Der Willies

To be clear, I'm not saying The Willies is the best horror anthology ever.  I'm not saying it's a greater artistic achievement than Tales From the Crypt, Black Sabbath or Creepshow.  But I am saying it's the best horror anthology yet to be released (and no, the Echo Bridge DVD doesn't count, for reasons you're about to see); and even more than that, I'd say it's better than a lot of the amusing but weaker anthology flicks we've been enjoying from labels like Scream Factory and Code Red lately, i.e. After Midnight, Nightmares, Encounter With the Unknown or Screams of a Winter Night.  Those are all fun, but The Willies is more fun.  I think some people are put off by the fact that it's PG-13.  It's even been packaged with children's films.  But that is just flat out wrong.  The Willies is actually the darkest and most twisted of all the films I've mentioned so far.  Its low budget does show, but apart from that, it's a kick.

Update 8/23/17 - 11/16/25: Well, here's something I never thought we'd see: The Willies on blu-ray.  I'm sure you've got questions.  Well, read on.

The Willies is written and directed by none other than Scuz of Return Of the Living Dead fame, Brian Peck (and for those of you whose hands just shot up in the air, I know, and I'll come back to that).  And it's pure EC Comics: entertaining and gross stories of human weakness culminating in twist endings, poetic justice and monsters.  It's got a simple but effective wrap-around where a bunch of kids - including Samwise himself, Sean Astin - out camping at night telling each other spooky stories.  Then the structure gets a little unusual.  Instead of an film evenly divided into three or four stories, they build up in length.  So we start with little short vignettes: i.e. an old lady's poodle gets wet and she decides to dry it off by putting it in the microwave.  That's it; runs about two minutes, but it does set a more honest tone of the kind of stories kids would tell each other.  Then you've got a standard-length story about a kid who finds a monster in the school bathroom, reminiscent of Stephen King's tiger story in Skeleton Crew.  Then, finally there's a surprisingly long story that takes up more than half the film's running time.  Fortunately, it's pretty great; about a maladjusted kid who makes dioramas out of flies.

One thing that helps set this 80s anthology apart from many of its peers, besides its writing, is it's excellent cast.  The kids give surprisingly strong performances for unknown child actors, and some dependable veterans show up in supporting roles, including fellow Return Of the Living Dead alums James Karen and Clu Gulager, Twin Peaks' Kimmy Robertson and Dana Ashbrook, Kathleen Freeman and a whole bevy of television sitcom and character actors, including Kirk Cameron and Tracey Gold in one of the most surprising, how-were-they-able-to-clear-that? cameos in horror history.  Every minor role has an extensive resume, though you'd have to have been watching television in the 80s to recognize most of them.  But even if you don't, it still gives the production a solid, professional air that's only countered a bit by the film's special effects.  And it just has some weird vibes.  For example, you've got a farmer dressed up like something out of Hee-Haw, suggesting they're trying to make a safer Goosebumps-like "entry horror" film for younger audiences, but then it's mixed with more adult sensibilities.  I actually kind of like this unusual mix-match of tones, but then it's genuinely disturbing when you let yourself consider who made it.

Alright, ugh.  I guess let's just address this now and get it over with.  I'm a big believer in separating the art from the artist and have zero interest in celebrity gossip or the filmmakers' personal lives.  But whenever I see fans on forums wondering why we haven't gotten a decent special edition of The Willies yet, it's hard not to assume at least part of the reason is that the film's writer/ director is a convicted child abuser.  Now, admittedly, we still get plenty of quality Polanski discs, and nobody seems to be boycotting the X-Men movies, but Scream got some blow back recently with their Jeepers Creepers editions, and frankly, I can't exactly say those reactions are unwarranted.  So I would still like to see this film get a quality release.  After all, it represents the work of a whole ton of talented artists who never did anything to anyone, and again, if we can get fancy blus of everything from Rosemary's Baby to Dark House, and Scuz can host the More Brains documentary, there's no reason to single The Willies out.  But you can certainly understand why DVD artisans don't rush to this one as opposed to another catalog title.

Now The Willies hasn't technically gone unreleased all these years, but as you've been seeing in the screenshots, what we've got looks like a fuzzy, old VHS tape.  It's an old barebones DVD from Echo Bridge, and they've reissued it many times, but it's always just a repackaging of the same product.  There's the standard solo disc, the aforementioned Kid-Approved Collector's Set, a version paired up with a film called Under Wraps, and a version that comes with a CD of scary sounds.  I kind of regret not going for the one with the CD.  But as far as The Willies itself, there's really only been one option, and it hasn't been pretty.

