Is No One Going To Do Anything About the State of Mesmer?!

Well, I'm not tagging Mesmer M.I.A. because it is available on DVD from Image.  In fact, it has been since 2000, and it's certainly far from rare, although in recent years it's been inching its way up in price as a long OOP title.  There are also foreign releases, in the UK and Australia, among others.  But they're all barebones discs using the same, crap fullscreen transfer.  And damn it, Mesmer deserves more than this!

I've read enough online reviews to know that many unprepared Alan Rickman fans seem to have stumbled upon this looking for some kind of Snape spin-off movie, or some torrid romance novel breathed to life.  And to a large degree, Mesmer delivers on the latter.  But most of them probably weren't ready for all the incest and sexual abuse.  Because the critical thing to know about this film is that it's written by Dennis Potter, so it's not going to shy away from the dark sides of its story.

And I know, often with Potter films, the disappointment is that they're watered down versions of his superior British television originals.  Like, I see a lot of people talking about how pleasantly surprised they were to discover Steve Martin's musical Pennies From Heaven is actually rather good.  And sure, it is, but the shame is that almost none of these people have seen the fuller and far superior original starring Bob Hoskins.  Once you've had that experience, the only reason to return to Martin's is for some flashier production numbers and maybe nostalgia.  Then you've also got the dueling Brimstone and Treacles, Track 29 vs. Schmoedipus, and god save you if you're only familiar with Robert Downey Jr's interpretation of The Singing Detective.  Or to a lesser degree, Alice and Dreamchild.  But Mesmer is a true 1994 original, the definitive and only version.

On its face, Mesmer tells the true story of Franz Anton Mesmer, the radical 19th century doctor who believed our mental and emotional states directly affected our physical health.  He introduced a lot of ideas, like psychosomaticism, that we still used today, but also some pretty far-out new age shenanigans (yes, he's where we get the word "mesmerize" from).  Indeed, this film is book-ended with Mesmer being brought up in front of a medical board on the charge of being a total fraud.  Chief among his critics is David Hemblen, who you'll recognize from all of Atom Egoyan's best, early films.

But Potter isn't really interested in teaching us history; this just qualifies as a biopic by technicality.  It's a fanciful, bleak, humorous and sly exploration of, you know, whatever was going on inside Potter at the time.  Anton rockets through class, working his magic for everyone from street peddlers to royalty.  He's at once a new age charlatan with some truly crazy treatment plans, and a bit of a medical savior, ahead of his time in a field of struggling experts whose answer to most things was still bleeding their patients and torturing them with leeches.  For some reason, it seems to help when his patients are beautiful young women.  Hmm...

Mesmer embraces the art house, so be ready for mobs of French revolutionaries to behave as a theatrical device rather than realistic rioters, or even for Rickman's face to be super-imposed on the moon.  I wouldn't blame you for being skeptical if you looked up the director.  Roger Spottiswoode has some rather spotty credits (sorry; I couldn't help myself) on his resume... his previous movie was Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.  And I'll admit, a finer director might've wrung some more nuance and subtlety out of this material.  But Rickman's is downright transcendent here, and the string's in this score are doing God's work.  I'm starting to run long, so if you still need to be properly sold on this film, I'll direct you to these vintage reviews from Variety and The Atlantic that really seem to get it.

2000 Image DVD.

So, like I said, Mesmer is presented fullscreen here (1.33:1), though this was of course a widescreen theatrical release.  I'm not even confident that this is open matte, as there doesn't seem like a lot of excessive head room, and the framing looks pretty tight.  Most damning, it's just so dark and soft.  The colors are drab, contrast is low so it feels like someone turned off the lights even when characters are out in the sun, and I bet a lot of detail has been crushed in those blacks.  It looks like what it surely is: an old video master made for tube televisions in the early 90s.  At least there aren't any rolling bars, and surprisingly, it isn't interlaced.  But otherwise, things are pretty sad.

Audio is just your basic 2.0 Dolby track, which is fine.  There are no subtitles, and the only extra is a(n also fullscreen) trailer.  That and an insert listing chapter breaks is all we get.

