H.P. Lovecraft's From Beyond: Dragon to Vinegar Syndrome

We may've completed the Re-Animator trilogy, but we haven't run out of Brian Yuzna/ Charles Band co-productions of H.P. Lovecraft stories by Stuart Gordon and Dennis Paoli, scored by Richard Band and starring Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton yet. And while From Beyond might not be quite the film the original Re-Animator was, it's pretty damn close. And it's got just as interesting a history on disc as the rest of 'em.

Update 9/27/15 - 2/11/23: And that history just got more interesting, as Vinegar Syndrome has upgraded From Beyond to 4k UHD, in a packed 3-disc set.

A fun fact about From Beyond: the original Lovecraft story is so short, that it's pretty much adapted in this film's pre-credits sequence. Everything after that, then, is extrapolation and invention. And inventive it is. It's a wild and imaginative story that stays true to pretty much everything that was great about Re-Animator in terms of tone, style, performance, etc. The only thing that holds it back, maybe, is that it's so much further out there. Re-Animator obviously had a supernatural element to it: you can't just inject dead people with green goo and have them sit up and start walking around again. But this film has a whole other dimension, shape shifting monsters and all kinds of craziness. It's still got a sci-fi, and of course Lovecraftian base, but it's really over the top, including the characters. So that's what keeps this film from being quite as top shelf as their first endeavor - Jeffrey Combs becoming a brain-eating monster isn't quite as intellectually satisfying as his coldly intellectual portrayal of Herbert West. But on the other hand, in terms of crowd-pleasing over the top effects and general B-movie shenanigans, this movie manages to take it even further, which is saying something!

The story, uh, well let's see. Two scientists discover that sonic vibrations can stimulate a gland the human brain to see another dimension. So they create a machine to do so, and find out it's full of nasty creatures and quickly shut it down. That's pretty much where Lovecraft ends. It's pretty much a "could you imagine?" scenario. But in the film, one of the scientists is changed by the experience and goes back, turning into a shape-shifting creature that wants to absorb more people. The other scientist, Combs, winds up in a mental institution because they think he killed scientist #1. But his doctor, Crampton, wants to take him back to the scene and discover the truth. Of course, she has no idea just how bonkers the truth is, and soon the three of them (including Dawn of the Dead's Ken Foree as Bubba, the cop who's there to supervise) are also changed by the machine and can't stop summoning back the original, sadistic doctor. In short, the whole movie's delightfully crazy and backed by a ton of talent.

So, for a long time, this film wasn't available on DVD, despite having a very strong reputation. Part of that may've been due to the fact that this film was known to be a cut down version of an even more extreme director's cut that had never been released, and included scenes like an infamous eyeball sucking. The German label Dragon put it out in 2003, though, and even made a bit of a special edition out of it. And despite it being full screen, that was pretty much the one to own until 2007 when MGM amazingly stumbled upon cans of the lost film and Gordon was able to restore it. Apparently, it's not 100% - there are still bits of his director's cut missing; but he was able to restore a bunch of it including, yes, the eyeball suck. That was quite a happy release, I must say, featuring a bunch of new exciting extras as well. Finally a definitive DVD release! And when it became blu-ray time, who else but Scream Factory had the connection to MGM's catalog to make create an even larger special edition? But now in 2023, that MGM master is looking a bit dated. So now Vinegar Syndrome is here to usher us into the latest format, newly restored in HDR from the original camera negative on 4k Ultra HD.

1) Dragon DVD; 2) MGM DVD; 3) Scream Factory DVD; 4) Scream Factory BD;
5) Vinegar Syndrome BD; 6) Vinegar Syndrome UHD.

So, there's six shots per because the Scream Factory release is a DVD/ BD combo pack, and VS is a BD/ UHD pack. It's a pretty natural progression down the whole line. Dragon's disc is fullscreen at about 1.30:1, but it's not entirely an open/ closed matte situation, since it does have extra info on the top and bottoms but is missing quite a lot more on the sides. Once MGM gets it, though, it's properly matted to 1.85(or technically, more like 1.83ish):1 with much more vivid colors. But then it drops the letterboxing and opens back up to 1.78:1 again once Scream Factory gets their hands on it for their DVD. Otherwise the images are fairly identical. Obviously I prefer the OAR of MGM's disc, but it's a literally slim distinction, and the upgrade to HD is much more important.