So now comes Cargo Records, a German label starting a new "From the Vault" line of horror blu-rays.  The Willies is #11.  But is it anything more than an upconvert?  Let's see.

2008 Echo Bridge DVD top; 2025 Cargo Records BD bottom.

Echo Bridge issues us a boxy ol' 1.31:1 fullscreen transfer.  It doesn't look terribly well shot, with lots of flat, boring close-ups; but maybe seeing the film restored would fix that to some degree.  It wouldn't be the first horror film people assumed was shot poorly due to a terrible transfer.  But for now, it's just ugly on top of ugly.  And let's see, what else can we throw at it to make it be worse?  Interlacing?  Yes, it's got that, too.  But hey, the picture's so soft, it almost smudges that out.  Um, yay?  Also the colors are faded with plenty of grey blacks.

And now?  Well, it's still fullscreen at 1.36:1.  It actually loses a sliver of information around the edges, but this was presumably framed for 1.85:1 anyway, right?  It was a direct-to-video release, though, so they might've framed it that way along all, like the later Silent Night, Deadly Night sequels.  At any rate, it is a cleaner and clearer picture.  The interlacing is fixed, but it's not just that.  The image is sharper, and you can make out things like Karen's name badge now in that second set of shots.  There's even a surprisingly consistent layer of film grain... Is it legit?  I can't help being suspicious, but there's no question this is a legit upgrade over the DVD.  And given that this film was shot on 16mm, I doubt there's much more detail we're still missing.

EB's audio isn't as fuzzy as you might expect looking at the screenshots, but Cargo Records improves things again by giving us a high fidelity DTS-HD track, as well as a German dub, also in DTS-HD.  They also throw in (removable) German subtitles for one of the cuts.

"One of the cuts?"  Yes, probably the most exciting aspect of this new Cargo release is that they've uncovered two versions of this film.  I first learned there was an alternate version in 2021, when a helpful reader posted a comment on this post linking to some footage that was certainly not a part of any edition I'd ever seen before.  It's that weird character pictured above.  He acts as a Zacherley-style horror host, broadcasting from a graveyard for "the KBLCH television network."  I would say this was shot as an alternative for the Sean Astin wrap-around segments, but the version here actually includes both.  Or, to be clear, the Blu-ray includes two cuts.  The video version we've all seen before, exactly the same as the DVD, and the TV version, which runs six minutes longer with these additional hosting segments in addition to, not instead of, the Astin stuff.  It almost raises as many questions as it answers, but it's great to finally have this rare material, and even the choice of which version to watch.

Of course, there isn't much by way of extras.  Echo Bridge's DVD is as barren as it gets.  But Cargo actually makes an effort.  They include the trailer, a video promo, and a complete scan of The Willies' comic book?  "Willies comic book?"  Yes!  We learn from the video promo that a complete comic book was produced and given out to video stores who stocked the video.  It's a complete adaptation of the entire film (sans KBLCH), which seems to go for quite a lot these days if EBay is anything to go by.  And we get it all here as a lightly animated (the camera pans down most pages, and it's set to music) video bonus.

Cargo has released a mediabook version and a standard Willies in a traditional Amary case.  I chose the later, which includes a 12-page full-color booklet (in German) and reversible artwork so you can hide the giant ratings logo.

I've been dying for this film to get restored, and this may well be the best we'll ever get, given the director's awful legacy, which has been further exposed in last year's docu-series Quiet On Set.  So this isn't exactly an Arrow 4-disc UHD limited edition, but it's a good step up over the old DVDs, that's for sure.  And hopefully no proceeds are going to anyone evil.

There Is No Competition for Catch-22

Is Mike Nichols' Catch-22 my #1 favorite war film of all time?  It absolutely might be; there's a lot to consider.  Other runners-up that spring to mind include War & Peace, Sword of Honour, The Battle of Algiers, An Ungentlemanly Act, Duck Soup, Henry V, Love and Death, The Killing Fields, Shame, Child's Play 3 (just kidding!)... Yeah, no, seriously, it probably comes down to The Killing Fields or this, depending on my mood.  At any rate, it's pretty damn peak and to this day under-appreciated.  The biggest criticism held against it seems to be that it drops a ton of great material from the book, which I admit I've never read.  But just taken as a film on its own terms?  Fuckin' wow, man.

