Update Megaweek, Day 6: Unleashing the Ultimate Sect

Oh, man.  How many years has it been since Code Red first announced their special edition of Michele Soavi's The Sect on blu?  Since that time, it's come out as a perfectly respectable edition in the UK from the fine folks at Shameless, Germany from Koch and Japan from Happinet, then switched hands to Scorpion Releasing, and come out as a budget single disc edition.  But I kept the faith and resisted all of those releases, holding out for the ultimate 2-disc special edition that was always just around the corner.  And now it's finally here!

Update 3/27/18 - 4/27/26: It's Update Megaweek and we're finally adding Severin's 2023 4k Ultra HD release of The Sect to this page.  And, at the same time, we're doing The Church, too - big Soavi day!

Now, I'm going to hold off official, final judgement until all four of Soavi's "main" films get proper, special edition blus to really lock in an official decision.  But most of my life, I've always been in the minority, holding up The Sect as my favorite.  Stage Fright certainly has the style to set it apart from the bulk of the genre, but still plays too much like a generic slasher to top my list.  The Church is a blast, but a bit sloppy, and unluckily stands in The Demons' shadow.  Dellamorte Dellamore was my favorite when I was young, but since then feels a little too comic bookish (fair enough, because it's based on a comic, of course; but still not my ideal sensibility).

So they're all great films, but The Sect winds up nestled in that sweet spot for me, still a more adult horror movie, full of atmosphere and completely wild imagery.  It feels more unrestrained, free to go where ever it wants, as opposed to his previous films, where he pushed against the envelope.  The Sect doesn't have an envelope.  It's just whatever Soavi wants it to be at any given moment.  Is Satan a hippy?  Is your face a lock that needs to be opened with a key of giant scary hooks?  Will a rabbit lead you down a hole that contaminates your drinking water with blue alien slime?  Will a bug crawl into your brain and make you dream about turning into a giant before a crucified bird monster pecks you to death?  Sure, all that can happen in The Sect!

With all of that said, I can just as easily see why this is some fans' least favorite film.  If you want a coherent, logical plot, you're out of luck.  It's confusing, seemingly arbitrarily weird, a little too reminiscent of Rosemary's Baby, and let's face it, the Alice In Wonderland theme is obvious and heavy-handed, and for all it's creative imagery, it can get pretty talky.  But even if it's at the bottom of your list, I think you have to admit it's still got a lot going for it.  There are undeniably cool scenes, and Soavi's camera is always crawling around, hunting out exotic new angles.  We get a pretty nifty performance from Herbert "Inspector Dreyfus" Lom from The Pink Panther movies.  And Pino Donaggio's score pumps the film full of cool energy.  At worst, it's a fascinating failure, which is still more than you can say for most movies.

So, like I said, I've held off on buying the previous blu-rays of this film, but I do have the original 2002 Cecchi Gori DVD from Italy, which until recently was the definitive release of this film for fans around the world.  So we've got that, Scorpion;s limited edition (to 3000, mine's #1892) 2-disc set that came out a few months after the 2018 single disc release.  The difference isn't just that second disc.  And then we've got Severin's 2024 BD/UHD set, which follows up their 2023 limited edition, where the difference is just swag.

1) 2002 Italian Cecchi Gori DVD; 2) 2018 US Scorpion BD;
3) 2023 US Severin BD; 4) 2023 US Severin UHD.

The Cecchi Gori DVD was pretty sweet it its day: uncut, anamorphic widescreen, with both English and Italian audio.  What more could you want?  Well, in this new era of HD, we want more.  Like for instance, not a soft, splotchy mess.  There's a weird kind of noise to the whole image, not interlacing, but this kind of pattern like you're watching the film through a screen door.  I remember the first edition of the Upstairs Downstairs DVDs looked like that too, until they corrected it with the remastered 40th Anniversary boxed set.  Or here, I've actually got an example of it already on the site with I, Claudius.  Look closely at the old screenshots from the original Image DVD.  All part of the ride in the olden days of DVD.

