Happy Bloody Birthday from Arrow Films (DVD/ Blu-ray Comparison)

I told ya I'd get to another one of these crazy killer children movies soon. Today's entry is 1981's Bloody Birthday, and boy oh boy. This is a demented one, alright. Almost an early slasher, with children, but even more unnerving drama and weirdness. It's far from a perfect film, I could see a lot of horror fans, especially younger ones, completely not seeing the appeal of this one. But if you get on the right wavelength with it, this film's so good. It must play great with a cult theater audience. But if nobody's screening a 35m print anywhere near you, not to worry, we're lucky to have some good quality home video editions.

Update 9/5/115 - 12/30/18:  Here's a remaster I really didn't see coming.  Only a couple brief years since 88 and Severin released Bloody Birthday on blu in the UK and the states, respectively, Arrow has put forth an all new edition of a film that I dig a lot, but isn't exactly high on the pop horror totem pole.  And hey, it's just in time for my own birthday!  Those previous blus were pretty good, though; so what's Arrow bringing to the table and is it worth a double-dip?

The premise is that, 10 years ago, there was a lunar eclipse as several women were giving birth, and now that it's their kids' tenth birthday, their souls left their bodies astrologically, and umm... Well, it's not explained very well or really made clear, but none of that kooky star chart stuff matters anyway. All you need to know is that a couple of kids have teamed up to go on a killing spree in a small, suburban town. That kid running around with that big gun (it's not really big; he's just small) is a joy every frame he's on screen. Thankfully, this movie doesn't get bogged down in any supernatural or sci-fi once you get past the awkward opening set-up. It's just a messy excuse to get into this weird "what-if" scenario where kids go psycho. José Ferrer has a small role as the town doctor, acting legend Susan Strasberg is a teacher who crosses the wrong student and MTV's Julie Brown, of Earth Girls Are Easy fame (not "Downtown"), has a surprising amount of nudity. Oh, and Michael Dudikoff has a bit part. But the real stars are the kids, and they rock.

Bloody Birthday debuted on DVD in 2003 from VCI, with a matching UK disc from Anchor Bay. It was a decent widescreen release with a couple extras, but there was room for improvement. And improve it did, when Severin remastered and re-released it in 2011 with some fresh extras to boot. Then in 2014, it received nearly simultaneous blu-ray releases from Severin in the US and 88 Films in the UK.  As if that wasn't enough, Arrow then issued a newer version on blu for both markets in 2018.  Well, I've got the VCI DVD, the Severin one, 88's blu-ray and Arrow's blu, so let's have a look.

1) VCI DVD, 2) Severin DVD, 3) 88 Films blu, 4) Arrow blu.

The biggest difference from the blueish, high contrast VCI disc to the later Severin and 88 editions is the more natural, earthy timing. All three are anamorphic 1.78:1, despite the Severin case claiming 1.66:1 with virtually identical framing. 88's blu-ray lowers the frame just a sliver, and is otherwise pretty similar to the Severin disc apart from being a truer HD image with natural grain instead of compression smudging. I don't own the Severin blu, but I understand they're virtually identical, which makes sense considering how 88 seems to be using the same transfer (I've looked up screenshots on other sites, and Severin's blu lowered the frame from the DVD just like 88 did).

But now Arrow's blu delivers a new 2k scan of the interpositive.  I previously wrote of the older blus that, "[t]his is probably about as much detail and clarity as we could ever get from this film," and I'd say Arrow's new transfer bears this out.  Maybe if someone gets a hold of the OCN, but at this point we're not uncovering anything new.  Even the grain looks, well slightly different but generally equivalent.  But that's not to say there's nothing to be gained from Arrow's new edition.  The real star of this show is the color timing.  As much as Severin improved upon VCI, Arrow has taken even greater strides by really separating the colors and making them pop.  They've also found a happy medium with the contrast, the combination of which really makes the previous editions look flat and dull by comparison.

