The Frighteners, Or How I Learned To Stop Waiting for Arrow and Love the Turbine

Y'know, I think 1996's The Frighteners may well be my favorite Peter Jackson film.  He's certainly made more ambitious films, and more charmingly scrappy indie flicks.  Heavenly Creatures may be more moving, The Lord Of the Rings trilogy more epic, and Braindead more gleefully gruesome.  But this one just situates in the perfect middle: Baby Bear's Just Right porridge (and featuring Jeffrey Combs' greatest performance after Re-Animator).  Interestingly, Jackson originally presented this to Robert Zemeckis as a potential Tales From the Crypt feature film.  Zemeckis says in the documentary (discussed below) that he didn't think it was a good fit, but wanted to produce it anyway.  Really, he didn't think The Frighteners made a good match for the tone of Tales From the Crypt, but Bordello of Blood did?  The Frighteners' distinct blend of humor turning increasingly dark feels like the ideal encapsulation of the TFtC spirit; the best you could ask for outside of an authentic EC tale.  But hey, whatever got us to this end point, I wouldn't change it now, because the movie we've got now, as it is, is just about perfect.

So it's interesting that it largely lives on now as an extended "director's cut."  I put that in quotes because, in his own documentary on this film, Jackson specifies the theatrical cut is still his preferred director's cut, and he considers the extended cut a fun alternative for fans.  I enjoy the restored material, but I agree, the tighter cut is better.  The extended version, which runs a hefty twelve and a half minutes longer, mostly features more comic bits with the comic relief ghost characters, and there's a pinch too much of that for my tastes in the theatrical cut already.  Some of it is clever, many of the effects are well done and a couple of the action sequences feel a little more fleshed out; but there's a reason he cut it in the first place.  There's only one cut I regret, and it's no coincidence that it's the only cut imposed by censors rather than the filmmaker's inclination towards making a superior picture, where Dee Wallace stabs Jake Busey for their mutual enjoyment.  It's a great little moment that says everything about who they are and where they're at in life; and I'd actually love a third cut of the film that's just the theatrical version plus that.  But c'est la vie.  At least we get to see it in the extended cut.

Universal first released The Frighteners on DVD all the way back in 1998.  It was anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1, but pretty disappointing considering that same year there had been a massive special edition with four and a half hours of extras and a new extended cut, while this DVD just had the basic theatrical cut and a fullscreen trailer.  But in 2005, overseas fans got what we all wanted when Universal released special edition DVD sets in various regions around the world, with everything from the laserdisc and a new introduction by Jackson.  I personally opted to import the German version because it was spread over four discs rather then three like in most other countries.  There was no additional content or anything, but I hoped it might have a better encode?  Anyway, they did make a US version, too, but it was a single flipper disc that dropped the theatrical cut, so it was clearly the worst option.

And apart from reissues with variant covers or whatever, that was it until the days of HD, when Universal did pretty good by the movie in 2011 with a 15th Anniversary edition, which included both cuts and all the legacy extras.  Unlike Jackson's earlier work, it was looking pretty sweet on home video, and that BD carried us over to the 4k era.  In 2022, Germany's Turbine produced an exclusive 4k restoration as a pretty massive, and certainly not cheap, 6-disc BD/ UHD set.  That included a BD and UHD of a 1.78:1 open matte version, which I guess has marginal novelty value for truly enraptured Jackson lovers; but if you asked me, it basically just came down to paying a lot of money for an intentionally misframed version.  So I held out...

...Especially since there was strong reason to hope for a preferable alternative!  Arrow included a promotional postcard for a Frighteners release of their own in their 2020 4k UHD release of King of New York (confirmed in this unboxing video, screenshot above).  So when Turbine came out, many of us were already in ye olde' "wait and see which is better" mode.  Of course, there still has yet to be an official announcement to this day, and everyone assuming it was just around the corner is feeling pretty deflated.  Speculation is that Turbine signed an exclusivity agreement to be the sole international distributor for this film for X number of years, foiling Arrow's initial plans.  Maybe it's still coming eventually.  But then there's also always the concern that even if it does happen, Jackson will want to create some kind of janky AI-enhanced, 200fps DNR'd redux that would actually be worse than the 2011 blu-ray anyway.  Meanwhile, Turbine eventually released a much more reasonably priced edition that dropped the 1.78:1 discs and the 1080p version, but still included both cuts in 4k plus all of the special features in a very handsome 3-disc BD/ UHD set.  So I finally broke down and gave up on Arrow (which probably means it will be announced tomorrow, amiright?), and copped the Turbine, which I have for you now.