Anyway, both CG and Scorpion present the film in 1.78:1, although the DVD has a bit of feathered edging around all four sides and despite the DVD case claiming 1.66:1.  Even though they have the same AR though, we see Scorpion has unveiled a healthy amount of information around all four sides.  The case tells us that this is a brand new 2017 2k scan (so a fresher one than even the 2016 blus?) with over 45 hours of color correction.  And that color work really pays off, because it's beautiful.  I mean, it's clearly superior to the blander DVD, but even on its own terms as a contemporary blu, it's an attractive image.

1) 2002 Italian Cecchi Gori DVD; 2) 2018 US Scorpion BD;
3) 2023 US Severin BD; 4) 2023 US Severin UHD.

Now, the Severin discs are 1.85:1, which is basically Severin's framing just matted a little tighter.  This is a 4k scan of the original camera negative, and the boosted resolution shows, with tiny detail easier to make out than ever.  Grain is actually still a little splotchy at points, but it's better captured and rendered here than ever before.  But I do have a complaint: their BD looks decidelyy pale, with faded colors and light contrast.  Fortunately, their UHD, with Dolby Vision HDR, looks much better, with stronger contrast and lusher colors.  So, I think it's an issue, but honestly, I don't really care about redundant transfers on lower gen discs of a set, so I'm not really bothered about that.  But anyone just buying this for the 1080p version, take note.  Besides that, I only have one, far more iffy concern.  It looks like some portions of the film might be missing a blue night filter?  Look at those second and third set of shots, they're totally different.  But the BD's aforementioned washed colors must shoulder some of the blame; and maybe this really is the correct color timing, and Severin took the liberty in their color correction?  It's interesting to note that Severin credits their Church transfer as Soavi approved, but not this one.  Anyway, I can't call it for sure, but the longer I look at it, the more my opinion shifts from Scorpion's side to Severin.

And if Zeder had you worried, here's a shot of Scorpion's subtitles.  They're perfect, and no they're not dubtitles.  And that's the first big distinction between this 2-disc release and Scorpion's single disc that came out last month.  That version didn't have subtitles, only the English audio.  Scorpion's disc gives you the full language options with both the original Italian and English mono tracks in DTS-HD 2.0.  And this is a film where you want the Italian audio option; it has the better performances.  Try comparing the scene where Lom collapses in Kelly Curtis's house and she starts shouting for help.  In English, she sounds like a disaffected high schooler reading Shakespeare in a classroom.  In Italian, it's a convincing performance.  Admittedly, Tomas Arana's part is better in English; but overall, the Italian rules the day.

Cecchi Gori had both audio tracks, too (in fact, they have both Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 options for the Italian track), but it only has Italian subtitles.  So we English speakers had to stick to the dub.  I should also point out that there is some hiss to Scorpion's audio tracks.  It's not bad; and shouldn't bother you at all once you've grown accustomed to it.  The nearly wall to wall soundtrack covers up most of it.  But it's there and you won't exactly need to be wearing high frequency headphones to pick up on it.  And the old DVD doesn't seem to have it.  It's fine, though.  I guess Scorpion decided it would be more destructive or revisionist to run it through some noise filtering.  Cecchi Gori was happy to remix the whole thing into 5.1's after all, so they're hardly being true to the original mix like the blu is.

Now, Severin also has both 2.0 tracks in DTS-HD - yes, with the same hiss - and also with optional English sub and dubtitles.

But language options aren't the only difference between the two Scorpion blus!  There's a whole wealth of new extras.  Now the old DVD just had the trailer and a negligible stills gallery (and a cool looking insert).  Scorpion already topped that with their single disc edition, which included on-camera interviews with Soavi and Arana, plus the trailer and some bonus trailers.  Well, that stuff's carried over, of course, but we also get an audio commentary by Troy Howarth, who did an excellent job on Arrow's Phenonema disc, and an on-camera interview with Dario Argento.  As you can see, while this is definitively a Scorpion release now, Code Red still gets credit for the extras they created, including an intro with Arana and Banana Man.  And these aren't cheap, no frills interviews.  They're well shot in HD, cleanly subtitled (as opposed to the mess on that Zeder disc) and thoughtfully edited with clips from the film.