Mesmer is one of those films I've been waiting decades for an upgrade for.  Anytime a studio like Twilight Time or Kino would announce their monthly releases, I'd check to see if Mesmer was amongst them.  I wasn't expecting a loaded special edition, but you'd think someone would at least get it to us in its proper widescreen.  I gave up really hoping years ago, though.  For some reason, this exotic film just feels doomed to neglect.  Meanwhile, Nail Gun Massacre is getting its fifth remaster, this time on UHD.  And if anybody gets that decision, I do.  But come on, studios, publishers... is really no one going to step up to the plate for this?  Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot is on blu-ray, with a 'making of'!  Surely this can get a no frills 2k clean-up?

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

Okay, I can't do Hamlet without doing Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.  It's a minor masterpiece and a personal favorite.  The more Tom Stoppard on disc the better, I say; and this is the ultimate Stoppard film.  Image first released this on DVD in 2005, finally allowing us to replace our laserdiscs, as a bit of a neat special edition on two discs.  Later, RLJ Entertainment, which is just Image rebranded, released it as an even fuller 25th Anniversary blu-ray edition in 2016.

Based on his own play, writer/ director Stoppard gives us something wonderfully inventive with 1990's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.  It dances elegantly along the thin line between a silly comedy (with additional comic bits for Rosencrantz added to the film version) fleshing out the ironic fates of two of Shakespeare's unluckiest characters, and a weighty, existential art film.  Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman) and Guildenstern (Tim Roth) are dealt a shrift, cruel hand in Hamlet, a work they're still trapped in here.  But this time they're given the space to question, if not defy, their most famously scripted destinies.  Of course, it's essential to know what that is exactly.  Stoppard may have over-estimated our modern educational system on that front.

"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead" isn't quite Hamlet's last line, but it's on the last page, their doom announced as a sort of twisted punchline to the extremely bloody tragedy.  But why?  Only the traveling player (Richard Dreyfus), leader of the troupe that would elicit a confession from the king, seems willing or able to discuss it with them.  Everyone else can only follow the grim procession to its violent end.  Game of Thrones' Iain Glen is capable, not great, as Prince Hamlet himself.  But that's fine, because he doesn't have a major part here, and the three leads of this show are all fantastic.  The production values are high, with excellent locations and art design, though they clearly had to cut a few corners with the final act at sea.  But it creates a more than credible world that add s lifelike weight to the fictitious surroundings.  The moody soundtrack and firelight evoke a mood suggesting that this is something far darker and more foreboding than Abbott & Costello Meet the Prince of Denmark, though they do also indulge in some genuinely amusing Vaudeville routines.  This film truly has everything.

2005 Image DVD top; 2016 RLJ BD bottom.

It's a nice little upgrade.  The aspect ratio is corrected from 1.82:1 to 1.85:1, revealing a little extra picture along the sides.  Grain is honestly still a little soft and smudgy, but the image is definitely clearer than the DVD with sharper lines, restored detail and less (though perhaps not zero) edge enhancement.  This is a dual-layered disc, allotting the film a healthy 23.1 gigs.  It looks like Tim Roth's mouth has been erased on the DVD in that second set of shots, and recovered on the blu.  Contrast is higher, too, with noticeably brighter highlights, which does make it easier to follow the action in the film's many dark scenes.

The DVD includes both the original stereo track plus a 5.1 remix with optional English subtitles.  The blu ditches the 5.1 but bumps the stereo to lossless DTS-HD and hangs on to the subs.

Stoppard, now in HD!

We don't get any commentaries, but we get individual, on camera interviews with each of the four main players: Roth, Oldman, Dreyfus and Stoppard himself, all of which are nearly an hour long.  Well, Roth's is more like 33 minutes, but it still gets pretty seriously in depth.  It also throws in a tiny stills gallery.  And the blu-ray keeps all of that except the gallery, replacing it with something much better: a second Stoppard interview, this time in conversation with producer Michael Brandman, which is also quite good.  Although, yes, he does tell most of the same anecdotes and jokes in most of the same ways.

So happily this essential cinematic outing is more than adequately presented on home video.  Could this stand a more up-to-date release in 4k?  Sure, every film could.  And maybe Criterion, Kino or Arrow could hire a proper Shakespeare scholar to provide an educational commentary track, or get Peter Biziou to sit down and talk to us about his memories shooting in Yugoslavia.  But if RLJ's blu is the best release this film receives in my lifetime, I'll be satisfied.

