Update Megaweek, Day 4: Dan O'Bannon's The Resurrected

Dear Lions Gate, you may not be aware, but among the many, many excellent cult catalog titles you have shut away in your vaults, is an fun, highly regarded HP Lovecraft adaptation that fans have been asking for called The Resurrected. It's written and directed by Dan O'Bannon, creator behind such cult classics as Return Of the Living Dead, Dark Star and co-writer of the original Alien. You've even got a lovely, HD master already made (we know, because it's streamed on Netflix). And all you would need to do, to make a lot of people very happy, boost your reputation and make a nice little profit is to release it on DVD and blu-ray, or sub-license it to a niche label like Scream Factory, Synapse, etc. who will happily do it for you. I could see wanting to do it yourself, or leasing it out and letting another company front all the risk and labor, but surely you'd want to do something more than just sitting on your vast catalog and watching them depreciate in value - especially with a hot.

Update, update, holy crap - update! 8/28/15: The special edition this film should've gotten years ago has finally landed! It's a limited edition blu-ray/ DVD combo pack from OFDb Filmworks, with a plethora of extras from Red Shirt Pictures. The film's finally been released in its OAR, and its in HD. It's a pretty lavish set from Germany (so be prepared for Region B blu and region 2 DVD), and I just got my hands on it the other day, so let's take a look! Join me further down the page for a fresh comparison and look at all the new features.

Update 1/5/20: So in 2015, it was a German, region B release.  Shortly after, Lions Gate really started cracking open their vaults with the Vestron Line.  And tonight we wrap up our updating run with the one title they licensed to Scream Factory for a proper US release in 2017.

Update 4/25/26: I wasn't expecting this one.  This past Halloween, Vinegar Syndrome upgraded The Resurrected to 4k, with a fancy new BD/ UHD special edition set.  Also today, since it's Update Megaweek, I'm adding coverage of the indie documentary Andre Gregory: Before and After Dinner to the My Dinner With Andre page.

The Resurrected is one of the most direct, faithful adaptations of Lovecraft on film, starring Chris Sarandon (who, by the way Lions Gate, starred in the also underestimated Fright Night, which wound up selling out its entire blu-ray run in only two days. Just sayin'.) as Charles Dexter Ward, whose wife hires a private detective (24's John Terry) to find out why he's disappeared to a remote cabin with a strange man. Mad science, gruesome murders and a sequence set in the 1700s stand between them and the monstrous answer. Impressive effects, music by the always reliable Richard Band and some atmospheric cinematography (though you wouldn't know it from the full screen version) add up to a quality horror flick just dying to be rediscovered by a broader audience. The Lurker In the Lobby: A Guide to the Cinema of H.P. Lovecraft calls it, "the best serious Lovecraftian screen adaptation to date."

Admittedly, part of the difficulty The Resurrected has had finding its audience is that the film ran into some difficulty in post production. The producers took the film away from O'Bannon, who said he felt it was his best work at the time, and re-cut it themselves. So it went through a couple titles (Shatterbrain and The Ancestor) and a final version O'Bannon wasn't so pleased with. And tragically, Dan O'Bannon has passed away, so it's too late to hope for his involvement in any kind of special edition. But thankfully, his director's cut already exists! He made it before he passed and it's already screened theatrically as early as 2013. It's frustrating that nobody's taken the opportunity to pull a Nightbreed and put out the still unreleased director's cut along with the theatrical version of the film.  But we at least get deleted scenes taken from the workprint on both the OFDb and Scream Factory discs, which is a good step in the right direction.

Now, to be fair to Lions Gate, they did release The Resurrected on DVD at one point. It's fifteen years old now, long out of print, and a completely no-frills fullscreen release without even a trailer, but that's substantially more than can be said for some other sought after Lions Gate titles, like Nightwish Tale of a Vampire.  But it really wasn't until OFDb released it in Germany that the film could be said to have any kind of proper edition.  They released a proper widescreen version in 2015 on blu as a limited edition media book, followed by a slimmer single-disc release in 2016.  Then in 2017, we got it in HD here in the US courtesy of Scream Factory.  And finally (to date), we got it in 4k from Vinegar Syndrome, in a BD/ UHD combo-pack.

1) 2005 LG DVD; 2) 2015 OFDb BD; 3) 2017 SF BD;
4) 2025 VS BD; 5) 2025 VS UHD.