Not that it's a huge boost, to be honest. I'm pretty sure Scream's just used MGM's high def master that they created back in 2007, so it's not floor show-level impressive. But it does sharpen things up and clear away compression lumps, giving the film a cleaner and more realistic look on blu. So it's a genuine step up to HD, but the minimum distance that step could take.  But now we've got VS's all new 4k scan - and hey, look, film grain magically appears!  Also, VS has re-framed the film to its proper 1.85:1 AR, and pulled out to reveal more picture along all four sides in the process.  Now it really looks like film; and only holds even truer on the UHD.  The HDR colors look more natural (or more unnatural, when it comes to the crazy pink and blue dimension crossing scenes), and aspects of the image that are blown out, like the papers on the desk behind them in the second set of shots, have all of their visual information restored.  This is a super satisfying upgrade.

1) Scream Factory BD; 2) Vinegar Syndrome UHD.

Oh, but I should talk about this, too: VS's new release comes with a disclaimer about the composited footage, which comes from a 35mm workprint, and how they went to extra lengths to retain its original qualities as best they could.  But that's obvious just from looking at it.  Grain is reasonably hinted at in these shots on the SF, but it's a stronger scan now, and all that much clearer on the UHD.  You can see that SF cleaned up some film damage, which is back on VS's presentation (notice the black marks around Jeffrey's upper hand), but I'll take that trade any day.  Oh, and VS has also matted theirs to 1.85:1 to match with the rest of their transfer.

The Dragon DVD just offered a standard stereo track (plus a 5.1 mix of the German dub), which MGM upgraded to a Dolby 4.0 mix. Scream gives both a 2.0 and 5.1 mix, in DTS-HD on the blu, both of which VS keeps. MGM, Scream and VS also include optional English subtitles.

There's plenty of extras on hand, too. Dragon started us off with two interviews: Stuart Gordon and Brian Yuzna. They're pretty good, but clearly recorded at some convention with omnidirectional mics, so the background sound really overcrowds the speakers. It also had a little booklet, but the text is all in German. MGM scrapped those and instead assembled a kick-ass commentary with Gordon, Yuzna, Combs, and Barbara Crampton, plus a short featurette on the restoration of the found footage and brief on-camera interviews with Gordon and Richard Band.  They also had some storyboard comparisons and a photo gallery.

Scream has all the MGM extras, plus a second audio commentary with Dennis Paoli. Writers are usually skipped over for commentaries, so that was a really nice surprise. They also created a 23+ minute featurette on the special effects, and on-camera interviews with Crampton, Combs and Charles Band. Plus they finally added the long conspicuously absent trailer. It adds up to a very satisfying, well-rounded special edition fans should love.

Re-Resonator: Looking Back at From Beyond

But Vinegar Syndrome must really want us to double-dip, because they came loaded for bear.  First of all, they have almost all of the special features from the MGM/ Scream Factory releases.  They're just missing the short featurette where Gordon (plus the telecine artist and a guy from Sony) speaks about how they found the lost footage ("this film had been castrated, and now it's got its balls back") and restored.  This is a shame because it answers a lot of fans' questions about these releases and isn't redundant, unlike many of the other extras we'll talk about.

Because VS also has a whole bunch of new material, most significantly, an all-new, feature length documentary on the history of From Beyond.  That's right, it's a whole new movie in itself, that talks to pretty much all the surviving major players, from the stars to Yuzna and Paoli, plus some people we never got to hear from before, like the editor even the foley artist.  It's enough that many fans might not even feel compelled to put in the third disc and explore the rest of the interviews.  But there's plenty, because VS has also ported over all of the interviews from Second Sight's UK edition.  So there's another interview with Gordon, another interview with Paoli and another interview with Crampton.  So I love how thorough it is, but it's also redundant and overkill.  Unsurprisingly, these guys mostly have the same memories to share about the film no matter which home video company was interviewing them.  I would advise just picking and choosing what you're most intrigued by rather than plowing through it all.  VS's release also includes reversible artwork and the first 7000 copies come in a limited edition slipcover.

We've wound up with a pretty ideal special edition. It's nice to hold out hope for the rest of the cut footage to be found, but realistically, this is surely as good as it's going to get, and better than I ever would've dared to imagine us getting twenty years ago when Dragon's DVD felt like a godsend.