Hysterical Will Crack Your Bowl

Horror comedies can be hit or miss.  By that I mean, about one hits for every 999 that miss.  And many of those misses can be downright excruciating.  So if one gets made that actually works, we should all hold it up, protect and praise it.  Well, I'm not sure if 1982's Hysterical works, or if it's just because I grew up with it since I was a little kid, but I love it.  Unfortunately, though, it's been languishing in relative obscurity, available here in the US only on a long out of print, murky fullscreen Image DVD from 2001.

...But it might be a different story in Germany.  There, in 2004, Marketing Film released it on DVD as Ein Sprung in der Schüssel, which Google translates to A Crack In the Bowl.  According to online listings, this is an anamorphic widescreen, English-friendly edition, which even includes deleted scenes and other extras!  That sounds a little too good to be true, but I couldn't live without knowing, so I tracked down a copy.  And, uh, it is and it isn't.

This is a movie written by and starring The Hudson Brothers.  You may know the name these days for celebrity drama, as one of them is Goldie Hawn's ex who publicly disowned daughter/ star Kate Hudson.  But they started out as a band, who had some success, and even briefly hosted a very weird children's variety show called The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show (and a later UK version called Bonkers!).  I've seen them described as teen idols, but this was definitely a show for younger kids.  Anyway, this is a film I'd liken to the Valentina movie in the sense that it's better if you just stumble into it without being familiar with the previous work.  Once you discover that it's of a piece with some inferior television work, it loses some of the shine.  Because taken on its own, it's so wild and weird.

You'd never guess anyone considered this goofball trio to be teen idols  or credible musicians based on this movie.  They're hammy, but not unappealing Dad Joke guys emulating a lot of classic Vaudeville-style film comics.  You'll catch some Abbott and Costello for sure (there's practically a full-on Lou Costello "t-t-t-the-the monster is right behind you" impression at one point), maybe a little Wheeler and Woolsey, but by and large they're presenting themselves as modern day Marx Brothers.  Mark is Chico, Brett is Harpo and Bill is Gummo.  That's right, they've chosen to do three Marx Brothers without a Groucho (although Bill does do a bit with greasepaint eyebrows that's a clear homage), which should tell you all you need to know about how offbeat and possibly misguided this movie is.

zombies getting coffee long before Jim Jarmusch touched a camera.

Bill plays a big city author who visits the small town of Hellview to get away from it all and work on his first serious novel.  He's our romantic lead (again, Gummo) who accidentally awakens the local lighthouse ghost, Catwoman herself Julie Newmar.  She, in turn, awakens the corpse of her ex lover (Richard Kiel, a.k.a. Jaws from James Bond) to do her murderous bidding.  The mayor from Jaws, Murray Hamilton, plays... the mayor from Jaws, who consults with the local mortician (Bud Cort) and sheriff (Clint Walker) to bring in expert help, which turns out to be two lunatic adventurers: Mark and Brett.  Of course, they're not much help, and soon everybody Kiel murders returns as a zombie, recognizable by their pale faces, turtleneck sweaters and the repeated phrase "what difference does it make?"

Everybody is somebody in this.  Robert Donner plays Ralph, the town crazy who warns everybody that they're doomed... a direct emulation of Crazy Ralph from Friday the 13th 1 and 2.  Franklyn Ajaye is the local librarian who intones "the library is closed; all white people must leave," John Larroquette is a stoner tour guide and Charlie Callas is, of course, Dracula.  Honestly, it's cast like an episode of Hollywood Squares, and that's kind of the tone, but funneled into a horror framework and packed with low effort parodies of movies like Taxi Driver, Indiana Jones and The Exorcist.  If you've ever wanted to see a Marx Brothers version of Night Of the Living Dead - and my god, how could you not? - they made that movie in 1982, and it's called Hysterical!

So how is this German DVD?  Is it really anamorphic widescreen like they say?  Does it truly look better than the American disc?