For starters, the cast is insane.  Alan Arkin is perfectly cast as Yossarian.  And the supporting line-up is mind-blowing: Charles Grodin, Bob Newhart, Martin Balsam, Anthony Perkins, Bob Balaban, Jon Voight who you see in be terrible in movies like Anaconda and forget what he was capable of here, Richard Benjamin, Art Garfunkel, Austin Pendleton, Jack Gilford, Buck Henry who also wrote lines Joseph Heller said he wish he'd thought of, Martin Fell, Michael Sheen and Orson bloody Welles.  Every single once of them is the irreplacably perfect embodiment of their roles.  Well, except Martin Sheen; you could replace him.  But he's still very good.

The production values are literally insane; Nichols literally built and ran an fully operational, World War II era airport, then ran Rome filming with giant tanks in the streets.  In his commentary, Nichols admits it was over the top and unnecessary, but like War & Peace, the spectacle is undeniably impressive.  But it's not really as impressive as his ability to successfully merge truly great, unrestrained comedy with genuine dramatic weight that makes as powerful a statement as a great war movie should.  I could maybe do without the Tex Avery-style scene of the pilots leering at the captain's girlfriend (after all, we've already seen they're all having multiple affairs with ridiculously gorgeous women), but that's like the flaw in a royal diamond.

Paramount took its time, first releasing Catch-22 on DVD in 2006, and... that's been it until now.  It completely skipped the blu-ray stage and went straight to UHD, although there is also a BD included in Shout Factory's new combopack.

1) 2006 Paramount DVD; 2) 2025 Shout Factory BD;
3) 2025 Shout Factory UHD.

Paramount's anamorphic widescreen DVD is framed mostly correct, at 2.32:1, but Shout Factory's new 4k scan of the original 35mm camera negative fine tunes it to 2.39:1, revealing a little more picture along all four sides.  The most obvious difference is just the boost in resolution, bringing the fuzzy SD image firmly into focus.  And the colors... are interesting.  I mean, this movie is mostly brown by design; but the DVD has a murky, overshadowed look.  On the other hand, some scenes look pretty funky on Shout's new blu.  By that I mean, they appear at times over-saturated, partly washed almost, and it makes thin shadows appear edge enhanced (although I don't believe they were, strictly speaking).  See the shot of Arkin and his girlfriend above, or Benjamin below, for some mild examples.  A lot of it's fine, and better than the DVD; but something like 15-20% of the movie looks a bit dodgy.  Thankfully, this is not the case on the UHD, which looks great and far superior to the previous version throughout.  I wonder if the film was just timed once for the Dolby Vision HDR and then slapped onto both discs, or maybe someone just made a weird judgment call somewhere in the process, but it seems off.  So luckily - I must reiterate - this criticism only applies to the unnecessary 1080p half of the combopack that most of us probably won't ever be watching anyway, not the UHD.

In terms of audio, the DVD contained the original mono in Dolby 2.0 and a 5.1 remix (why?), plus a French mono dub and optional English subtitles.  Shout preserves both mixes, boosts them up to DTS-HD, and also has English subs.

For special features, Paramount basically provided one key thing: an excellent audio commentary by Nichols and moderated by Steven Soderbergh (who worked on the 2006 remaster).  It's a very frank and detailed commentary, with Nichols unafraid to talk about where he thinks he went wrong or his reasons for his artistic decisions.  It's one of those commentaries that feels like an important piece of film history now that he's passed.  So it's a relief that Shout Factory hung onto it.  Besides that, Paramount just had the trailer, which Shout kept as well, and a small stills gallery that Shout didn't bother with.

Then Shout added one more thing, a second audio commentary by film critic Drew McWeeny.  And look, a lot of the supposed "expert" commentaries these labels have been giving us lately have been putting me off them.  So I'm happy to report, this one is actually quite good.  He's read the novel and has a lot of information to share.  He covers a bit of the same ground, and interestingly contradicts a minor point or two that Nichols makes in his own commentary; but both commentaries are welcome additions.  It's too bad this film doesn't have any on-camera interviews, or the proper documentary retrospective it deserves, but the commentaries are strong.

So this is such an easy recommendation, being so long-awaited a release of an underrated classic, which has essentially no competition.  That it turned out even better than expected in just an extra pleasant surprise.