Bubba Ho-Tep's Much Needed 4k Restoration

Okay, and we're back with the first in my second set of "Pair" posts, this time for Scream Factory releases.  This pair was always going to happen in one form or another, because they've always needled me as the two biggest "holes" in my Scream Factory coverage on DVDExotica.  Until today, Don Coscarelli's Bubba Ho-Tep held the crown as the most glaring omission to me for several reasons.  Because it's Coscarelli's most essential film that I haven't already tackled, because it's such a fun, favorite film that I just personally want to recommend on the site, and because the whole situation of the UK import DVD having its exclusive extras is precisely the kind of thing this site is here to document.  Plus, despite the current blu-ray being only a couple years old (it came out right at the end of 2016), I have some very 2019 thoughts about it that I think it's time to bring up.  So let's go!

Update 2/12/19 - 2/7/23: I originally concluded this entry saying, "a new 4k scan would be super welcome and probably a major improvement."  Well, today's the day.  A 2-disc UHD/ BD combo-pack with a 4k restoration and even some more special features.

2002's Bubba Ho-Tep is, like its title sounds, a delightfully nutty film and a welcome highlight in a pretty drab period for horror films.  Boy, did we need this film when it came to us.  First of all, I think you could be quickly forgiven if, at the time, you believed like all the "masters of horror," that by the 2000s, all his great works were behind him.  Instead of any more masterpieces, we'd be lucky to shake out another direct to video flick or two that wasn't heart breakingly awful, right?  In the same way that we hope Argento's next film will at least be closer to The Card Player than Dracula, or Landis's will be more like Innocent Blood than Susan's Plan... we already know not to keep hoping for another Suspiria or American Werewolf In London.  But then, boom!  He dropped it on us: another genuinely great film rivaled in his catalog only by the original Phantasm.

It's an adaptation of an outrageous short story by Joe R. Lansdale, where Bruce Campbell plays an aging Elvis Presley, still living in secret in a quiet, Southern retirement home.  Nobody else cares enough to raise any questions, but their mortality rate seems a little high; and Elvis deduces that people are dying because an ancient Egyptian mummy is hiding nearby and leeching off their life force.  Who's the only man who will believe Elvis and help him battle the mummy?  JFK, of course, who also happens to still be alive, tucked away in the same retirement home, played by Ossie Davis.  It's obviously a boldly original story (despite one scene rather shamelessly lifted in whole from The Singing Detective), filled with novelty and humor.  It's pretty brave to settle on a hero who's too lazy to get his ass out of bad for the first half of the picture.  But what's especially impressive is how much sincerity and genuine character they manage to fill such a superficially goofy plot with.  There's actually more relatable humanity and touching drama in this than, say, Nicole Kidman's recent The Destroyer, which in some strange ways, shoots for the same sort of targets.  It's there in Lansdale's story, preserved through Coscarelli's subtle care, and thanks in no small part to the impressive cast.  Campbell is perfect for his role, it's through the grace of the gods that they managed to rope Davis into this, and then they have a wealth of supporting players like Roc's Ella Joyce, TV legend Larry Pennell and of course Reggie Bannister.

So Bubba Ho-Tep debuted on DVD as a pretty nice Collector's Edition from MGM in 2004.  This same disc was later reissued in 2007 as a Limited Edition - the only difference being a new three-dimensional slipcover designed to look like Elvis's cape.  Oh, and they dropped the booklet.  Meanwhile, in the UK, they introduced a more substantive upgrade.  2005 saw Anchor Bay UK debuting a special edition of their own, which came with its own nice little slipbox.  But more importantly, it was a 2-disc set with all of the special features from the US, plus several, new exclusives (detailed further below).  In 2010, it was time for HD, and Anchor Bay released their version on blu-ray with everything.  Everything, that is, until 2016, when Scream Factory came out with the US blu-ray, which included all of the MGM features, and more, new stuff they cooked up.  But... not all the Anchor Bay ones, most of which remain exclusive to the UK (and Germany, as the blu-ray EMS put out there in 2010 has everything the AB disc had, too).

1) 2004 US MGM DVD; 2) 2005 UK AB DVD; 3) 2016 US SF BD;
4) 2022 US SF BD; 5) 2022 US SF UHD.