Credit where it's due, Lions Gate's DVD is at least open matte rather than pan & scan, so nothing's cropped away.  Still, it's interlaced.  And looking at the composition, there's no question that the widescreen version is the correct ratio, with the OFDb looking much more impressive in 1.78:1.  Then, SF's blu is even wider at 1.85:1, but they didn't just matte it a little more.  It actually has more vertical info (though not as much as the DVD) and more on the sides - especially the left.  The boxy look of the film on DVD and cable is certainly a part of the negative reactions this film has gotten from casual viewers over the years. So it's great to see this finally looking like a movie, not a cheap TV show. Granted, OFDb's HD transfer doesn't look quite state of the art: it's a little soft and it doesn't look like we've got a natural look at the film grain yet. And that goes for Scream's blu, too.  It has the improved framing and they've also done some fresh color correction (OFDb's timing pretty much matches the old DVD), providing some additional separation, with generally white whites, and unveils some detail that was crushed away in the shadows of the earlier edition.  But their 2k scan of the interpositive still seems to have had its grain smoothed away, or just not thoroughly captured in the first place.

Well, that issue is clearly taken away with the new 4k scan, and VS has upgraded the source from an interpositive to the original camera negative.  Still 1.85:1, VS's new scan pulls back to reveal a tiny bit of extra information along all four sides. The color timing is very much like Scream's, as opposed to the earlier editions, but there's an extra photo-realistic authenticity, particularly to the UHD.  Compare the skin-tones in the first set of shots to see what I mean.  That said, it's not an upgrade that jumps right out at you.  Zoom in and you finally see how finely rendered the film grain is and what a higher quality product we've got now.  But casual viewers might file these distinctions under: Who Cares?

The 2005 DVD just offered the original stereo track with no subtitle options.  OFDb bumped that up to DTS-HD, plus both 2.0 and 5.1 DTS-HD mixes of the German dub with optional German subtitles.  Scream Factory and Vinegar Syndrome keep just the stereo track in DTS-HD and gives the film optional English subtitles for the first time.

So it's great to have a widescreen release of this film, finally, but where OFDb has really excelled is the extras. Now, this is a German disc, so there are a couple of bits that are German only. But most things - all the important stuff -  is completely English-friendly.

First up is an audio commentary (yes, in English) with the film's producers Mark Borde and Kenneth Raich, writer Brent V. Friedman, special effects artist Todd Masters and actor Robert Romanus (he played Lonnie).  Brent Friedman and Todd Masters also comes back for on-camera interviews, running 18 and 16 minutes respectively. This and all the other interviews are in English with optional/ removable German subtitles. The other interviews include star Chris Sarandon (16 mins), composer Richard Band (10 mins), and production designer Brent Thomas (8 mins). There's also a brief acceptance speech by Dan O'Bannon at the Chainsaw Awards, introduced by Bruce Campbell and Quentin Tarantino, and two trailers for the film. Finally and perhaps most excitingly of all, there's over 18 minutes of recovered footage of the director's cut from the workprint tape. As you'd expect, it's from fuzzy 4:3 tape, but it actually looks a lot cleaner than most workprints I've seen, looking essentially like a commercial VHS release. It's missing music cues, and there's the occasional "shot missing" card for big effects moments; but this is really the stuff fans have been wanting to see since final cut was first taken from O'Bannon back in 1991. These are all on the blu-ray and in HD.

2015 OFDb DVD.

Because yeah, technically OFDb's release is a 3-disc set.  The second disc in this set is the DVD version of the blu.  And the third disc is most of the extras that couldn't fit on the blu on DVD. It's worth noting, though, that there's an animated stills gallery with the behind-the-scenes photos and such that's only on the DVD, and not on the blu. And for the German speakers among us, there are also two additional commentaries (one with a pair of German film critics, and one with two guys from Wicked-Vision Magazin), as well as a radio play of the original Lovecraft story. Oh, and there's a glossy, 80-page book included in this set, which is also all in German. But at least it makes the set look a little more lavish. There's a separate insert, too, with a note from the producers of the DVD and telling you the individual number of your limited copy (mine's 2040/5000).