Every disc covered utilizes the original mono audio tracks, in Dolby Digital on the DVDs and LPCM on the blus (the old Anchor Bay UK disc also gave the film a 5.1 mix).  Arrow is the first edition ever to provide (optional) English subtitles.

The VCI doesn't mention it on the case for whatever reason, but it has a pretty neat little interview with the film's producer, Max Rosenberg. He's pretty interesting, and it's a shame this video never gets carried over to any of the later special editions. So yeah, Severin doesn't have a producer interview, but it does have a very long and dry audio-only interview with director Ed Hunt. He doesn't think very highly of this film, so he only spends a few minutes on it, instead droning on about the rest of his career, including a book he wants to sell us. Still, we do get a little good stuff out of it, but they really could've edited it down by 80% or so. Much better is an on camera interview with Lori Lethin; it's brief but engaging. There's also a weird little featurette called A Brief History of Slasher Films which is so far from comprehensive it feels arbitrary, but it's worth the watch. That's about it, except for an easter egg of the promo trailer (we'll come back to that) and a couple bonus trailers.

Meanwhile in the UK, 88 Films has all the same extras as Severin's DVD and blu: Lethin's interview, the slasher film thing and Ed Hunt's interview. Although they make the good choice of letting Hunt's interview play over the film, like an audio commentary, rather than the single still image Severin held on the screen for 50+ minutes, which helps the talk feel less like punishment. And speaking of commentaries, they've got an exclusive one on their release, by Justin Kerswell, author of Teenage Wasteland, and Calum Waddell. Unfortunately, neither of these guys were actually involved with the filmmaking, so it feels more like a fan commentary. Worse, they spend the entire time chatting back and forth about other films, completely ignoring what's on screen the whole time. But it's better than nothing, I guess. Plus they added a little booklet with notes by Waddell where he does remember to address Birthday.

This is possibly the clearest frame in the whole thing; the rest looks even worse.

The only little thing 88 is missing is that easter egg, which is a bit of a shame. The promo trailer is fun, because it has original film shot for it that doesn't appear in the actual movie, of a hand bursting out of a birthday cake. Both blu-ray editions have added a more traditional Bloody Birthday trailer to their extras, which looks nice in HD, but doesn't have the cool stuff. On the other hand, the reason why Severin hid the promo trailer away as an easter egg is because it's in terrible, digitized quality. It's soft and blocky to the point where you can barely make out what's going on... I think they must've taken it off the internet, uploaded back in the very earliest days of online video.

And Arrow?  They've really shuffled the deck!  First of all, they do include the Rosenberg interview from the VCI disc, so you can finally toss that old DVD.  Then they ditch most of the Severin and 88 material, replacing it with their own, all new stuff.  The best of this is the all new audio commentary by the director, which thanks in no small part I'm sure to their moderator, is infinitely more listenable and engaging than the old 51 minute audio-only director interview.  They also replace the old Lori Lethin interview with a new one, which is about the same length and covers a lot of the same ground.  That's kind of a dead-even one-to-one tie.  They add a new audio commentary by The Hysteria Continues podcast guys and an on-camera interview with Chris Alexander, which is much better than having him do a commentary where he slips right into his time-wasting "let me tell you about my day" mode.  And, interestingly, they have an interview with producer Ken Gord, who wasn't involved with Bloody Birthday but worked with Hunt on other projects.  They also have the trailer, that elusive promo trailer(!) in better though still not amazing quality, a 24-page booklet with notes by Lee Gambin, the standard card for another Arrow release (The Horrors of Malformed Men this time) and reversible artwork.

So, it's an interesting situation.  If you don't already own the film, Arrow is an easy choice, with the best transfer, overall set of extras, and even subtitles.  And the new stuff does a good enough job replacing the old ones that, even though it barely has any of the Severin/ 88 extras, I wouldn't bother going out of my way to pick them up for those additional extras.  But if you already own one of those old discs, is it worth the double-dip?  Ehh.  The colors are nicer but it's not a PQ revelation, and the new extras don't add so much more to the pot.  I was hoping for more of a heavily packed special edition to really wow us early Birthday adopters.  But this is the best addition yet, can't argue with that.