2001 US Image DVD top; 2004 DE Marketing DVD bottom.

Yes!  Okay, granted, it's a question of properly framing an open matte 1.29:1 transfer to 1.73:1, not revealing a whole ton of picture on the sides (though there's a little more on the left).  But just look at that - it's such an improvement.  The colors are natural, the brightness is accurate, as opposed to the murky blues and blacks of Image's transfer (which, based on that cigarette burn we saw earlier, was presumably based on a print), where you often can't even tell what you're looking at during night scenes.  It fixes the interlacing!  You can actually make out smaller detail, like the smaller "TERRIFIC READING!" sign above the reporter's head.  It literally looks like night and day.

But uh-oh, wait.  Why can't I get the English audio to play?  It lets me switch between a German 2.0 dub and, incredibly, a German 5.1 remix.  But no English?  There's not even any subtitles...  Listings said this was English friendly!  What's going on?!

2004 DE Marketing DVD, "Original-Fassung (Englisch)."

Well, dig around the Zusatzmaterial menu, and at the bottom you'll find the "Original-Fassung (Englisch)."  And that's... a straight rip of the Image DVD!  Even the interlacing and NTSC runtime is back.  It's a bit of a puzzler why they did it like that at first, but I figured it out when I really sat down and dug through everything on this disc.

The reason this DVD has deleted scenes is that the German version is missing scenes.  It seems like they mostly cut drug and alcohol references to make it more family friendly.  They also cut out the big "Zomboogie" musical number out of the last act, presumably because the German voice actors couldn't remake the full song in German.  So the only way to watch the full uncut version is to watch the Original English version, which looks like blue mud.  On the plus side, whoever put this DVD together really seemed to care, because not only did they include both versions, the deleted scenes are carefully laid out with the surrounding context and widescreen versions sans sound, then repeated with the murky English version.

Speaking of extras, Image only had the trailer.  Marketing has that trailer, plus two alternate ones (I told ya someone cared).  There are also two stills galleries, one of promo photos and one of various home video release covers.  And there's a 9-minute promo video, sadly unsubtitled, where some German marketing guy in the 80s talks up this film's VHS release.

So, could you... rip both versions, sync the uncut English audio to the widescreen version of the film, cutting the silent widescreen deleted scenes back?  Yes!  Although you'd have to adjust the speed to match the NTSC audio to the PAL video, slightly complicated by the fact that the German version opens with an extra MGM logo throwing off the timing.  But yeah, completely hypothetically speaking, you could make yourself a vastly superior, widescreen, English-friendly, uncut Hysterical with this DVD if you were dedicated enough.

Either way, I guess Marketing's disc is the best version of the film available.  Even if you say the German stuff is worthless because it's not English-friendly, you do get everything from the Image DVD plus a couple extra trailers and galleries.  Obviously, the ideal solution would be for somebody like Scream Factory or Vinegar Syndrome to save our beloved film from this quagmire (it's enough to put a crack in your bowl!) with a fancy HD restoration.  But I don't know what the rights issue is like.  In the meantime, these are our choices.  I'd say it's probably not worth importing for most film fans, except the Image DVD is so OOP it goes for close to $100 these days.  So the German DVD is probably the way to go after all.  But lordy, I'd jump on a blu-ray!

All the Children Of the Corn You'll Ever Need

Children Of the Corn is the killer kids movie.  It's not the first, or the best, but somehow it's the definitive one.  Anyway, it has its moments.  And it's still better than the eleven(!) other Children Of the Corn movies.  I mean, you should see Part 3 once just for its epic climax, but otherwise, this is the only one worth bothering with.  Strangely, it still kinda holds up.  You can't really be a fan of this twisted subgenre and not have it in your collection.  And I certainly couldn't not have it on this site.

In my case, it helps that I grew up a Thirtysomething devotee, so Peter Horton always helps sell me on this.  But even if you didn't roll hard for The Michael and Elliot Company, the cast is elevating this movie to places it normally couldn't reach.  A pre-fame Linda Hamilton does an above average turn, but it's the "kids" (in quotes, because one actor was actually in his 20s) who play Isaac and Malachai who really carry this film.  Otherwise, it's shot and scored like a TV movie, the effects are mixed and as good as the aforementioned kids are, most of the other child actors are entirely unconvincing.  But the premise of a ghost town populated only by its children who murdered all the adults is powerful (even if another movie beat them to the punch).  All the "He Who Walks Behind the Rows" mythos undercuts what works about this film more than enhances it, but the corn husk imagery is at least a little interesting and gives the movie a valuable sense of personality.

