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.

Finally, The Warlock Films from Vestron

Yes, I have been waiting for this one for a very long time!  Warlock is a pretty major horror film.  Maybe not quite on the level of Dracula or The Exorcist; but certainly one of the best known, highly regarded, successful horror flicks that's still never had a special edition.   In fact, in the US. all we've had is a hideous, fullscreen, barebones DVD (more on that below) from Trimark.  But finally, thanks to Lions Gate Vestron line continuing to do justice to their long-neglected catalog titles, it's a packed, special edition blu-ray.  And it's packed with the sequels, too!

Update 7/12/18: Just to be more thorough, I've added the Warlock 3 DVD to the comparisons.  Seeing it really makes you appreciate Vestron's blu!

1989's Warlock is as much a fantasy adventure as it is a horror film.  You really feel the production values as two 17th century nemeses chase each other into modern times in this thoroughly eccentric battle of good and evil.  The star power is evenly split between Julian Sands (Boxing Helena, A Room With a View) as Satan's cunning servant, and Richard E. Grant (Withnail & I, Twelfth Night) as his sort of Van Helsing expert witch hunter.  Caught between them is Footloose's Lori Singer as a cheerful valley girl who's forced to pursue the warlock across the country after he curses her with an aging spell.  Besides, if they don't stop him, he's going to end the world.

Sands is super cool as one of horror's great villains, and there's so much fun to be had from a smart script that plays with a wide variety of witchcraft law, from hex signs to nailing footprints.  It stays a little darker and more serious than director Steve Miner's previous horror masterwork, House, but there's more than your usual dollop of humor in both the characters and the situations.  But thankfully everyone's smart enough to play it with a straight face, particularly Grant, who brings enough talent to keep a character grounded that would veer much too far off into the silly in another actor's hands.  And speaking of great actors, we've also got Mary Woronov (Eating Raoul, Scenes From the Class Struggle In Beverly Hills) in a great cameo as a psychic who Sands pays a visit on to get acclimated in the modern world.  There's just too much to enjoy in this film; you don't want it to end.

a glimpse of the deleted scene from the trailer

Now, speaking of Woronov's character, we fans have to ask with every Warlock release if this will restore her lost death scene.  There's only ever been one cut of the film released, theatrically or on home video, but it's well known that Miner shot a wild, effects-heavy death for Woronov that had to be cut out for their R rating.  Pictures were posted in Fangoria, heck, there's a snippet of it in the film's theatrical trailer.  Well, before this set's release, I reached out to Michael Felsher, head of Red Shirt Pictures, about this scene and he responded, "[w]e looked extensively for this scene but could not find it, but the Bluray does contains several photos and behind-the-scenes FX video that show images from that sequence.  Wish we could have found the whole thing."  So no, sad to say that scene's not here; but at least we now know that footage is truly lost, and it's not just a case of Trimark being too disinterested to reinstate it.  ...And we get a pretty good look at it now in the special features.

So, like I said, here in the US we've been suffering with Trimark's 2000 fullscreen, barebones DVD as our sole release of Warlock.  I mean, just look at it down there below.  At least, overseas, there were some equally barebones but restored widescreen editions.  In fact, I've got Second Sight's UK DVD from 2011, so we can add that to the comparison.  There have been barebones blu-rays, too, in places like Australia and Germany.  But those have been rendered fairly obsolete now, thanks to Vestron's fancy, 2017 2-disc 3-film Collector's Series blu-ray set that's just being released this week.

2000 US Trimark DVD top; 2011 UK Second Sight DVD mid; 2017 Vestron blu bottom.

So wow, yeah.  For anybody who can't or won't import, this couldn't be any more essential of an upgrade.  Look at that ugly, dark, 1.30:1 Trimark disc.  It looks like it's ripped from a fuzzy laserdisc that was itself pulled off a tape.  The only positive thing to say about it is that, because it's fullscreen, the vertical mattes are lifted and we get more picture information on the top and bottom.  But it's all excessive, with crazy headroom, boxy framing, and all at the cost of lost information chopped off the sides.  This new Vestron blu, though, is clearly not sourced from a new master.   It's a respectable HD picture, but not on the same level as the fancy 4k masters we've been getting recently like with Arrow's Phenomena and Studio Canal's Mulholland Drive.  Comparing it to the Second Sight DVD, it seems to be the same 1.85:1 master that all the modern discs have been sourced from.  Of course, Second Sight's release being a DVD means Vestron's is superior by virtue of being a cleaner, stronger image.  The only other difference seems to be that Vestron's looks to be a bit better color corrected, which is nice.  But yeah, Vestron seems to have a strong "if it ain't broke" policy to their transfers, so this is perfectly fine but short of impressive.  Unless you're comparing it to the Trimark DVD, of course, in which case it's a friggin' revelation.