Larry Cohen: Man of Mystery & Misdirection

Here's a fun, new Shout Factory (or I guess, now, Gruv) exclusive: 'Larry Cohen: Mystery & Misdirection,' a 3-disc set of arguably lesser Larry Cohen films, two of which are making their long-awaited HD debuts.  Specifically, 1984's Special Effects has been released on blu before, by Olive Films (now OOP, as Olive is sadly no more), in 2016, following a 2004 MGM DVD.  But it's the first time for 1977's The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover and 1989's Wicked Stepmother, which hadn't even been available on DVD before, apart from two short-lived MOD MGM DVRs.  And they're nicely packaged together in Scream Factory's slim set.  Yes, this is under the Scream banner, despite only one of the films being halfway to a horror movie.

The biggest criticism of Hoover would probably be that it feels like Cohen produced a TV movie for the theatrical market.  Cohen, known for stealing high profile locations, pulls off some of his greatest heists in this one, but much of it still looks flat and stagey.  Cohen is determined to cover Hoover's fifty-year legacy with the FBI, which means he has a ton of story to cover in under two hours.  Full of short scenes and a massive, revolving door of characters, this movie flies by at a breakneck speed.  Rip Torn is more or less our point of view character, but he doesn't really enter the story until the second hour.  Zip, zip, zip, major historical figures come in and go out.  But this being Cohen, he still fins the space for quirky personal moments and presumably improved humor.  He's helped by Broderick Crawford's authentic performance, and a murderer's row of great character actors like Andrew Duggan, John Marley, George Plimpton, Jose Ferrer and of course James Dixon, who's in all three of these.  But Hoover's story is a fascinating one at heart, and Cohen's got all the angles on him.

2011 MGM DVR top; 2025 Scream Factory BD bottom.

This movie looking better than it ever has should help with its reputation nowadays.  MGM's DVR was anamorphic widescreen, so I was fairly happy with it for its time.  But while Scream's blu, which is a new 2k scan taken from the original negatives, is still 1.85:1, it pulls back to reveal more picture along all four sides.  More importantly, it has deeper, richer colors, with less washed highlights and blacks.  And MGM's disc was interlaced, which this new release corrects.  It's just a nice, obvious improvement in every way.

And that includes the 2.0 audio, which has been boosted to DTS-HD.  And Scream has included subtitles for the first time.  Extras are slim, not entirely absent like they were on MGM's 100% barebones disc.  Scream has got the original theatrical trailer, and more interestingly, an on-camera interview with historian Daniel Schweiger about the impressive, bombastic score by Academy Award winner Miklós Rózsa.

Next up is 1984's Special Effects, a fun little murder story about a filmmaker, a sinisterly cold Eric Bogosian, obsessed with capturing the moment of real death in his next movie.  He starts off as a fairly stiff and tame thriller, hampered greatly by the creative decision to completely re-dub leading actress Zoë Lund (Ms .45) with an unconvincing Southern accent.  Yeah, her character's supposed to be from Texas, but they really should've gone with whatever was coming out of her mouth on set, because the effect is so distancing.  Anyway, fortunately, Cohen packs in enough twists and clever ideas that the film slowly succeeds at drawing you further and further in.  Stick with it, and you'll be hooked on this twisted little tale.

2025 Scream Factory BD.

This is the only disc in this set not to feature a new 2k scan.  In fact, by all accounts, this is the same transfer as Olive's previous blu-ray, apart from any minor differences in encode.  So fortunately it's a pretty good one, with a crisp 1.85:1 image and the soft focus grain always at least being hinted at.  The colors are strong, contrast is attractive.  It's presumably a master that was delivered to them from MGM, creating HD masters of their own archive.  And like the previous BD, this one also includes 2.0 DTS-HD with optional English subtitles.

Unlike Olive's blu, though, this one's fairly barebones.  It just has the trailer (which, for the record, was also on the MGM DVD and Olive BD).  But Olive had an important special feature: an audio commentary by Cohen himself, along with the director of his documentary, King Cohen.  So in that respect, this is a disappointing step backwards.  And I've heard it.  Cohen always does good commentary tracks, but this was still one of his better ones, helped by the fact that this is one of his less discussed works, so it's not as familiar territory.   So... oh well.