I suppose it's worth mentioning that there's possibly a longer director's cut out there.  It's described on the film's imdb page, and people have posted on forums (so take that for what it's worth) claiming to have seen it on television.  Check out the lengthy discussion in the comments of this blog post, for example.  Apparently, the prologue is more elaborate, with additional characters and kills, and a few additional moments.  But it seems to be seriously lost, if it ever existed at all.  I remember 88 Films delaying their release to search for it, and ultimately coming up empty-handed.  I'd certainly love to see it restored if possible, and I wonder if it would actually make for a superior film; but I don't hold out a lot of hope anymore.

Children Of the Corn has had an extensive history on disc, starting out with an Anchor Bay 2001 DVD, followed by a 2004 Divimax edition, which also turned it into a special edition adding a bunch of extras.  Then, in the HD era, AB released it as a 25th Anniversary Edition blu-ray, which is the first one we've got here.  Then the rights shifted to Image, who released it on DVD and BD in 2011.  88 Films released it in the UK in 2016, but it was quickly overshadowed by Arrow's 4k restoration in 2017, which was released in both the US and UK markets.  But, of course, it was only a matter of time until that BD was reissued on UHD, and that's what happened in 2021 in the US, and 2022 in the UK.

1) 2009 AB BD; 2) 2011 Image DVD; 3) 2017 Arrow BD; 4) 2021 Arrow UHD.

For starters, all of these are 1.85:1, except the Image, which is 1.78:1.  You can see the Image is essentially the same framing as the Anchor Bay just with the slim vertical mattes removed.  But then Arrow doesn't just restore mattes; they keep the extra vertical information from the Image disc and instead restore the 1.85 AR by revealing more on the sides.  The colors and general look of the picture is rather consistent across all releases - I think they're all from the original 35mm negative (Arrow's definitely is; their booklet tells us so).  But the grain is soft even on Anchor Bay's blu.  Arrow really captures it well for the first time on blu with their fresh scan, which smartens up detail as well.  The backwards "B" is distinct for the first time on the Arrow discs in that second set of shots.

The UHD is barely even an upgrade in that regard, because their BD encodes it all so well.  But the UHD, graded as it is in HDR/ Dolby Vision, is more vibrant.  The older releases look a bit washed, which Arrow's blu emboldens nicely, while still separating them.  Notice their naturally bluer sky.  And then the UHD pushes the colors even further.  The mechanic's yellow hat, and even the red on his color, are deeper and richer.  This is definitely a case where the UHD's upgrade is in the HDR.  You really have to zoom into the shots to appreciate the boost in resolution (though if you're looking for that, check out the car door handle and gas cap at five or six hundred percent to really appreciate it).

And here's another reason to upgrade to the Arrow: Anchor Bay and Image both just have a 5.1 remix track (despite earlier AB DVDs having the original track, too), but Arrow has both the original mono and the 5.1 remix in LPCM and DTS-HD, respectively.  Image also doesn't have any subtitle options, though the other three all have proper English ones (AB also has Spanish).

Straight outta Gatlin

Anchor Bay already had some solid extras in their pocket by the time they of their 25th Anniversary edition, starting with a really strong audio commentary by the director, producer Terrence Kirby, and the actors who play Isaac and Malachai.  This diverse quartet have a lot of memories, good information and keep the discussion lively.  There's a good 30+ minute featurette that sits the commentary gang in front of the camera, and yeah, they repeat some stuff, but it's still worth the watch.  They also had the trailer and some galleries.  ...And when AB came up with their blu, they kept all that and added some more.  They also added three great new interview featurettes, one with Linda Hamilton, one with the composer and production designer and one with producer Donald Borchers.

Image, meanwhile, has nothing but the trailer.

Disciples Of the Crow

Arrow happily went in the complete opposite direction.  They carry over everything from Anchor Bay, old and new.  And they came up with a bunch of new stuff.  There's a second, expert audio commentary, which is okay.  They do have some new pieces of good info sprinkled throughout the track.  Of even more value, though, they have new interviews with the screenwriter, the actors who played the two good kids, the actor who played "the blue man" and a visit to the original filming locations.  And I was very happy to see they threw in the original adaptation of King's short story, Disciple Of the Crow, a short film from 1983 that was originally released on VHS as part of The Nightshift Collection.  It's presented in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio in 1080p and does not appear to have been restored in 4k like the feature, but it looks a lot better than a VHS rip.  It's a lot lower budget, cruder and under 20 minutes long, but it's creepy enough and I daresay better than some of the later CotC sequels.