And that's just the first disc!  The second disc gives us two and a half hour's worth of additional interviews with cinematographer Raffaele Mertes, set designer Massino Geleng, screenwriter Gianni Romoli, Pino Donaggio, Giovanni Lombardo Radice and film historian Fabrizio Spurio.  And yes, these are all the same high quality as the ones on the first disc.  The only difference is the subtitles are removable here, but burned in on disc 1 (the extras, not the movie!).  Just something I noticed.  Anyway, this 2-disc set comes in a nice slipcover and features reversible artwork, utilizing the same poster image you see on the Cecchi Gori cover.

And just like with The Church, Severin has carried over most, but not all of those extras, and also come up with a bunch of new stuff.  This time, the loss is a little less disappointing, too.  They've dropped the commentary, the Arana interview, and the Banana Man intro.  The Arana interview is no big deal, because Severin has conducted their own talk with Tomas.  And they've created new interviews with effects maestro Sergio Stivaletti, expert Alan Jones and a fun featurette where Soavi takes us on a tour of a creepy basement on his family's property, which inspired the one in the film.  The initial limited edition also included a booklet, slipcover and soundtrack CD.  They also sold a t-shirt and a pendant of the film's spiral seal that you could order in a bundle directly from their site.

Scorpion clearly set their sites on the very top A-list releases by companies like Arrow and Criterion when they released these Italian titles.  And the result is Soavi's films finally got the treatment they've always deserved.  I mean, it's amazing The Sect never even got a standard Anchor Bay DVD back in the day.  It took until 2018, but we finally gotten The Sect release we've always wanted. Better yet, we have options!  You can spring for Severin's fancy 4k or stick with Scorpion's blu - either way, Sect appreciators are winning for the first time in a long time.

Update Megaweek, Day 2: The Full, Grizzly Experience

Well, this is my first time owning Grizzly, thanks to a review copy sent from 88 Films, but it's far from my first time seeing it.  I grew up on these movies on TBS back in the 80s.  They kind of run together a bit for me: very talky, made-for-TV feeling animal attack films with a batch of commercials every three minutes.  Not exactly cutting edge Hellraiser, but they were pretty much your only free, daytime horror options as a kid.  I can still remember Leslie Nielsen ripping off his shirt in the woods, deciding he had become a killer animal, too, and he was going to rip apart all his fellow campers who dared to question his leadership.  Unfortunately, this isn't that movie, but it's a close second.

Update 9/1/18: Adding the Scorpion DVD, which has some special features not on the 88 blu.

Update 4/23/26: It's Update Megaweek, and today I'm adding Severin's latest blu-ray from 2021.  I was going to let this be a secondary post this megaweek, but actually comparing the discs for the first time today, I was surprised how drastic the improvement was, so I wanted to give it its moment at the top of the front page.  Scroll down and see for yourself.  Oh, I've also just added Sony's 2005 DVD to my Oliver! page.

A lot of these movies take heavily from the popular disaster genre of the 70s, like The Poseidon Adventure and Avalanche, combined with the radioactive giant critter films of the 50s, like Them or Beginning Of the End.  But coming immediately on the heels of Speilberg's 1975 box office sensation, Grizzly sticks very closely to the Jaws script, and with taglines like "the most dangerous Jaws on land" and "not since Jaws has the terror been like this," they're not shy about it.  Christopher George is Roy Scheider, the official in charge of keeping the park safe for the public.  He catches onto the shark grizzly killing vacationers pretty quickly, but people don't want to believe him and the guy in charge refuses to shut down the park despite George's warnings.  So he assembles a 3-man team, with Andrew Prine as Richard Dreyfus and Richard Jaeckel as Robert Shaw.  It's all here, dragging a bloody corpse to lure the beast to the animal's POV shots lurking up on its victims.  There's even a sequence where the music mimics John Williams' famous "duh-nuh, duh-nuh" theme as the bear sneaks up on an camper.