And speaking of "oh well," that feeling brings us to our final film...  Ha ha  No, no.  Actually, 1989's Wicked Stepmother, while clearly no masterpiece, is better than it would appear.  In the tradition of silly comedies like My Stepmother Is an Alien or My Mom's a Werewolf, comes Bettie Davis's final film, and Cohen's silliest ever.  Yes, even more so than Full Moon High, which is in the ZAZ vein.  This plays more like a sitcom.  And it is packed with television stars, including Tom Bosley from Happy Days, Richard Moll from Night Court, Lionel Stander from Hart To Hart, Barbara Carrera from Dallas and David Rasche from Sledge Hammer!  But it is packed with gags, some of which are genuinely funny, and silly special effects, some of which are admittedly wretched.  And the spirit of this movie is to just walk right into and embrace the eye rolling aspects.

2010 MGM DVR top; 2025 Scream Factory BD bottom.

Wow, I forgot MGM's old Wicked Stepmother was nonanamorphic.  Yeah, it's a good thing we can replace it.  Besides that, it's another new 2k scan that adjusts the aspect ratio from 1.87:1 to 1.85, fixes the problematic interlacing, corrects the drab colors, clears up the compression noise and sharpens up the detail of MGM's lower than usual resolution.  The difference is vast and obvious.  And again, the 2.0 audio is boosted to DTS-HD and optional English subtitles have been added.  Plus, we get a couple nice extras.  The DVR has nothing, but the blu has the theatrical trailer and an on-camera interview with the editor, who has some great memories of working with Cohen and is pretty candid about the conflicts behind the scenes.

The set itself is just one amary cased housed in a slim slipbox.  For diehard Larry Cohen aficionados, this is essential.  Two HD exclusives with a couple nice new extras.  The Special Effects blu is more just a bonus disc for casual fans, since completists will still need the Olive disc for the commentary anyway.  And those folks may be put off by the non-insubstantial price point.  It depends how interested you are on these particular, lesser known movies.  But I'll say, for my part: my appreciation has grown for each of them on every revisit, and I'm glad to have added this set to my collection my it's still available.  Limited to just 2500 copies, the option may not be on the table for long.

In the Mouth of Madness and Its Wide World of Special Features

So I just got my hands on Scream Factory's brand new special edition of John Carpenter's (last great?) movie, In the Mouth of Madness.  I don't have the older blu-ray to compare it to, because I was always annoyed by the lack of special features for such a wild, beloved cult film that obviously cried out for all kinds of fun bonus content.  And, as we now see, my holding out eventualllllllllly paid off.  But here's the thing.  Did you ever look up a movie on DVDCompare and wonder about all those foreign editions of a movie you like that have all these random, exclusive little extras?  Usually short running times, probably EPK (Electronic Press Kit) stuff; but better than the nothing we were getting in the US.  Well, for this film, I decided to break the bank and import a few additional DVD editions to see just what all that stuff was, and maybe scrap together a halfway decent special edition for a film that so deserved one.  Let's see how worthwhile that endeavor was.  Oh, and you're probably wondering how much of that material is on Scream's new Collector's Edition.  We're going to sort all that out, too.

Update 7/13/18 - 10/30/25: well, Arrow has come to take ItMoM into the next generation, releasing the film on UHD and yes, with all new special features.

Suggesting this might be Carpenter's last great movie is probably pretty contentious of me.  I imagine most fans would point to Vampires.  That's certainly a good one, but there's just something so much more evocative about the way Carpenter handles his far out apocalyptic horror - especially this one, where he gracefully ties it into our Stephen King-style small town Americana - that elevates it to a much higher level for me.  I'd trade ten Vampires for one In the Mouth of Madness.  Now I'll admit, we're probably sinking pretty deep into personal taste and preference more than any pretense of objective artistic merit at this point.  But I don't know... if nothing else there's a thrilling level of ambition in telling this particular kind of "absolutely anything can happen, and does" story that sets it apart from most other horror films.

And this film has so much else going for it besides.  Carpenter seems to be playing with one of his highest ever budgets, steeping the film in production values that enable him to bounce from one incredible set piece or massive KNB special effect to another.  And he's got a pretty strong all-star cast with Sam Neill, Das Boot's Jürgen Prochnow, David Warner, John Glover, Carpenter staple Peter Jason and Charlton fuckin' Heston.  And even the small roles are filled with great character actors like Bernie Casey, Willhelm von Homburg (Ghostbusters 2's Vigo) and Frances Bay.  You know who played that little paperboy kid at the end of the film?  A pre-Star Wars Hayden Christensen.  I'm not pulling your leg; look it up.  And speaking of looking up the cast, I couldn't place where I new Julie Carmen from until I visited her imdb - she's the head vamp in Fright Night 2!  Top it all off with a rockin' Carpenter score, and you've got one of those great, "anytime I see it's on television; I have to sit down and watch it" movies.