And Scream Factory?  Thankfully, they've imported everything except the German-language commentaries.  Even that photo gallery.  And most excitingly, they've also come up with a little bit more.  First is an on-camera interview with ST Joshi, the Lovecraft expert we've seen on several recent Lovecraft discs, like Dagon and Beyond Re-Animator.  Then, even better, they interview female lead Jane Sibbett.  Apparently, she doesn't like horror movies, but she's a good sport.  Scream's release also comes with reversible cover art.

Vinegar Syndrome carries everything over, too, but they don't add too much more to the pot.  But to be fair, there aren't many gaps left to fill.  They basically conducted three new on-camera interviews.  The first of which is Chris Sarandon, which is nice, but we've already heard from him and he doesn't have a whole lot more to say.  The second is an expert: Kim Newman, who also struggles to find things to say that haven't already been said on these discs.  And third is Robert Romanus, who was already on the commentary.  It's nice that they made the effort, but nothing to get excited about.  Their release has reversible artwork, and the initial limited edition also came in a slipcover.

 

OFDb's release turned out to be absolutely everything I was asking and hoping for when I wrote the original version of this post, and Scream Factory's is even better.  Then Vinegar Syndrome came along and gave us a truly definitive edition, unquestionably the one to buy if you're just starting out with this movie.  But you'd have to be pretty hardcore to justify triple-dipping if you've been keeping up with every step.

Barbara Crampton Takes Us Back To Miskatonic In Suitable Flesh

If you're not familiar with Suitable Flesh, allow me to bring you into the fold.  In brief, it's an HP Lovecraft adaptation (specifically of "That Thing On the Doorstep") Stuart Gordon and Dennis Paoli had been trying to get funded since the 90s.  Think of his Shadow Over Innsmouth project if Dagon never finally got made.  Well, apparently, Barbara Crampton, who's been having a very gratifying scream queen comeback thee days, has enough pull with Shudder now to get a project funded.  So she reached out to Paoli, who gave her the screenplay, which she is now producing and starring in, along with Brian Yuzna, who's executive producing.  It played in a bunch of horror festivals last year, went to Shudder and just now came out on a special edition blu from RLJ (formerly Image) Entertainment.

But, of course, Gordon didn't get to actually direct this.  Instead they enlisted Joe Lynch, who frankly, I was worried about when I saw his name attached.  I mean, Mayhem is perfectly watchable if you don't go in expecting too much, but this is the guy who turned Wrong Turn into a cornball reality TV parody, did that ridiculous hitman flick with Salma Hayek where she breaks the fourth wall to make lame quips and the title Knights of Badassdom speaks for itself.  I was worried.  But Joe Lynch has proven an excellent steward for Stuart's vision.

That's not to say this is 100% the masterpiece that Re-Animator or From Beyond were, but it's better than Castle Freak and absolutely worthy of their company.  Heather Graham, of all people, stars and proves willing to go as far as out as this movie needs her to.  If you know the Lovecraft story, you can anticipate some of the body-swapping hi-jinks everybody gets up to, but of course Paoli and Co. have to crank things up a notch or two before the show's over.  A lot of this plays like a fun Tales From the Crypt episode, with whole cast having fun with its murderous premise.  But then it pushes the envelope with the sex and violence... maybe not quite as gonzo as Gordon would've taken it, but definitely in that same, demented direction.  And they manage not to lose the thread and get silly, helped by composer Steve Moore, who does a nice job capturing the spirit of what Richard Band would've done, if perhaps just a little more subtle.

2024 RLJ BD.

RLJ's blu preserves Suitable Flesh's very wide 2.35:1 aspect ratio.  This is a new release, presumably taken right from a DCP; so there's not a lot for this blu to have gotten wrong and happily they don't.  Things actually look kinda soft, but that may just be down to the look of the film itself (i.e. to look less digital and hue to its 80s predecessors).  Because this is a lot clearer than when I watched it streaming in 1080p, and we've been given a dual-layer disc for a relatively short flick, so I don't think compression would be at issue.  It's always a little tougher to gauge without film grain, how much detail is missing from a modern digital transfer.  Heck, I'd love to see a UHD of this, even without HDR, but generally I think we're lucky to even be getting BDs of these Shudder titles, so I have no complaints.

And we get a nice, bold DTS-HD transfer of the 5.1 track with optional English subtitles.  There's even an audio descriptive track, as well as Spanish and French subtitles, so RLJ has us covered.