So, ah, okay.  The 2016 blu the most impressive HD transfer I've ever seen.  Not only would it appear that Scream Factory didn't make a new master to update the previous, 2010 blu-rays, but it looks like they're using the same master as the original DVDs.  Now, don't misunderstand; I'm not calling "upconvert." You can see the slight increase in clarity when you flick between the DVD and BD screenshots; we're not getting SD compression slapped onto an HD disc.  We're just getting the same old master, slightly less compressed.  The framing also shifts slightly, starting out at 1.84:1 on the original DVD.  Then, Anchor Bay slightly squeezes the image to 1.86, and finally Scream Factory goes back to 1.84, but with a micro-sliver of extra pixels around the rim, that the old DVDs sacrificed to over-scan fade-out.  So, yes, it's a slight but legit upgrade over the DVD.  But this film was shot on 35mm; grain is barely visible when it is at all, and fine detail is soft and hazy.  Essentially, what I'm saying is, this film was dying for a new scan. To be fair, this film was made in the murky period of 2002, when major directors were shooting films in standard def and working under all kinds of sub-par, frontier-pushing digital conditions.  Again, this film was shot in 35, but I don't know how the CGI effects were rendered... But what we've got is a late 2016 blu-ray using an early 2000s master, and it looks the part.  I wouldn't even say the upgrade to HD was worth double-dipping for unless you'd already replaced almost every other DVD in your collection.

But all that's behind us now.  Scream has come back around and given us a fresh 4k scan of the original negative.  What's more it's on a proper 4k UHD disc with Dolby Vision HDR and color correction supervised by Coscarelli himself.  And it obviously looks better.  Although at first glance, it may not look as much better as you'd expect.  The grain is so fine, when you look at the 1080p blu (which also features the new transfer), it almost seems, if not DNR'd, then not not properly captured.  But it's there on the UHD.  Well, in a few shots (like the first set above), it's still a little soft, and often detail is light overall; but I guess that's down to how the film was shot, not how it's presented on home video.  And to be clear, this is unquestionably an improvement.  The shadows (of which there are a lot in this film) in particular really come to life, where things just got murky and even blocky on the 2016 blu.  We've also finally gotten the AR to a precise 1.85:1, correcting a very slight pinch, and the new color timing is more vivid, especially in HDR.

Audio-wise, things are swell, too.  The MGM DVD just gave us a nice 5.1 mix, plus optional English, French and Spanish subs.  AB dropped the foreign subs (keeping the English), but also gave us a Dolby stereo mix in addition to the 5.1.  And Scream Factory?  Well, they finally did get something from Anchor Bay.  Their 2016 release hung onto both the 5.1 and 2.0 mixes, both now in lossless DTS-HD (although, to be fair, both of Anchor Bay's audio tracks were lossless on the 2010 BD), plus the English subs.  And their 2022 set has all the same options.

But now's where it really gets complicated: the extras.  MGM started us off really nicely.  In fact, to be honest, it's a very satisfying edition right off the bat, and if nobody added anything more to the mix, I'd still be pretty satisfied.  We begin with a really fun and information-packed commentary by Coscarelli and Campbell.  This is the most essential feature, and it's on every release.  So whatever happens moving forward, we're pretty safe.  There's also a second commentary with Campbell doing the whole thing in character as Elvis, which I would recommend skipping entirely - the novelty wears off after you've read the listing on the back of the case.

After that, we also get a pretty solid, 25 minute 'making of' featurette, followed by three additional featurettes focusing on Bruce's costumes, creating the mummy, and the score, which play like extensions of the main doc.  Then there are three deleted scenes, with optional commentary and about seven minutes of Lansdale reading from his original story.  Finally, there are a bunch of additional odds and ends, including a music video, photo gallery, the trailer, a TV spot and some bonus trailers.  The original 2004 disc came in a slipcover and included a nice booklet of behind-the-scenes photos and notes by Bruce Campbell himself.  Again, the 2007 reissue scrapped the booklet and replaced the slipcover with the fancier one.

The UK-only deleted scene.

Crossing oceans to the UK, Anchor Bay gives us pretty much all of that stuff, even the booklet - though their slipbox is different than the US slipcover, and they do drop the TV spot - plus new exclusive content.  They basically add six new things.  One thing you'll notice the US disc might seem a little light on is on-camera interviews, although there's certainly plenty of that in the 'making of' doc.  But AB makes sure to give us new, exclusive on camera interviews with both Campbell and Coscarelli.  They also include a 20-minute Q&A with Coscarelli from a UK screening of Bubba Ho-Tep.  Anchor Bay also has a special intro/ video message from Bruce, a short but fun assembly of behind-the-scenes footage, and perhaps most interestingly of all, a fourth deleted scene not included on the US disc.  And where some of the previous deleted scenes were more like outtakes, this is a solid minute twelve of Ossie and Bruce cut out of the film.