The UHD doesn't have anything the BD 2017 release didn't have, but it keeps everything.  And both releases come with a full-color 28-page collectors' booklet, in a slipcover with reversible artwork.  For whatever mysterious reason, you definitely can't seem to keep this series of films down, but it seems like this will be the final, definitive chapter on this film for a good long time.

Terry Gilliam Week Day #1: Time Bandits

It's been a long time since we've done a "Week" here at DVDExotica, and Terry Gilliam is one I've had planned since the earliest days.  Actually, if I'm being honest, I'm not a huge Gilliam fan.  I mean, I guess that's a fairly popular stance to take these days regarding his contemporary work.  I don't think cineastes are really bashing down the doors to get into screenings for The Brothers Grimm, Zero Theorem or The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.  Any who still are probably optimistically clinging to their memories of his early days, holding out hope for a return to form, like Argento fans.  And his latest effort, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, at least reclaimed some respectability, about on par with Dark Glasses.  Even Gilliam's more celebrated work, though, I could often take or leave.  But he's had a good run on home video, so I thought I'd spend the next few days looking at the ones I take.

So let's start with perhaps his most perfect work, 1981's Time Bandits.  The only thing I might hold against Time Bandits is that it's basically a children's film.  And there's nothing at all wrong with children's films; but being an adult, it kind of makes them a little too simple for me to really sink into and get much depth out of.  But Time Bandits is so demented, slightly twisted and delightfully busy on the surface, maybe that's all it needs.  Or maybe it just holds enough moments of treasured childhood memories that the nostalgia magic of the cowboys and the knights, the tank and the spaceship all coming together to fight the evil wizard in his Lego castle is enough to keep suckering me back in.  I might need a more objective younger person to weigh in.  But if I get a kick out of it as much as I do, there's surely enough of you out there who do, too.

Gilliam started out as a cartoonist, and for good or ill, he's pretty much remained one through every stage of his filmmaking career.  It's enabled him to add a million little details to his production design and come up with some memorable imagery of fantasy.  But it might limit him in other departments, which is why it's fortunate he's got such wonderful collaborators here.  Fellow Python Michael Palin co-wrote the script, and also takes a turn as a minor, recurring comic character.  And speaking of the cast, you've got some heavy hitters from Sean Connery to John Cleese, Ian Holm, Shelly Duvall, Jim Broadbent, Peter Vaughn, Ralph Richardson, Katherine Helmond (Who's the Boss) and the great David Warner as the arch villain.  Not to mention the bandits themselves are all terrific, and even the kid manages to hold his own surrounded by such talent.  After a certain point down that list, I think it becomes impossible to make a bad movie.  Is it not as funny as a Python movie?  Is the pacing a little uneven?  Well, so what?  Look at how much you do get!

Time Bandits came out on DVD twice in 1999 in the US alone: Anchor Bay's non-anamorphic barebones DVD, and Criterion's non-anamorphic DVD with a commentary. In 2004, Anchor Bay updated their disc to a Divimax special edition DVD, which is to say it's from an HD master and yes, anamorphic with new extras, albeit without the commentary.  It hit blu in the UK first, from Optimum, in 2009, but we got it here shortly after, in 2010, from Image.  But it got a fancy, updated 2k restoration from Arrow in 2013, with a whole bunch of additional extras.  And finally, Criterion imported that 2k to the US in 2014, with a completely different set of extras, including their original commentary.

1) AB 1999 DVD; 2) AB 2004 DVD; 3) 2010 Image BD;
4) 2013 Arrow BD; 5) 2014 Criterion DVD.