And definitely that includes the special features department.  For starters, there's an audio commentary by Lynch, Crampton and co-producer Bob Portal.  Lynch, of course, is co-host of the Movie Crypt podcast, so he's great at doing commentaries, especially with Crampton and Portal to bounce off of.  Then there's a making of, which is fairly substantial.  I was expecting one of those ultra-brief promo featurettes, but this is a good little retrospective with Lynch and most of the cast, reminiscent of the featurettes Scream Factory creates.  Good stuff.  There's also a Zoom-style interview between Lynch and Steve Moore, a look at the storyboards (with a video intro by Lynch), a blooper reel and a couple of bonus trailers (though not the trailer for Suitable Flesh itself).

So this is a really satisfying release of a really satisfying little horror flick: the kind of thing they don't make much of anymore.  Admittedly, if you come in holding this to the extreme expectations of Gordon's all-time greatest moments in cinema, I suppose this could be a little disappointing.  But if you're not at least having fun with this title, you've brought the wrong attitude.  Everybody involved got it right and managed to deliver us one more exciting chapter from what we thought was a long finished necronomicon.

H.P. Lovecraft's From Beyond: Dragon to Vinegar Syndrome

We may've completed the Re-Animator trilogy, but we haven't run out of Brian Yuzna/ Charles Band co-productions of H.P. Lovecraft stories by Stuart Gordon and Dennis Paoli, scored by Richard Band and starring Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton yet. And while From Beyond might not be quite the film the original Re-Animator was, it's pretty damn close. And it's got just as interesting a history on disc as the rest of 'em.

Update 9/27/15 - 2/11/23: And that history just got more interesting, as Vinegar Syndrome has upgraded From Beyond to 4k UHD, in a packed 3-disc set.

A fun fact about From Beyond: the original Lovecraft story is so short, that it's pretty much adapted in this film's pre-credits sequence. Everything after that, then, is extrapolation and invention. And inventive it is. It's a wild and imaginative story that stays true to pretty much everything that was great about Re-Animator in terms of tone, style, performance, etc. The only thing that holds it back, maybe, is that it's so much further out there. Re-Animator obviously had a supernatural element to it: you can't just inject dead people with green goo and have them sit up and start walking around again. But this film has a whole other dimension, shape shifting monsters and all kinds of craziness. It's still got a sci-fi, and of course Lovecraftian base, but it's really over the top, including the characters. So that's what keeps this film from being quite as top shelf as their first endeavor - Jeffrey Combs becoming a brain-eating monster isn't quite as intellectually satisfying as his coldly intellectual portrayal of Herbert West. But on the other hand, in terms of crowd-pleasing over the top effects and general B-movie shenanigans, this movie manages to take it even further, which is saying something!

The story, uh, well let's see. Two scientists discover that sonic vibrations can stimulate a gland the human brain to see another dimension. So they create a machine to do so, and find out it's full of nasty creatures and quickly shut it down. That's pretty much where Lovecraft ends. It's pretty much a "could you imagine?" scenario. But in the film, one of the scientists is changed by the experience and goes back, turning into a shape-shifting creature that wants to absorb more people. The other scientist, Combs, winds up in a mental institution because they think he killed scientist #1. But his doctor, Crampton, wants to take him back to the scene and discover the truth. Of course, she has no idea just how bonkers the truth is, and soon the three of them (including Dawn of the Dead's Ken Foree as Bubba, the cop who's there to supervise) are also changed by the machine and can't stop summoning back the original, sadistic doctor. In short, the whole movie's delightfully crazy and backed by a ton of talent.

So, for a long time, this film wasn't available on DVD, despite having a very strong reputation. Part of that may've been due to the fact that this film was known to be a cut down version of an even more extreme director's cut that had never been released, and included scenes like an infamous eyeball sucking. The German label Dragon put it out in 2003, though, and even made a bit of a special edition out of it. And despite it being full screen, that was pretty much the one to own until 2007 when MGM amazingly stumbled upon cans of the lost film and Gordon was able to restore it. Apparently, it's not 100% - there are still bits of his director's cut missing; but he was able to restore a bunch of it including, yes, the eyeball suck. That was quite a happy release, I must say, featuring a bunch of new exciting extras as well. Finally a definitive DVD release! And when it became blu-ray time, who else but Scream Factory had the connection to MGM's catalog to make create an even larger special edition? But now in 2023, that MGM master is looking a bit dated. So now Vinegar Syndrome is here to usher us into the latest format, newly restored in HDR from the original camera negative on 4k Ultra HD.