But in the end, the Jaws angle isn't what sells the movie, at least not decades later now that we're hip-deep in Jaws knock-offs.  It's the wildly satisfying bear attack sequences.  They're surprisingly graphic and ambitious.  The bear swats one woman and her arm goes flying across the clearing.  A small child is mauled on screen.  A horse is beheaded with one, clean swipe!  And I won't even begin to spoil the conclusion that could still make audiences break out into cheers and applause.  The rest of the film is about as flat and dull as you'd imagine: wooden dialogue, excessive pseudo-scientific exposition, and completely uninteresting subplots that never affect the story... I suspect there's an earlier draft where Joan McCall's role as a reporter was going to lead her to investigate the camper deaths and, you know, get endangered or something.

Yeah, the bulk of Grizzly is awfully generic, but it really knows how to deliver the goods.  All the helicopter shots and variant locations don't add much by way of thrills, but they at least belay a healthy budget.  More impressively, they make great use of a real bear though there are of course a few scenes where actors are clearly mauled by a PA in a fuzzy glove.  Actors are harnessed up to portray massive Rawhead Rex-style bash-ecutions.  It helps a lot that they play everything deadly straight, unlike the goofy Sharknado outings of today.  Grizzly never goes camp or winks at the audience, except for one scene that sticks out like a sore thumb, where a female ranger, on the hunt for the man-eating grizzly bear, decides to take an inexplicable break to strip down and bathe in a small waterfall... where of course the bear is hiding!  But even that just manages to add to Grizzly's only-in-the-70s charm.

This is hardly Grizzly's first time at the rodeo.  Shriek Show first rescued it from the dark sea of grey market DVDs with a nice, 2-disc special edition.  Scorpion released it as a somewhat strange, limited edition blu-ray release in 2014.  They included two transfers (yes, it was a BD50), unfiltered or DVNRed, sold with the warning that, "This Blu-Ray of GRIZZLY is not up to our usual standards for a Blu-Ray release. However, due to the overwhelming request for this title, we are presenting the film to you in the best way possible in HD. Although there are many imperfections with the materials, we hope you can still enjoy the presentation as it is while viewing. Thank you."  Their DVD counterpart, on the other hand, just features the one transfer.  Also curious: they didn't include the audio commentary from the DVD, even though Walt Olsen (president of Scorpion) was one the participants.  Anyway, it was released on blu more broadly in 2018 in the UK from 88 Films.  That's the edition most of us got our hands on until 2021 when Severin issued it in the US with an all-new 2k scan.

1) 2014 Scorpion DVD; 2) 2018 88 Films BD; 3) 2021 Severin BD.

Presented in a very wide, 2.40:1 aspect ratio, 88's disc clearly uses the same master as Scorpion's (also 2.40:1), but thankfully they've opted for the non-DNR version.  This is a very grainy transfer, probably taken from a print.  But while there are occasional white flecks and minor blemishes - even a little soft flickering in one or two scenes - for the most part, Grizzly's in much cleaner, more attractive condition than I was expecting.  The colors are strong and very natural, and the aforementioned grain is very distinct and crisply rendered. I'm surprised Scorpion got self conscious enough to issue a disclaimer over this master.

But now we've got a fresh 2k scan from the internegative, and man, it looks so much better.  I mean, just look how much more distinct those colors are!  Looking at them side by side, it really brings up how red the previous master was.  Also, the AR is roughly the same at 2.39:1, but look how much more image is in the frame.  Who knew what we were missing before now?

Audio-wise, the Scorpion DVD has the mono and, surprisingly, a 5.1 remix.  88 drops that, but we get a healthy, lossless LPCM 2.0 mix.  No subtitles, but then the Scorpion and Shriek Show releases didn't have any either.  Severin does, though, as well as the original mono in DTS-HD.