Controversial Blus: Dark Star (DVD/ Blu-ray Comparison)

John Carpenter has a real talent; his films run the gamut from wonderful to captivating misfires.  And Dark Star, his first feature film made when he was still a student, is certainly no exception.  In fact, despite its obvious budgetary limitations, it holds up as one of his most successful ventures.  To be honest, though, I feel the creator's stamp of writer Dan O'Bannon on this that Carpenter.  Maybe that's partly because he also stars in this, but really it's in the humor, not to mention the obvious similarities to his next, much more famous film, Alien.  Whoever deserves however much credit, though, it's an utterly successful collaboration and a great little film that deserves a great release.  And, well, there is a blu-ray...

Update 4/5/17: It really doesn't feel complete without having all three versions on here, so I've included the Hyperdrive Edition to the comparisons.  👍

If you haven't seen it, Dark Star is a comedy set in space.  It's not really a parody or spoof (though there's some 2001 in there to be sure), but a clever piece of character humor.  There is some semblance of a plot; we have a space alien and the crew faces imminent death during a tense climax.  But for the most part, it's just a light-hearted look at a small crew of men going completely stir-crazy.  Their biggest threat isn't the creature loose on their spaceship or the intelligent bomb that's determined to blow them all up.  It's boredom.  This film takes man's epic battle with the doldrums beyond the stars and it's pretty great.

This film has a terrific look to it.  Cheap or not; it's very well designed, and the sometimes home-made looking special effects actually become part of the appeal.  Also, everyone in the cast nails it.  O'Bannon is the most fun to watch, but everyone is spot-on.  The music is also by John Carpenter and very effective; but don't expect "a John Carpenter score" like we know them today.  The soundtrack here owes a lot more to its sci-fi peers than Carpenter's more recognizable style.  And all these elements work together in service of the writing, the real star of the show.  It's just smart, fun and still able to pull you in, all these decades later.

I suppose now I should talk about the two cuts.  There's sometimes a little confusion surrounding this title, thanks to the fact that there are two versions of this film in popular rotation.  In short, this film was originally 68 minutes long.  That's how it was first screened for the public.  Then, when it got a great reaction and the chance for a distribution deal, more scenes were shot to bring it to proper feature length (83 minutes), so it could get a wide release.  And fortunately, the additional material is not only up to par with the rest of the film, but raises the entirety of the film up a level.  When I watch the short version, I really miss the scenes.  It's like watching a cut of Vacation where some editor said, "hey, this story doesn't need all the parts with Randy Quaid and Imogene Coca.  Snip snip, and now this film really flies!"  That might be true, but it's so disappointing to not have all their moments you've come to love.  To me, the original cut is academic.  If you just want to see it to know what the film was like originally, great.  But to truly experience Dark Star, the extended cut is the only way.

Dark Star has only been released by VCI in the United States.  They released the 1992 laserdisc, the 1999 DVD, the 2010 DVD "Hyperdrive Edition" re-release, and most recently the 2012 "Thermostellar Edition" blu-ray.  The initial laserdisc featured the shorter version and just included the extended material as separate deleted scenes.  Both subsequent DVDs (and just about all international discs) included both cuts.  But the blu-ray makes the curious decision to pare that down and only release the longer, extended cut.  Disappointing for some to be sure, and reason to hang onto your old DVDs.  But that's not even what makes this blu controversial.

 1999 VCI DVD top; 2010 VCI DVD middle; 2012 VCI blu-ray bottom.

So the first thing you should notice is that the 1999 DVD's non-anamorphic.  That's one thing the 2010 DVD corrected, at least; and obviously the blu-ray doesn't have that problem.  The 2010 DVD, however, is unfortunately interlaced.  In fact, the blu-ray is clearly an improvement in just about every area: detail, clarity, and it's properly matted 1.85:1 framing has more picture on three of four-sides compared to the old DVD's 1.82:1 and even a bit more than the newer DVD's 1.78:1.  The color timing is different on all three releases, and while it's clearly worst on the 1999 DVD, it's hard to say which is better between the 2010 and 2012.  They're different, but without any insight from the DP or an official source, it's going to come down to taste.  Personally, I prefer some shots on the blu and some on the DVD, so that particular aspect winds up as a tie for me.