1) Dragon DVD; 2) MGM DVD; 3) Scream Factory DVD; 4) Scream Factory BD;
5) Vinegar Syndrome BD; 6) Vinegar Syndrome UHD.

So, there's six shots per because the Scream Factory release is a DVD/ BD combo pack, and VS is a BD/ UHD pack. It's a pretty natural progression down the whole line. Dragon's disc is fullscreen at about 1.30:1, but it's not entirely an open/ closed matte situation, since it does have extra info on the top and bottoms but is missing quite a lot more on the sides. Once MGM gets it, though, it's properly matted to 1.85(or technically, more like 1.83ish):1 with much more vivid colors. But then it drops the letterboxing and opens back up to 1.78:1 again once Scream Factory gets their hands on it for their DVD. Otherwise the images are fairly identical. Obviously I prefer the OAR of MGM's disc, but it's a literally slim distinction, and the upgrade to HD is much more important.

Not that it's a huge boost, to be honest. I'm pretty sure Scream's just used MGM's high def master that they created back in 2007, so it's not floor show-level impressive. But it does sharpen things up and clear away compression lumps, giving the film a cleaner and more realistic look on blu. So it's a genuine step up to HD, but the minimum distance that step could take.  But now we've got VS's all new 4k scan - and hey, look, film grain magically appears!  Also, VS has re-framed the film to its proper 1.85:1 AR, and pulled out to reveal more picture along all four sides in the process.  Now it really looks like film; and only holds even truer on the UHD.  The HDR colors look more natural (or more unnatural, when it comes to the crazy pink and blue dimension crossing scenes), and aspects of the image that are blown out, like the papers on the desk behind them in the second set of shots, have all of their visual information restored.  This is a super satisfying upgrade.

1) Scream Factory BD; 2) Vinegar Syndrome UHD.

Oh, but I should talk about this, too: VS's new release comes with a disclaimer about the composited footage, which comes from a 35mm workprint, and how they went to extra lengths to retain its original qualities as best they could.  But that's obvious just from looking at it.  Grain is reasonably hinted at in these shots on the SF, but it's a stronger scan now, and all that much clearer on the UHD.  You can see that SF cleaned up some film damage, which is back on VS's presentation (notice the black marks around Jeffrey's upper hand), but I'll take that trade any day.  Oh, and VS has also matted theirs to 1.85:1 to match with the rest of their transfer.

The Dragon DVD just offered a standard stereo track (plus a 5.1 mix of the German dub), which MGM upgraded to a Dolby 4.0 mix. Scream gives both a 2.0 and 5.1 mix, in DTS-HD on the blu, both of which VS keeps. MGM, Scream and VS also include optional English subtitles.

There's plenty of extras on hand, too. Dragon started us off with two interviews: Stuart Gordon and Brian Yuzna. They're pretty good, but clearly recorded at some convention with omnidirectional mics, so the background sound really overcrowds the speakers. It also had a little booklet, but the text is all in German. MGM scrapped those and instead assembled a kick-ass commentary with Gordon, Yuzna, Combs, and Barbara Crampton, plus a short featurette on the restoration of the found footage and brief on-camera interviews with Gordon and Richard Band.  They also had some storyboard comparisons and a photo gallery.

Scream has all the MGM extras, plus a second audio commentary with Dennis Paoli. Writers are usually skipped over for commentaries, so that was a really nice surprise. They also created a 23+ minute featurette on the special effects, and on-camera interviews with Crampton, Combs and Charles Band. Plus they finally added the long conspicuously absent trailer. It adds up to a very satisfying, well-rounded special edition fans should love.

Re-Resonator: Looking Back at From Beyond

But Vinegar Syndrome must really want us to double-dip, because they came loaded for bear.  First of all, they have almost all of the special features from the MGM/ Scream Factory releases.  They're just missing the short featurette where Gordon (plus the telecine artist and a guy from Sony) speaks about how they found the lost footage ("this film had been castrated, and now it's got its balls back") and restored.  This is a shame because it answers a lot of fans' questions about these releases and isn't redundant, unlike many of the other extras we'll talk about.