Then, in 2016, Scream Factory kept all the MGM stuff (including that slippery TV spot) but loses most of the Anchor Bay stuff.  However, they cooked up some pretty impressive new features that would make even somebody with one of the 2010 blu-rays seriously consider adding this edition to their collection.  First off is an all new audio commentary by Joe Landsdale.  He's pretty enthusiastic, and an important voice we didn't hear so much of in the previous editions.  Then they add three brand new on-camera interviews: one with Coscarelli, one with Campbell and one with effects artist Robert Kurtzman.  You could say the first two basically just work to replace the Coscarelli and Campbell interviews they didn't get from AB, with the added bonus that these are in HD, but the Kurtzman one feels nice and fresher.  And, what's more, they add 35 minutes of additional, vintage Campbell interviews.  This includes his special message and his on-camera interview from the UK disc, plus even more.  Yes, some of these do get redundant, but one thing's for sure; you'll get your Bruce Campbell fix here alright.  You'll also get reversible cover art and a frankly rather ugly slipcover.

And now in 2022, Scream Factory retains everything from their 2016 release, plus adds three new features.  The least compelling of these is 3 minutes of soundbites from the film's Egyptian Theater premiere.  More substantive is an over 30-minute Q&A with Coscarelli and Campbell from the Toronto Film Festival.  But best of all is easily a new location tour by a couple called The Grimm-Life Collective, especially since we've already heard everything Coscarelli and Campbell repeatedly already.  Unfortunately, however, the Anchor Bay UK exclusives remain exclusive to that edition.  There's really no swag either, like a booklet or even reversible cover art, except for its stylish slipcover.

So, the new Scream Factory edition is undoubtedly the best edition going.  It's got all the new extras from 2016 and 2022, some of the UK ones (to be clear, the ones it's missing are 1) the screening Q&A, 2) the Coscarelli interview, 3) the behind-the-scenes footage and 4) the deleted scene) and a thankfully revamped HD presentation, even if it's not quite as massive a transformation as I set myself up to expect.  I do wish they could've scooped up that last, dangling deleted scene, but otherwise, I couldn't ask for anything more.

All the Heathers You Need

Every few years, I start to doubt whether Heathers still holds up.  And every few years, I break out my latest edition of it - because I have been keeping up - and... yeah, mostly.  On the one hand, this is a softer, unofficial remake of Massacre At Central High that loses some of its edge in its attempts to play to a mass teen mall cinema audience.  But it's got an amazing cast and it's full of brilliant, witty writing that's wholly unique to this film, even if the basic premise isn't.  It's hard to find a film about teenage characters that doesn't make you feel like you're too old for its trite messaging on high school drama, but Heathers' pointed satire of how the surrounding adult world handles teenage suicide is still as adept as any film I've ever seen.  The cast is perfect, from Winona Ryder, Christian Slater and Shannon Doherty, right down to the bit players.  It looks great, the soundtrack is impressive.  But I wish they'd had the balls to keep the darker, "stabby" ending.

As a bit of a pop/ mainstream cult film, Heathers has had a very healthy release on home video.  Anchor Bay first released it on DVD in 1999, and then again upgraded to anamorphic with a 5.1 remix THX edition in 2001, which is the first one I ever bought.  That one was also available in one of AB's famous limited edition tins, where the "limited" meant 15,000 copies.  In 2008, they released the film as a 20th High School Reunion Edition on both DVD and blu.  There was also a Limited Edition Locker DVD/ BD combo pack that came with all sorts of swag like a T-shirt and magnets.  Then the right changed hands to Image, and they released the film as a surprisingly barebones DVD and blu in 2011.  And that's not to say anything of all the alternate covers and "Livin' In the 80's" triple feature movie collections Heathers was included in.  But Arrow changed the game in 2018, releasing the film on an all new special edition blu with new features and a fresh 4k scan of the original camera negative.

1) 2001 Anchor Bay DVD; 2) 2008 Anchor Bay BD;
3) 2011 Image DVD; 4) 2018 Arrow BD.