So I did that thing again where I leave the negative space around the first set of shots to demonstrate the shifting aspect ratios over the years.  It also illustrates the smaller image of AB's early non-anamorphic image, which is necessarily lower res than its later reissue.  It's also cropped surprisingly tight to 1.81:1, with less picture around the sides than any of the other releases in this comparison.  Their 2004 disc only shifts ratio ever so slightly to a marginally windowboxed 1.82:1, but pulls out to reveal more and brightens the image significantly.  And despite still being SD, it's a lot clearer with stronger color separation and detail.  Then Image comes along, and despite boosting it to a genuinely HD blu-ray, manages to make things worse.  It's left unmatted at 1.77:1, overcast with a red hue, and interlaced(!), which not even the 1999 DVD was.  Any hint of grain has been smoothed away.

Finally, Arrow comes along with its new 2k restoration from the OCN (we don't know what all the previous editions were taken from, but Criterion's 1999 DVD says it's from the 35mm interpositive).  Of course, it's no longer 1080i, and bumped up to a dual layered disc.  It's still not exactly 1.85:1, but it's the closest we've come, matted to 1.83:1, with roughly the same vertical information as the Image but with more revealed along the sides.  The colors are corrected, and we've finally got a natural, filmic look.  Criterion just uses the same Gilliam-approved restoration Arrow debuted, and I only got the DVD for the extras, so I can't really judge their encode.  But to their credit, they did tweak the framing to actually be 1.85:1.

Originally, Anchor Bay just offered us the Dolby Digital stereo mix, but in 2004 they also added a 5.1 remix.  Neither had subtitles, which is one thing the old Criterion DVD could at least take credit for.  Image's blu doesn't even have subs, though it throws in a French dub.  It also has both English mixes, but only the 5.1 is lossless.  Jeez, what a crummy disc.  Arrow finally gives us both tracks in lossless DTS-HD and LPCM with English subtitles, and Criterion is the same (though their DVD is lossy, of course), except it drops the 5.1, which is fine by me.

Extras for Time Bandits are interesting, because they're always different. The old AB DVD is barebones, apart from the trailer (which is pretty unusual, so don't skip it), but their 2004 DVD has some nice stuff.  There's a new on-camera interview with Gilliam and Palin, which is both informative and amusing.  The trailer's back, and they include the 2000 documentary/ episode of The Directors on Gilliam.  Admittedly, those tend to be available elsewhere (if nothing else, they were all sold separately), but they're still pretty great hour-long overviews that score a lot of big name interviews.  This one gets a bunch of the stars of Bandits, plus Brad Pitt, Amanda Plummer and more.

Surprisingly, Image's blu isn't barebones.  They actually have their own, all new on-camera interview with Terry Gilliam.  Well, not really "their own."  Optimum created for their release, and Image carried it over to the states.  But it's good and covers all the basics, though if you have any of the other special editions, you don't need it, because you can hear him saying all the same stuff on those.  They have the trailer, too.

Image's (of course interlaced) Gilliam interview.

Arrow has the best set of features, though.  They have their own, new interview with Gilliam, plus a solo one with Palin, and more great interviews with David Warner, effects artist Kent Houston, costume designer James Acheson, production designer Milly Burns, a second featurette with Burns showing us behind-the-scenes artwork from the film, a brief restoration featurette and the trailer.  The first pressing also included a booklet and all pressings have reversible cover art.

Criterion has the second best set, and it has nothing in common with Arrow's, Anchor Bay's or Image's (apart from the trailer... they all have that).  Most importantly, they have their old commentary, which actually debuts from their 1998 laserdisc, and is pretty great.  It's one of those spliced together mash-ups, mixing commentary by Gilliam, Palin, John Cleese, David Warner and the kid himself, Craig Warnock.  This is the only place Cleese and Warnock are heard from, and it's the only audio commentary at all, so it's pretty valuable.  They also have a their own featurette with Acheson and Burns called Creating the World of Time Bandits.  Nice, but less essential, are a short vintage television interview with Shelly Duvall and a very lengthy film festival Q&A with Gilliam.  There's also a stills gallery and a fold-out insert/ map of the universe with notes by critic David Sterritt.

So, as far as the film presentation itself, it's absolutely worth updating to one of the 2k releases from any previous edition you might own.  After that, the decision is all about the special features.  They're so diverse, I'd actually recommend both the Criterion and the Arrow together; though you can do like I did and save a few dollars by getting just the DVD of one them (they've both released DVD-only versions of their latest releases).  And serious fans might want to take it even further and pick up the Anchor Bay DVD, but only the most die-hard completists need to bother with the Image/ Optimum.