Because VS also has a whole bunch of new material, most significantly, an all-new, feature length documentary on the history of From Beyond.  That's right, it's a whole new movie in itself, that talks to pretty much all the surviving major players, from the stars to Yuzna and Paoli, plus some people we never got to hear from before, like the editor even the foley artist.  It's enough that many fans might not even feel compelled to put in the third disc and explore the rest of the interviews.  But there's plenty, because VS has also ported over all of the interviews from Second Sight's UK edition.  So there's another interview with Gordon, another interview with Paoli and another interview with Crampton.  So I love how thorough it is, but it's also redundant and overkill.  Unsurprisingly, these guys mostly have the same memories to share about the film no matter which home video company was interviewing them.  I would advise just picking and choosing what you're most intrigued by rather than plowing through it all.  VS's release also includes reversible artwork and the first 7000 copies come in a limited edition slipcover.

We've wound up with a pretty ideal special edition. It's nice to hold out hope for the rest of the cut footage to be found, but realistically, this is surely as good as it's going to get, and better than I ever would've dared to imagine us getting twenty years ago when Dragon's DVD felt like a godsend.

Stuart Gordon's Longer, German Lovecraft Adaptation

This post has been a long time coming.  In 2006, when Masters Of Horror first hit DVD, I was excited to pick out my favorite episodes as individual special edition DVDs.  When they were later upgraded to blu-ray, I held off.  They ditched most of the special features, and people were complaining that they were 1080i instead of 1080p.  And there were foreign releases with similar issues.  Were they interlaced, in the wrong frame-rate, or was this just the inherent to their broadcast television roots?  I wasn't sure.  My DVDs weren't interlaced, reviews for the BDs were all pretty mediocre (I was a little put off that only season 1 made it to the US), and I was never all that impressed with most of the series anyway, so I just decided to steer clear of the whole quagmire.  That is until I discovered that some of the episodes, including my absolute favorite, were longer overseas!

As you can see, my fave is Stuart Gordon's Dreams In the Witch House.  It's a Lovecraft adaptation, co-written by his usual Lovecraft collaborator Dennis Paoli.  And it's really pretty great, even better than some of their features, though it probably helps that I've been able to see it in its fuller, uncut form.  I reckon I'd rank this between From Beyond and Dagon, definitely above Castle Freak.  It helps that they have mostly all practical KNB Effects.  Dagon's Ezra Godden returns as a Miskatonic student who moves into a cheap boarding house, only to discover that the very specific, weird convergence of angles he's researching because he believes they represent a connecting point between dimensions actually exist in the corner of his room.  And it's this very angle that's allowed a witch to live there for hundreds of years, preying on the local children.  This is a deranged, gruesome little story that adeptly captures Lovecraft special blend of sci-fi and fantasy horror.

So yes, this is a happy reunion: Gordon, Paoli, Lovecraft and Godden.  Even Richard Band is back to provide a suitably orchestrated soundtrack.  Apparently, Jeffrey Combs was set to co-star in this, too, but had to drop out two days before shooting.  It's a shame in the sense that it would've been an even bigger reunion, but the actor they replaced him with is great, more age appropriate, and probably better for the film, overall.  Also back, essentially, is the rat with a human face creature, that Paoli had originally written into The Evil Clergyman segment of Pulse Pounders, which at the time had been thought to be lost to history.

And in Germany, it's longer.  I'm not sure if this was strictly slimmed down for Showtime's air times, but scenes of sex and gore have both been abbreviated, so it might've been outright censorship.  Either way, it's better longer.  Some trims are almost arbitrary, but there's some great dialogue restored in this version, too.  It's not drastically different, but it's superior.  The nightmarish sex scene is even madder now and the ending is even bloodier.  Even the closing credits are more stylish, laid out over a series of images from the film, as opposed to the US cut, which just runs them over plain black.

2006 US Anchor Bay DVD top; 2018 DE Splendid BD bottom.

I'm happy to report, too, that the 1080i does not mean the blu-ray is interlaced.  We remain interlacing free.  We do have PAL speed-up, though, which is why the running times of both cuts are so similar despite one version having all the footage restored.  So take off a point for the speedup, but it's not really noticeable outside of a direct comparison, as opposed to the boost to HD, which is distinctly sharper than the DVD.  Both discs are between 1.77 and 1.78:1, but the DVD has a slight stretch vertically, that the BD fixes, therefore adding a pinch more information along the tops and bottoms.  It's not the greatest PQ either way - the BD is macroblocky and absolutely missing film grain - you'd never know this series was shot on 35mm looking at these discs.  But it's still a genuine step up from SD to HD.