For starters, Anchor Bay's DVD is anamorphic, but since I left the negative space around the first set of shots, you can see it's slightly window-boxed, leaving the framing at 1.81:1.  The most notable thing about it, though, is just how soft and under-detailed it looks.  It feels like an even lower res image blown up 480, though I'm not saying that's actually what's happening there, but it sure looks fuzzy.  We move on, then, to AB's blu, which is framed better at 1.84:1, revealing more picture on the sides and even along the bottom.  It's also considerably sharper and clearer now in HD.  You might've expected the 2011 DVD from Image to essentially look like AB's blu but in HD, but no.  They make some curious choices, including framing it at 1.78:1 and really blasting the saturation.  Heathers is clearly supposed to be a colorful film, with a cartoonish bent and broad primary colors representing each of the main characters, but everybody's skin colors look burnt orange for chrissakes.  So Arrow's blu is a real revelation, looking markedly better than everything that came before it.  It's finally framed at exactly 1.85:1 while still revealing more image that the previous discs - even Image's 1.78.  And now the colors manage to be more bright and colorful than AB's without the crazy blow-out of Image.  And despite Heathers sometimes gauzy look, Arrow's new 4k scan is sharper, more finely detailed, and with a natural, strongly encoded grain structure that the old blu only hints at.  It is a very substantial upgrade.

Both Heathers DVDs present the English audio remixed to 5.1, but I can't say I notice a big difference in their touted THX encoding.  AB's DVD also gives us the original stereo mix, but not their blu, although that at least gives us the 5.1 in TrueHD.  Only Arrow has the original mono and stereo tracks in lossless LPCM, plus that 5.1 in DTS-HD.  And every disc offers English subtitles except, surprisingly, the Image DVD.  Oh, the AB blu also throws in Spanish subs.

When Anchor Bay first released Heathers, it had a 21 minute featurette called Return To Westberg High and the trailer.  But for their 2001 disc, they put in more effort.  It includes a lively and engaging audio commentary by the director Michael Lehmann along with his producer Denise Di Novi and co-writer Daniel Waters.  And they cooked up an excellent, half-hour retrospective documentary called Swatch Dogs and Diet Coke Heads.  It stands out because it includes interview clips from the films biggest stars who don't appear in any of the other extras.  All that was included on their 2008 BD, too, plus they brought back Return To Westberg.

The Beaver Gets a Boner

When Image gained the rights to Heathers, that apparently didn't include AB's original features, because their 2011 was barebones apart from the trailer and a couple bonus trailers.  But Arrow gains most of it back.  Disappointingly, they dropped Swatch Dogs, but they kept the commentary, trailer, and Return To Westberg.  And that disappointment wanes once you start to dig into all the new stuff Arrow came up with.  There are a series of on-camera interviews featuring: Lehmann with composer David Newman, Lehmann with production designer Jon Hutman and art director Kara Lindstrom, casting director Julie Selzer, actress Lisanne Falk, screenwriting duo Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski (Ed Wood, My Name Is Dolemite) with Daniel Waters, and an appreciation by the writer/ comedian John Ross Bowie.  Some of these extras start to get a little repetitive, but there's a lot of great new insight here.  They've also restored Lehmann's student film The Beaver Gets a Boner, and included the alternate European "Lethal Attraction" trailer Lehmann talks about in the commentary.  Arrow's release also features reversible artwork, and the first pressing included a booklet with essays by Bidisha Mamata, Anna Bogutskaya and cinematographer Francis Kenny, and came in a slipcover.

Before I leave off, you may be wondering about an Image/ RLJE (RLJE is Image, rebranded) 30th Anniversary 2-disc blu-ray steelbook that was released in the US in 2019.  It has all the old US extras, some of the Arrow ones, and some brand new stuff: an audio track with commentary by the composer, Lehmann and Waters along with isolated score, plus new on camera interviews with Waters, Lehmann and Falk.  But, sadly, it still uses the same old Anchor Bay transfer every blu except the Arrow has, not the 4k remaster.  You might still want to pick it up for the exclusive special features (although all of those people are already extensively interviewed on the preexisting extras, and the artwork is heinous), but the Arrow release is the definitive presentation of the film.  And better/ cheaper than buying the 30th steelbook for the additional extras, I'd suggest just laying out a couple dollars for a used DVD with Swatch Dogs.  Although die-hards may feel they need absolutely everything, and most fans will find the Arrow package more than enough in itself.