Audio-wise, both DVDs have fairly basic Dolby stereo tracks.  Trimark at least gave us optional English and Spanish subtitles, which Second Sight neglected.  Vestron bumps that stereo mix up to lossless DTS-HD and, as always, provides optional English and Spanish subtitles.  I think the Spanish subs are new for Vestron?

Extras is where Vestron is really playing to win.  Trimark's DVD was barebones with nothing but the trailer and a pair of bonus trailers, and Second Sight didn't even have that, managing to take that extra step backwards.  But Lions Gate has again brought in the excellent Red Shirt Pictures to create something really great.  We get a terrific audio commentary by director Steve Miner, moderated by Nathaniel Thompson, and another one of their patented score tracks, which plays the film's soundtrack for the first half and interviews the composer.  Though in this case, the interview is with author Jeff Bond, who writes books about film scores - an understandable substitution, since Warlock has a score by none other than Jerry Goldsmith.  Then Steve Miner gives us an additional on-camera interview, as does star Julian Sands (who totally spoils Warlock 2, so watch that first!), as well as make-up effects artists Carl Fullerton and Neal Martz.

Then there's the aforementioned "behind-the-scenes FX" stuff Mr. Felsher mentioned.  In fact, there's a wealth of vintage material here: vintage effects featurette, vintage making of featurette, vintage on-set interviews, behind-the-scenes footage...  And you might think, okay, little throw-away promo featurettes, big whoop; but one of these runs as long as 41 minutes(!), so they cover a lot of ground.  There are also two different trailers, a couple TV spots, and a photo gallery.  The only frustrating thing about all this archival material is if the studio already had all this, why wasn't any of it on the DVD?  FFS, Trimark.  Oh well, the past is past, and now we've got all this great old and new Warlock content.

Our favorite male witch returns in 1993's sequel Warlock: Armageddon, directed by Anthony Hickox.  Hickox seems to take a lot of flack from horror fans, but his films are always a lot of fun without shying away from the dark side, so I'm a fan.  And he does a great job with the warlock character.  Unfortunately, Richard E. Grant wasn't interested in sticking around for sequels, but Sands is more than able to shoulder the extra weight and carry even more of the film himself.  This time around, he has to collect some magical gems to resurrect Satan, and Hickox manages to make each trip feel like a distinct little film: the high-end fashion world, the crazy circus world.  It's almost like an anthology film all tied together by a through-put narrative of Sands' quest and our heroes training to stop him.

That does bring us to Armageddon's weakest spot.  The elders who reunite once they hear of the warlock's return are fun, feeling a lot like Patrick Macnee's gang in the Waxwork films.  But their young charges, including Hellraiser 3's Paula Marshall, are on some awful milquetoast teeny bopper Dawson's Creek vibe.  You just want them to die horribly, but you know they won't.  So this film isn't as consistent as the original Warlock, but the original film's tone meshes perfectly with Hickox's sensibilities, and the high points really are great.  I mean, Sands' introduction in this film may owe a small debt to Xtro, but it's fantastic, even outshining anything seen in the first film.  And it's topped off with a great cameo by Zach Galligan.  Warlock: Armageddon is like the dictionary definition of "worthy sequel."

Like the first Warlock, Trimark released part two as a barebones DVD 2000, though at least it was widescreen this time.  And again, that was all we ever got in America.  Germany did put out a barebones blu-ray in 2015, but by the time that started making its way stateside, I think most of us were holding out for this Vestron set.

Trimark 2000 US DVD on top; Vestron 2017 US blu-ray below.