Here's where things get even more interesting: special features.  The Shriek Show set was pretty full, with the audio commentary, plus a nearly 40 minute retrospective documentary, a screening Q&A, vintage 'making of' featurette and some other little odds and ends.  Scorpion carried over some of that, but lost the commentary and vintage featurette (though they did add their Katrina intro, if you're interested in that).  And 88?  Well, disappointingly, they've included none of that.  But they did produce their own, all-new exclusive 23-minute featurette.  It's an interview with David Del Valle, who's basically here as an expert to give us a little of the backstory for the film.  But he knew Christopher George, so he's able to give us some unique personal anecdotes, and it winds up mostly being about him.  Quite interesting and definitely worth the watch.  Besides that, we get the theatrical trailer and, if you get the first pressing, it also includes a limited edition slipcover and booklet where Calum Waddell rather generously compares the film to George Orwell's Animal Farm, and gives a little history to the "animals run amuck" genre, with quotes from Joe Dante and others.

And Severin?  First of all, the commentary's back!  And they've got a new one with experts Nathaniel Thompson and Troy Howarth.  Honestly, it's kinda silly and skippable; but it's great to have the original again.  The making of and vintage featurette are here, too; though the Q&A is gone, as is the Katrina bit, naturally.  88's original featurette isn't here either.  But we get some great, new interviews with co-producer J. Patrick Kelly III, a conversation between Sheldon and McCall, a fun one with actor Tom Arcuragi and a lengthy one with expert Stephen Thrower, which unlike the new commentary, you shouldn't pass over.  There's also a second trailer and a couple radio spots.  It has reversible cover art and was originally sold with a slipcover.

So, Grizzly is entertaining, but not what you'd call, you know, a good movie.  It's definitely worth watching once for the highlights, but beyond that, for me, it's the kind of movie you get as an impulse buy or not at all.  Maybe you see it cheap and pick it up on a lark, or include it in a big order when a site is having a sale...  For most viewers, I'd imagine whichever blu-ray is in your region will do.  But if you are seeking the full Grizzly experience, Severin is the answer in all departments.  Hold onto your older copies for their exclusive extras, but Severin has the best overall package; so there's really no need to get more than one edition of this.

Some Quality Renovations On The Carpenter

The Carpenter is a wild, direct-to-video supernatural slasher from 1987.  A young couple moves into a new home, and as they're having the house renovated, we start to learn things aren't as idyllic as they seem.  The husband's a sleazy cheat, the wife has a history of serious mental illness, and even the contractors are slackers and crooks.  All but one of them, anyway, as one carpenter is always working late and doing the work of a whole crew on his own.  Soon he's not just doing all the repairs, he's solving all the wife's troubles, including murdering whoever needs murdering.

Update 10/3/20 - 3/28/25: For a while there, I thought this one might never receive a proper special edition, but in retrospect I shouldn't have worried.  It's an 80s slasher; somebody was going to bring it back.  Turns out it was Vinegar Syndrome, so expectations are high.

But something's too good, or too evil, to be true about this carpenter.  Is he a madman obsessed with the young couple, a ghost determined to finish the house he could never complete in life, or all a part of the wife's mind?  It's very rough around the edges, but the script at its core is clever enough to keep even jaded horror vets on the hook.  It's tongue-in-cheek at times, with all the cheerfully over-the-top handyman-themed kills you'd expect, but the humor is never at the expense of the characters or the story.  This isn't a horror comedy so much as a legit dramatic horror with some wit, striking a tone very similar to The Stepfather, and almost as successfully.  And character actor Wings Hauser is at his best as the titular laborer out of his time and his mind.  Admittedly, this film puts a lot of weight on his shoulders, but he carries it well, delivering demented speeches over his coworkers' wriggling bodies.