1) 1998 Universal DVD; 2) 2005 Universal DVD theatrical; 3) 2005 Universal DVD ext;
4) 2011 Universal BD theatrical; 5) 2011 Universal BD ext;
6) 2025 Turbine UHD theatrical; 7) 2025 Turbine UHD ext.

The US disc starts us off at 2.40, while the German disc (on both cuts... on every release with the two cuts; their transfers are identical) opens it up a smidgen to 2.35:1.  You can also see the framing shift vertically, showing more along the bottom and less along the top.  This framing persists through the rest of the subsequent releases, which are also 2.35, though the UHD reveals slivers more picture along the edges.  Color-wise, there are never any vast swings.  The original DVD is a bit red, which was corrected by the special edition DVD, and the UHD is a pinch cooler than all previous editions.  Turbine's Dolby Vision HDR pulls a bit out of the shadows, but it's not like the previous blu was crushing stuff.  It is more naturally defuse, though, and the 4k resolution definitely captures the film grain much more thoroughly and naturally.  In short, each edition is a subtle but distinct improvement over the previous, but you'll really appreciate the boost if you've skipped any of them along the way.

The initial 1998 DVD starts us off with the original 5.1 track, optional English subtitles, plus a French dub and Spanish subs.  The special edition keeps all of that and also adds a new DTS 5.1 to the director's cut.  They also add a German dub (of course) and additional French, German, Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovenian, Swedish and Turkish subs.  Then the blu-ray scales back all those options, returning us to just the 5.1 (now in DTS-HD) and French dub (still lossy) with English, Spanish and French subtitles.  And finally, Turbine gives us The English and German tracks in 5.1 DTS-HD, 2.0 mix-downs also in DTS-HD and a new Atmos mix for the extended cut, with optional English and German subtitles.

So, as I mentioned above, the original DVD only included a fullscreen trailer as an extra.  But the the special edition DVD, and the subsequent releases covered here, rounded up all of the extras from the laserdisc, which is a ton.  We're talking four and a half hours, not even including the commentary.  And it's a great commentary.  Jackson delivers it over the extended cut, and enthusiastically discusses all manner of the production, from pre to post.  But then that's like a pittance to the elaborate documentary he crafted, rivaled only by his Lord of the Rings appendixes.  This has everything, from the deleted scenes, extensive behind the scenes footage that sticks with scenes for long stretches of time (as opposed to your usual B-roll, which just gives us frustrating glimpses), outtakes, cast and crew interviews and more.  There's one section where he animates the film's storyboards, scores them and provides an audio commentary for that, pointing out all the ideas that didn't make it to the final film, etc.  It's a real treasure.  Jackson also shot a brief, new introduction to the bonus features for the special edition DVD, which has also made its way to the BD and UHD editions.

Now, besides that, Turbine has created an all new, feature-length retrospective.  And I am not just happy but surprised to report this new doc is great and doesn't simply repeat details adequately covered in the previous extras.  It features a Jake Busey, Dee Wallace and a whole bunch of crew members sharing additional, unheard memories of what it was like when LA came to New Zealand.  Besides just having the additional perspective of time, they get into less promotional-areas that the original supplementary materials skipped, like working with Michael J. Fox as his Parkinson's symptoms were staring to flare up or effects artist Wes Takahashi talking about how he was made to act as a sort of spy for ILM and Zemeckis when working with WETA.  This feels like the filmmakers did what I always pleading for them to do: watch the original extras and cut out all the repetition, so everything is fresh and adds to the conversation rather than repeating it.  So this is a great addition to the already comprehensive collection of extras, which to be clear, have been carried over in full on the Turbine release.

The 2022 edition came in an outer slipbox with a hefty 196-page book (but remember, it's all in German), plus a fold-out poster, six art cards and a replica of Frank Bannister's Psychic Investigator business card.  The three disc-set did away with all the swag, but was also released in three cover slipbox variants (using the same art pieces) with a back slip that does pass Grindhouse Mike's "does it fit int he box" test.  There's also a steelbook version of the three disc set that comes in a slipcover.

So who knows?  Maybe Arrow will still come out with their version one of these days, and hopefully not processed through Jackson's virtual reality machine.  But even if that day comes, I'm not sure there's much that bears improving upon here.

Import Week, Day 5: Braindead/ Alive

I've had my eye on this one for a long time, mostly with the hope that Peter Jackson's long awaited restorations would come and render this whole mess obsolete.  But I finally gave in and rolled the dice on the Spanish blu-ray of 1992's Braindead, a.k.a. Dead/ Alive.  Information about this disc online is pretty wrong, so I'm glad to be able to correct the record.  But that isn't to say it's everything fans have hoped for.  So let's get into it.