So Trimark did better with this film, giving us an anamorphic widescreen transfer.  But looking at it recently, it's pretty murky.  It was slightly windowboxed to a ratio of 1.82:1, losing a bit on all four sides compared to Vestron's 1.78:1 blu.  Again, it's a little soft and looks like an older master with a slightly dull palette.  I haven't seen it, but I assume the German blu is from the same source, which Lions Gate probably made even years earlier than that.  But again, hey, compared to the DVD we'd been stuck with, it's a huge leap forward in terms of clarity and color.  The Trimark disc looks like you're viewing the Vestron disc through wax paper.

Trimark again gave us a good Dolby 2.0 stereo mix with optional subtitles (including English, Spanish and French).  And Vestron again bumps that stereo track up to DTS-HD and gives us optional English and Spanish subtitles.  A lot of labels skimp on the subtitles, so I'm happy to see Vestron being so consistent on that front.

Red Shirt really poured all their love into the first Warlock, but not so much the sequels.  But since they already recorded commentaries with Hickox for the Waxwork films, I just knew they couldn't leave us hanging here.  And thankfully they didn't.  It's another fun (and in this case funny) audio commentary from Hickox, who's surprisingly forthcoming about what he feels doesn't work in this film, which is a lot ...and in the case of some of those prehistoric CGI shots and dippy teen "Jedi" scenes, it's hard to disagree.  But that commentary's all the new content we get.

However, we do get more vintage material.  The old DVD featured nothing but the trailer, and that's been ported over here.  But we also get a vintage 'making of' featurette, on-set interviews, behind the scenes footage, TV spots and a stills gallery.  Again, I can't help but wonder why we never got this stuff on the DVD.  Heck, I probably would've coughed it up to import the German blu if they'd slapped it on there.  But oh well, we've got it all now, and that's all that matters.

Now, I was tempted to refer to these films as the Warlock trilogy in this post title, but I couldn't bring myself to do it because of this film.  1999's Warlock III: The End of Innocence's most overt crime is carrying on without Julian Sands.  That would be like making a Freddy Krueger film without Robert Englund or a Pinhead without Doug Bradley.  Yeah, I know they actually did both of those things, but looked how they turned out.

But actually, Sands' replacement Bruce Payne is the best thing about this film.  He's not quite as good as Julian, but he comes reasonably close enough, or at least as good as they could've hoped to manage.  No, what's so off-putting about this film is just about everything else.  It's a lame story that feels as much like a Skinemax softcore flick as a tale of witchcraft.  It's got the worst bunch of wannabe MTV rejects for character fodder, and it's all set in one lame, haunted house set to try to deal with its budgetary problems.  This was shot in a foreign country trying to pass for America, and it certainly shows.

In fact, it was shot in Ireland, and I think they should've owned that.  Run around, shoot all the interesting and old world-y locations they could.  That would've at least given this film some production values and unique character.  All they used was a tiny bit of woods, which frankly, I could match just by shooting next to the railroad tracks in my hometown.  This movie has no direct connection to the previous Warlock films anyway (another failing), so why not make it an Irish warlock with some unique lore to spice things up a bit?  Instead they're tucked away in an obvious set trying to look as generic as possible, so Blockbuster Video patrons in America don't get a whiff of it being foreign.  Seriously, Ashley Lawrence walked away from the Hellraiser films to make this?  And Mikey?

Honestly, though, until seeing the blu-ray, I'd only ever seen this film on VHS.  And rediscovering it now in its proper aspect ratio and decent picture quality, actually helps it some.  The film actually has a decent, if modest, look to it that was lost on the fullscreen video, and even the special effects look better than I remember them.  They're not amazing, but like that fire effect and all?  Not so shabby.  It's not a good movie, but it's not as offensively bad as I remember.  It's more just mediocre, but kind of nice to have in this set if you think of it as more of an extra itself rather than a whole third movie.  You know, watch it as a curiosity piece for Warlock fans and round out the collection.

No comparisons here, because I never copped Warlock 3 on DVD because it's Warlock 3.  The comparison's here now!  Trimark put it out in 2000 (in fact, they issued all three Warlock films on the same day: September 12th).  And there are no HD imports for this one.  Vestron's set is The End of Innocence's blu-ray debut.

Trimark's 2000 US DVD top; Vestron's 2017 US blu bottom.

