go our of your way to dig up a copy of the EC disc now, that same Q&A - all 46 minutes of it - was later included on Grindhouse's blu-ray of The Beyond. So get that instead.  8)

Now, Arrow really delivers a nice special edition. First up is an interview with film critic Stephen Thrower, who really hits it out of the park. This is one of the best talks of this nature I've seen on a disc outside of The Criterion Collection. He is very informed, with all kinds of details not only of this film, but Poe's original story and other film adaptations of The Black Cat, and he brings it all together into a really fascinating listen.

...There is one little point I'd disagree with him on, though. He points out that in the film version, a lot of the kills are somewhat random, just people on Magee's hit list because they're villagers, and he seems to resent everyone around him. But I think the film takes more time to establish motives than he noticed. He kills his ex (similar to the original story), and the kids in the boathouse are her children that she had with the man she left him for. And the guy who falls onto the spikes was the guy who always talked about him in the pub, disparaging Magee and warning people away from him. Then Farmer and Warbeck, of course, are getting too close to uncovering his guilt. The only victim not fully explained is the one in the opening credits, but even there we know there's something going on there, because Magee goes to his grave to talk to him later in the film. But that's a nitpick of a great discussion. I only bring it up because I was so engaged. When I read the list of extras for this, I thought, "eh, okay, an expert chat's better than nothing," but I was really pleasantly surprised.

Then Thrower takes us into the next featurette, one I was looking forward to more, and which turns out to be equally enjoyable: he takes us on a tour of the film's locations. It turns out the real life village is just as interesting as it appears in the film. Next is an on-camera interview with actress Dagmar Lassander, which is a little dry as it covers her whole career. But she's interesting, and they do splice in an extra phone interview to include her comments on her death scene in this film. And for the last of Thrower's pieces, there's a very long (70+ minutes!) interview with David Warbeck. He of course passed away in the 90s, so this is a nice vintage discovery. Filmed at his home, it does get a little excessive at the end when they start pontificating about censorship, but most of it's really interesting, and Warbeck is a very charming raconteur. So definitely check it out, but if you start getting antsy, you could turn it off before the last fifteen minutes or so without missing out on much.

Besides all of that, the trailer's here, too, plus reversible artwork and an all new audio commentary by Chris Alexander of Fangoria. This one I would just characterize as "better than nothing." On his commentary for Contamination, he seemed really enthusiastic, an informed champion of the film. But now on Nightmare City and Black Cat, he doesn't have much to say. He's informed enough to give us the basics, but admits he hasn't seen the film in a long time, and so he's just watching it with us, unprepared, almost treating it like it's his personal podcast. Yeah, he lets us know at the top that he's never going to get "too fussy with this stuff" on his commentaries, and I appreciate that it's not one of those 'awkward scholar reading a 90-minute essay' tracks; but instead we wind up learning more about him than the film. He goes on about things like how much he prefers his friend's new film to the recent horror film The Editor, and how he can get movie stars on the phone any time he wants.

On Contamination, he knew lots of obscure facts and had talked to the filmmakers, and yeah it was still pretty casual and drifted into a few indulgent tangents, but you got a lot out of it and wanted to follow his lines of thought. Here we get TMI about why he doesn't find Mimsey Farmer sexually attractive and a complete history of his career that you just want to walk out of the room during. I don't want to over-sell its faults; it's not terrible. He does talk more about The Black Cat than anything else, makes some good observations and it's worth listening to if you already own the disc. But maybe in future, Arrow should just bring him in for films he's particularly interested in.

I'm very pleased with this disc and really recommend it. If I already owned one of the anamorphic DVDs, I might not have bothered with this, since it's not one of Fulci's wildest. But I'm glad I have it now, because many of the extras were better than expected, and seeing this film presented so well, including the Italian language option, actually got me to appreciate the film more. And it's one I already enjoyed. This is the kind special edition this film has always deserved and we're just finally getting in 2016. Next stop: Blue Underground's Manhattan Baby!