Braindead is a zombie comedy, made before such things had played themselves out, where Jackson essentially set out to make the goriest movie of all time.  It's arguable if he succeeded, but he's definitely in the running.  By the final set-piece, this film is literally crawling in blood and guts.  But this film has a lot more to offer, too, from fun characters to wild stop motion creatures.  I guess this movie has gone down as a box office flop, but this was clearly never made for mainstream audiences.  It's a zany gorefest that's constantly striving to go further and further over the top.  It's a bit of a miracle that this film opened wide in theaters at all.

A moment only in the full, original Braindead cut.

And now you can't talk about this film without talking about cuts.  As far as I can tell, besides issues of opening logos bootlegs and fan edits with weird NTSC/ PAL run times confusing things, there are essentially three cuts of this film.  The original is the full-length cut, released as Braindead in the UK.  Then Peter Jackson himself cut the film down for its US release, where it was also retitled Dead/ Alive, where it was released unrated.  We then also got an even shorter R-rated cut in the US.  According to movie-censorship.com, Italy has a differently censored cut of Dead/ Alive, essentially an alternate R-rated edit.  But for most intents and purposes, we can essentially refer to the film as either the longest Braindead cut, the medium-length unrated cut and the shortest R-rated cut.  Thankfully, none of the discs we're looking at today are the R-rated cut.

So Dead/ Alive was first released on DVD here in the US in 1998 by Trimark.  It's an anamorphic widescreen, barebones presentation of the unrated cut.  The Trimark was originally a single-sided flipper disc, reissued as a traditionally labeled disc in 2001, which is what I've got.  But I believe the contents of the disc are identical.  Meanwhile, in the UK, Universal released the complete Braindead cut in 2002.  Unfortunately, it's non-anamorphic and also barebones.  Really, just to save time, every release of this film is barebones.  There have been plenty of other DVDs around the world, but it's always been a choice of a crappy Braindead cut or a nicer unrated cut.  On blu, it's largely the same story.  There is a long out of print, now quite pricey blu of the unrated cut released by Lions Gate in 2015, but I've curious about the Spanish Braindead blu-ray for years.

According to blu-ray.com, it's 104 minutes and 1080i, but English friendly.  It's also released by Llamentol, who are notorious for releasing grey market BDRs.  So, I figure, worst case, it's an upscale of the UK DVD, which would at least fix the non-anamorphic issue.  But it turned out not to be what I expected.

1) 2001 US Trimark DVD; 2) 2002 Universal UK DVD; 3) 2015 ES Llamentol BD.

First off, happily, it's a properly pressed blu-ray, not a BDR.  And yes it's 1080i, but it doesn't have any interlacing/ combing issues, it's just playing at PAL speed.  I don't know how it compares to the US blu, but it's a clear improvement over the DVDs.  I've left the negative space around the first set of shots to illustrate some of what's going on with the framing.  Trimark's DVD is anamorphic 1.85:1, while Universal's is non-anamorphic 1.54:1; but the latter is largely open matte, revealing more on the top and bottom, while cropping just a little off the sides.  Llamentol's blu is 1.78:1, but it's not just Trimark's framing with the slim mattes lifted.  It reveals more along all four edges, revealing more than either disc shows on the side while roughly (not precisely) matching Universal vertically.  And, of course, it's a whole lot clearer than either of them, with more natural colors and clearer detail.  So far: better than expected.

Can't say I saw that coming.

But here's where the down side steps in.  First of all, the audio is lossy.  Well, I anticipated that.  At least it's back to stereo (the UK was mono).  But worse, it's actually not 104 minutes, but 93.  So it's not the Braindead cut but the unrated one, albeit with the word "Braindead" plopped on top of the Dead/ Alive title card.  It's basically just a wonky version of the Lions Gate BD.  It's playing at PAL speed and exchanges Trimark's optional English subtitles for Spanish ones (Universal has none).  But on the other hand, it isn't currently selling for $158 on Amazon (which, even then, is out of stock).  Oh, and for the record, every disc except the UK DVD includes the theatrical trailer.

Obviously, this just emphasizes the desperate need for Peter Jackson to finally deliver on his promise of restoring his back catalog, but until that distant dream comes true, this could be an affordable and only slightly inferior substitute for the unrated cut, which in theory is Jackson's preferred cut anyway.  But the complete Braindead cut remains as frustratingly elusive as ever.