Like Armageddon, The End of Innocence is open matte at 1.78:1 instead of 1.85:1.  It looks like a slightly older master, too, like the other films (and most Vestron titles), but maybe a little nicer... possibly just because it's a slightly more modern film.  Grain resolution still isn't what one would hope, but it's a bit better than Armageddon.  You'll certainly be singing its praises if you've been living with the DVD, though.  Matted to 1.82:1, the DVD actually has less information around all four sides.  But the real story is the soft, blocky lack of detail compared to the blu.  It's non-anamorphic, too, which really doesn't help, and the color palette is much more compressed.  Seeing the blu-ray after years of that is like lifting a thick veil.

Ever consistent, Vestron again gives us the Dolby Stereo track in DTS-HD with optional English and Spanish subtitles. The same stereo track is on the DVD, but not in DTS of course, and it also has optional English and Spanish subs, as well as French.

Warlock 3 has no new Red Shirt features, which is understandable but disappointing.  A commentary or a few interviews where the a couple of the cast or crew gave an honest retrospective about this film might've been more interesting than the movie itself.  But we do get another nice collection of vintage EPK stuff again, at least.  This time, their on-set interviews run almost 45 minutes long!  Yeah, it's a lot of fluff, softball promotional Q&A, but at least they cover some extra ground, and some interesting moments pop up here and there.  There's also a brief but interesting bit of behind-the-scenes footage, plus a trailer, a promo video, and a stills gallery.  Oh, and like all Vestron releases, this set comes in a spiffy slipcover.

The DVD had nothing but the trailer and a couple bonus trailers if you clicked the Trimark logo.

So at the end of the day, I'm grinning to be holding this set.  I've been waiting decades for a special edition of the Warlock films, and it's finally here.  And while the HD presentations warranted a little nitpicking, they're far from cutting edge, but they're still respectable blus.  Like if I was in the business of giving letter grades, these would be in the B-range, not in danger of failing ...unlike those dirty Trimark DVDs.  Thank goodness we're replacing them.  I hope this Vestron line never ends, because there's so many more titles Lions Gate is sitting on, including a couple I've written about already, like Nightwish and Eyes of Fire.  But today I'm just happy the Warlock films have finally come home.

Today, Let's Be Ken Russell Completists!

What do you get the Ken Russell fan who has everything? Oh, sure, the Russell lover in your life already has BFI's fancy but woefully incomplete restoration of The Devils, the BBC Collection boxed set and a loaded special edition of Tommy. But I bet they don't have this pair of DVDs on their shelves: Tales of Erotica and Women & Men: Stories of Seduction. They probably passed on them because they look like cheap, late night cable TV softcore from the 80s (Tales of Erotica is even bundled in a boxed set with three other DVDs of presumably genuine softcore flicks called The After Dark Collection). Well the cable TV part, but the fact that these are clearly being sold as softcore, or trying to be sexy, is pretty misleading. They're both anthologies, somewhat based around the topic of sex or romantic relationships, but you'd have a hard time finding anything less steamy than these flicks. And anyway, far more most important than degree of steam is that they each have a segment directed by the great Ken Russell. So let's look and see what we've got.

I remember when HBO was advertising the heck out of their original 1990 movie Women and Men: Stories of Seduction. They were trying to get a lot of mileage out of the fact that Molly Ringwald was making a comeback in it, and she had - gasp! - short hair. There's actually a bunch of noteworthy name actors in this, including James Woods, Beau Bridges, Melanie Griffith and Peter Weller. They also have the high minded concept of being based on stories by famous writers like Dorothy Parker and Ernest Hemmingway. I already made this point in the last paragraph, but just to hammer it home, you'll never find anything less sexy than James Woods and Melanie Griffith meandering around an old train station flatly reciting Hemmingway to each other for 30 minutes, or Elizabeth McGovern do voice over narration about suicide in a terribly put-on "20s lady" accent.

Anyway, you can buy Women and Men on its own; but for the same price you can get Women and Men and its 1991 follow-up Women and Men 2 packaged together, so you might as well get that one. I did, but honestly, I never even watched part 2 until the other night for this review. There's one slightly interesting segment by Mike Figgis, where he Juliette Binoche and Scott Glenn in a bit taken from one of Henry Miller's novels. Other big names in part 2 include Matt Dillon, Kyra Sedgwick, Ray Liotta, Andie MacDowell and Johnathan Demme. But enough about all that, let's get to the Ken Russell.