When this finally came out on DVD in 2011, I was amped.  The only bummer was that Scorpion only came up with an essentially barebones DVD-only release.  Apparently elements didn't exist for a blu, and the bets they could do was a composite cut.  See, when this was released on VHS, there were two versions: R and Unrated.  Whatever elements Scorpion had for their transfer was the R rated cut, so they had to cut in the unrated footage, i.e. all the best bits, from a tape.  So yes, it was the full unrated version, but SD is all we got.  ...Until 2025, that is.  Vinegar Syndrome apparently felt the materials warranted an upgrade, and so we get an all new 2k scan on BD from "the best existing film elements," a 35mm release print.  And yes, this one's a composite cut, too.  So don't expect immaculate PQ, but if anyone can make this movie look prettier in HD, it's Vinegar Syndrome.

1) 2011 US Scorpion DVD; 2) 2025 US Vinegar Syndrome BD.

As you can see, the film is presented as it was originally shot, in widescreen (1.78:1 on the DVD, 1.85:1 on the BD), as opposed to the old 1:33 VHS tapes.  It's obvious this was shot on film, not tape, so it looks markedly better than it ever has before.  That said, Scorpion's disc retains some evident print damage, from little specks to vertical lines running through the shot and even green chemical burns.  Most of it's pretty clean, but the when it's there, the damage is hard to miss.  Happiily, however, VS has cleaned all of that up.  The image is definitely sharper and clearer now in HD, with very natural looking grain captured in 2k, and the colors look decidedly more natural.  Even in the SD composite footage. 

Looking above here, the second shot is the main footage, while the first is from the unrated inserts.  There's a bunch, and you can clearly see it's from a weaker, noisier source, but it's far from unwatchable.  If you got through Scream Factory's Silent Night, Deadly Night or Arrow's Hellraiser 3 without falling on the floor, you'll be fine here.  There is a noticeable shift in quality even in motion, but VS's additional color correction (and grain filter added to the SD stuff?) blend it together quite satisfactorily.  We lose some fine detail, but they've done a first class job with it, and fans should be more than satisfied.

In terms of audio, we just get the original mono track, but that's all I'd ask for anyway.  Even on the DVD, it's a pretty clear track, with any weaknesses seeming to stem from how it was originally filmed.  You can hear the shift in quality when the scene shifts from the R to unrated footage; it sounds more echo-y and thin.  But it's still pretty clean and hiss-free.  VS bumps it up to DTS-HD, and there's an appreciable improvement on the insert stuff.  They must've done some intense remastering, because you no longer have that distinct shift between the cleaner and composite audio.  They've also included optional English subtitles, which the Scorpion lacked.

There are no extras on the DVD, really, apart from the Katarina's Nightmare Theater wrap-arounds.  She doesn't have much to say even by Katarina's usual standards... her credits sequences last longer than the segments themselves, which are mostly just an excuse for her to pose holding a power drill.  The only other things on this disc are bonus trailers, not even a trailer for The Carpenter... although it's possible none were ever created, apart from those thirty-second "coming soon to home video" ads.  Anyway, this release does at least come with reversible artwork.  It's the same imagery on both sides, but allows you to hide the garish Katrina banners.

The BD, on the other hand, is well stocked.  There are two audio commentaries, including a top notch one by the director and the screenwriter, and then a more casual, but enthusiastic, track by two flippant podcast guys.  Then there's a great half hour+ retrospective with the stars and main cast members.  A few moments repeat what we'd already heard in the commentary, but it's still a must-watch for any fan.  There's an additional Hauser interview, too, which is essentially bonus footage from the doc, because he was in that, too, in the same hat and the same chair.  But you can never have too much Wings Hauser on a Carpenter release.  This new release comes in reversible cover art (though, honestly, I'm not a fan of either... I wish they'd stuck to the old photo image), and if you got the limited edition direct from VS's website, a slipcover.  We do lose the Katrina wrap-arounds, though.

This was a real must-have DVD for me, and just as crucial a double-dip to blu.  As I wrote in 2020, "[s]core an interview with Hauser and the director, and I think you'd have a high demand title."  Yeah, this film's low budget and won't bowl you over with production values, but it's a neat little film that still manages to amuse after all these years.  For 80s slasher fans, this is a staple.  And even if you're not particularly hung-up on the subgenre, this has a broader appeal as well.

R.I.P. Wings.