So we've got a better cut of the film now, with better picture.  How else can the blu be preferable?  How about sound?  Yes, the 5.1 audio has been upped to lossless DTS-HD on the blu, now, too.  They've also added a DTS-HD German dub and German subtitles, too.  It does lose the optional English subtitles, though.

A big part of this discussion has to be about extras.  Anchor Bay's DVD had a lot of great stuff.  There's a fun and informative commentary by Gordon and Godden, though to start to run low on stuff to say in the end.  There's also an interview with Gordon which is okay, but repeats most of the stuff from the commentary, so it's fairly skippable.  Unmissable, however, is a new retrospective documentary on Gordon's work, featuring interviews with his most famous collaborators, even if they weren't involved with this episode: Brian Yuzna, Jeffrey Combs, Ken Foree, Barbara Crampton and more.  There are also interviews with co-star Chelah Horsdal and Howard Berger, a short collection of behind-the-scenes footage, a look back at the few CGI visual effects, outtakes, a stills gallery, a storyboard gallery and trailers for a bunch of Masters Of Horror episodes including this one.  It also came in a slipcover and included an insert and even a Stuart Gordon trading card.

Unfortunately, the blu-rays drop almost all of the original special edition DVD extras.  They just keep the commentaries.  But the German blu-ray has something the US blu-rays and even the original DVDs never had: a ton of behind-the-scenes footage.  There are glimpses of this in the DVD extras, but there's almost an hour's worth of footage here.  We see rehearsals and filming, more or less uncut, and well mic'd, so we can actually here Gordon giving direction, the animal controllers calling to the live rat, etc.  It also has reversible artwork so you can hide the tacky ratings logo.  So we lost a lot, but at least we gained something.  And of course, if you just keep your DVD, you've simply increased your collection of extras with this new stuff.

A scene only in the extended cut of Incident.

So let's talk quickly about the other episodes on here.  Don Coscarelli's Incident On and Off a Mountain Road is another fun reunion, where he's reunited with writer Joe R. Lansdale, who of course wrote the delightful Bubba Ho-Tep.  And Angus Scrimm may be a bit shoe-horned in (his character's not in the original story), but he's still the best thing about his episode.  It's also a creepy, nasty story with a strong premise, though the leads are pretty milquetoast and they really botched the ending.  The good news is, this is another episode that's longer on the Splendid blu than it was in America - score!  And it still has the great commentary with Coscarelli and Lansdale in conversation, and more exclusive behind-the-scenes footage.

The other two episodes are Tobe Hooper's Dance Of the Dead, which I'd classify as an interesting failure, adapting a rather extreme story by Richard Matheson, and Dario Argento's Jenifer, starring Steven Weber, which was a decent but unexceptional episode.  Again, we get commentaries and behind-the-scenes footage, plus these also have some interviews with Argento, Weber, and the Mathesons Jr and Sr.  Both of these episodes are the same length as their US counterparts, apart from the PAL thing.  Anyway, I'm here for Dreams, but I'll take these as fun bonuses, sure.

I can't leave you, though, without explaining that not every Splendid version is the preferred longer version.  No, unfortunately things have to be more complicated.  Norio Tsuruta's episode, Dream Cruise, is actually feature length at 87 minutes on DVD, but 57 (the length it originally was on Showtime) on blu.  Also a couple of Splendid's episodes are cut shorter (John Carpenter's Pro-Life and Dario Argento's Pelts), though they're uncut in the Nameless box set.  The Nameless box set is a now very hard to find German collection of the full series that was mostly a straight-forward reissue of the Splendid discs in fancy packaging, except that it fixed those cut episodes.  It still has the short version of Dream Cruise, though.  All the Splendid discs are available separately, but the Nameless versions are only in the full set.  This complication can make it daunting, and frustrating, to collect the whole series.  But if you're just interested in a couple of the stand-out episodes like me, anyway, it's easy to pick and choose the ideal editions so long as you're informed.

For the particular episodes on this disc at least, the Splendid is highly recommended.  I'd still hang onto the DVD for all those first class extras, but this longer cut makes a German version essential.  The HD boost, lossless audio and new extras sweeten the deal.  And if you haven't revisited it in a while, seriously, go back and watch Dreams In the Witch House again.  It really is something special.