2010 VCI DVD left; 2012 VCI blu-ray right.

But there's something off about the blu.  It's very soft.  Now you might say, hey, it's an ultra-low budget, old student film.  VCI has talked plenty about the conditions of the materials they had to work with.  This is as good as it could ever look.  But this film was shot on 16mm (then blown up to 35mm for wide release), and one thing we should know from all the 16mm we've looked at before here on this site is that 16mm is high on grain and low on detail.  Well, this film's low enough on detail, but where's the grain?  Ahhh... that's why it's so soft.  This film has used DNR (Digital Noise Reduction) or other digital software on the master to smooth away all the grain.  It sure doesn't look like a 16mm film now, and that explains why the whole thing's so soft.  In fact, the 2010 standard def DVD actually resolves more natural film grain and even actual picture detail than the blu-ray.  Grain haters may think it's great; and admittedly, since this is 16mm, we didn't erase as much detail like other heavily DNR'd blus have in the past.  But we've definitely lost ground between 2010 and 2012, not gained it.

Meanwhile, we get two audio options on the 2010 and 2012 releases.  There's the main stereo mix, where the audio's not exactly crystal, but unlike the grain scrubbing, I'd say it's fair to blame any audio issues on the original materials.  And then they've also included a more boisterous 5.1 mix that still has the same root issues, but both are clear enough for music and dialogue so long as don't expect it to sound like Avatar 2.  They're in LPCM on the blu.  Oh, and interestingly, the original DVD only had the 5.1 mix, so including the stereo mix on the later releases was a nice nod to the purists.

And extras?  You want extras?  Well, the original DVD had nothing but the trailer, but the biggest selling point of the Hyperdrive re-release was the wealth of new DVD extras, that necessitated making it a 2-disc set.  And the blu-ray?  They didn't create anything new, but they ported everything over.  Well, except for the trailer.  I wonder why they left that off?  Oversight, or maybe they felt it was too low quality for HD and they didn't want to remaster it?  Oh well, the trailer's always the least important extra (except for booklets, amiright fellas?), and everything else is here.

And what is all of that?  Well, the main attraction is a 2-hour documentary by the fine folks at Ballyhoo Pictures.  They get really in-depth and talk to everyone they can, from Tommy Lee Wallace to Dan O'Bannon's widow.  Carpenter doesn't participate, but they do include some vintage interview clips with him, so he's not so glaringly absent.  It's a pretty terrific doc.  Then, there's an audio commentary by a "super fan," which sounds horrible, but is actually pretty good, as he has really studied the film and its history and comes off as a well informed expert providing a lot of great information.  A lot of better-known journalist commentators could actually take some notes from this guy.  Then there are long on0camera interviews with actor Brian Narelle and author Alan Dean Foster.  All these extras are taken from the DVD, so they're basically SD quality upconverted to HD, but it's fine for extras.  And the Foster interview is particularly interesting, I found.  Finally, there are some odds and ends like a trivia track, an introduction written by Dan O'Bannon and an interactive map of the spaceship from the film.  Again, no trailer.

So for now, if you don't already own Dark Star, I recommend the blu.  It's a terrific little film, packed with extras.  But if you've already got the 2010 DVD set, this is a very minor upgrade if it's an upgrade at all.  You lose detail, which is a big step down, plus the trailer if that bugs you.  But you fix the interlacing, which is an almost even trade-off.  Certainly, if you've already got either one, I wouldn't spend money to replace it with the other.  And I'm forever day-dreaming of the day the a label like Arrow or Synapse can wrestle this title away from VCI and give us a truly definitive version.  Unfortunately, that's not likely to happen any day soon.  So us fans may gripe, but we've all got one of these discs on our shelves.