Happily, Russell has the most fun source material: Dorothy Parker's "Dusk Before Fireworks." Ken Russell leaps at the opportunity to splurge on wild 20s fashion and set design - I guess there's a reason why HBO marketed this film around Ringwald's look after all. The story is classic Parker: frivolous and fun. There's not a lot of substance, but a good handful of entertainment to be drawn out of this silly story about two lovers who to have an affair but are constantly interrupted by the telephone. It's a stage play for the small screen, but Russell gives the film a look that justifies seeing it filmed rather than in person at your local community theater.

Unfortunately, but predictably, both films are just videotape-sourced fullscreen transfers, soft and interlaced. Ghost frames, too, yup. They're made for TV back before widescreen televisions were a thing, so it's the right OAR. But these could look so much better today if anybody who owned the rights cared. That's never going to happen, though, so I recommend just taking what we can get. The upside is these DVDs can be found dirt cheap. And of course there are no extras or anything, except both films have the option to view them dubbed into Spanish. I think it actually makes McGovern's performance better.

And now we move away from adaptations of classic literature disguised as softcore to ridiculous comedy disguised as softcore. Tales of Erotica is a film made up of four short films. In fact, they're really four episodes of a German television series called Erotic Tales, packaged as one little movie for the USA. This stuff is really ridiculous. Mira Sorvino stars in the first segment where she has no lines, because all the action is instead narrated by her two New York nurse friends from who "tawk laik dis" in cartoonishly exaggerated accents. The week before she's to get married, Mira falls in love with a man in a painting, and winds up entering into its dull, dreary world. Amazingly, this episode won an Oscar as a stand-alone short film in 1994, which just blows my mind.

It almost blows my mind as much as Melvin van Peebles segment, which starts out as a long hip-hop barbecue music video. Eventually the dancing stops and we find out there's one guy at the party who's essentially a parody of Lenny from Of Mice and Men, and nobody wants him to come to the after party because he's such a goofy hick. He's bummed until he helps an old lady out of a car wreck and she turns out to be a genie who grants his two greatest wishes: a motorcycle and sex. But it's really more of a double wish than two separate wishes, because he just has sex with the motorcycle, which transforms into a half-human hybrid in a scene which must be seen to be believed. Unfortunately, there's a condition to the wish, and I guess irony ensues.

There's also some terrible thing where a woman seduces a jacuzzi salesman by behaving in the most obnoxious way possible. And then it all turns out to be a conspiracy of some convoluted sort that makes no sense. The best thing about it, I guess, is a small role by Witchboard's Kathleen Wilhoite.

The only good thing about this film is Ken Russell's segment, and even that's far from his greatest work. It's called "The Insatiable Mrs. Kirsch," and it tells the story of a young man staying at the same hotel as a beautiful woman, but he hears strange buzzing sounds coming out of her room at night. This is just Russell being playful with a silly little story that suggests sometimes maybe erotic fantasies do come true, when you chance upon that one in a million like-minded partner. It rolls around in its beautiful ocean-side scenery like a pig in mud, and has some classically over-the-top imagery, like a woman turning an entire field into a crude illustration of a naked man with a huge penis... which she does jumping jacks on. It's not exactly one of his greatest artistic achievements, but it's quite charming.

Again, there's no extras except for four horror bonus trailers from Trimark's catalog. And again, it's another fuzzy full-screen video sourced transfer. But, like Women and Men, you can get it for pennies, so what could you expect?

If you want to go even farther, the entire, original Erotic Tales 30-episode series has been issued on DVD overseas. There's a collection of ten(!) now hard to find, individually released German discs by WVG Median released back in 2005. And in 2011, Madman released two boxed sets, Erotic Tales and More Erotic Tales (also sold together as one larger set) in Australia. These are all listed everywhere as being anamorphic widescreen, but I've checked them out, and the OAR actually varies episode to episode. And all the eps featured on Tales of Erotica are fullscreen on the Madman sets, too.  So don't bother tracking them down just for a widescreen Russell episode. The rest of the series involves some other noteworthy filmmakers, though, including Nicholas Roeg, Hal Hartley and Bob Rafelson, so who knows? There may be another genuinely good episode or two in there if you have the temperament to go digging.

But this post is about being a Russell completist, not a Roeg completist.  So I recommend just picking up the Women and Men and Tales of Erotica discs wherever they're cheapest. They're not amazing, but speaking as a Russell fan myself, I was pleasantly surprised.