So which DVDs did I have to scrap together to assemble every single special feature?  Actually, not all that many (the picture at the top was probably a spoiler, huh?), which should be encouraging if anybody else feels compelled to follow in my footsteps.  We start out with the original US New Line DVD from 2000.  That one's not entirely barebones; it actually features an audio commentary by John Carpenter and his DoP Gary B. Kibbe.  But it's infamous as one of the worst audio commentaries of all time... anyway, we'll come back to that.  It's also a flipper with both a widescreen and fullscreen transfer, so it should be interesting to see how they handled that, especially since Carpenter is so famous for shooting in 'scope.

Then we've got the 2002 Italian DVD from Cecchi Gori.  If you're checking my work against the DVDCompare page, you might be thinking I made a mistake.  The German DVD from BMG Video has the same features as the Italian one, plus one more.  But - and I only know this by virtue of having the Italian DVD right here on my desk in front of me - that listing is missing an entry, and the "B-roll featurette" is actually on the Italian DVD as well.  So, at least in terms of special features, they're entirely interchangeable.

Anyway, then I've got the 2006 French DVD from Metropolitan, who you might remember also brought us the exclusive special features for American Psycho.  I'm beginning to realize those guys are an under-appreciated label, because they scared up some really good, all new special features for their edition, not just EPK stuff that New Line, for whatever reason, neglected.  And, of course, now we've got Scream Factory's 2018 BD and Arrow's 2025 UHD.

1) New Line DVD (wide); 2) New Line DVD (full); 3) Cecchi Gori DVD;
4) Metropolitan DVD; 5) Scream Factory BD; 6) Arrow UHD.

So, okay, first of all, that's a nasty fullscreen transfer.  I think they actually managed to chop off more than they left in.  I guess Carpenter didn't leave them any vertical matte area to play around with, going from 2.31:1 to 1.33:1.  Woof.  Apart from that, I'm not too mad at the 2000 DVD despite its age.  It's certainly better than the murky 2003 Italian DVD, which I'm guessing was either taken from the laserdisc or a print (or both).  It's somewhat windowboxed, zooming in a bit to crop all four sides to 2.21:1; and the edges look they were enhanced with a black magic marker.  Even before the days of HD, if you had gotten that disc for the extra extras, you still would've needed at least one other edition to watch the movie.  The French disc looks almost identical to the US disc, except a smidgen greener and slightly more accurately framed at 2.36:1.  The blu is at an even more perfect 2.35:1, but you'll notice manages to uncover more information on the sides than ever seen before.  It also loses that French greenness, and being in HD is naturally sharper and more clearly defined.  This is a new 4k scan of the "original film elements," which I guess is safe to assume isn't the OCN or they would've said so.  Grain is evident but not super distinct; it's obviously an entire class above any of the previous DVDs.

And Arrow?  They've widened the frame to 2.39:1, yes revealing more on the sides than even the Scream.  And what a scan and encode!  Arrow's booklet describes this as a new restoration done by Arrow and Warner Bros in collaboration, so this isn't just the same 4k scan SF used on a higher gen disc.  You could focus in and track every single speck of grain that was ever on the film.  That gives us a slightly sharper image.  And we can see that the already minor film damage has been further cleaned up (like that white fleck in front of Sam Neil on the elevator door that's there on the Scream disc but removed from the Arrow).

Now, the original DVD gave us a stereo and 5.1 mix, plus optional subtitles. No one should be using the Italian DVD to watch the movie in 2018, but just for the record, the Italian DVD just gives us the English stereo mix (plus two Italian 5.1 mixes), with English and Italian subtitles.  France gave us English and French 5.1 mixes plus French subtitles which are hard to remove (and no English ones).  Scram just gives us the English 5.1 mix, boosted to DTS-HD, plus optional English subtitles.  The previous US blu-ray didn't keep the stereo mix either, so really the only difference is that the Warners blu had a bunch of additional foreign dubs and subs.  But Arrow brings the stereo mix back, for the first time in lossless LPCM, as well as the 5.1 in DTS-HD.  And of course they have English subs as well.

So let's talk extras!  And we can begin with that notorious commentary.  Carpenter enjoys a well-earned reputation for doing really good commentaries.  They're lively, easy to listen to, yet still enjoyable.  So I think part of the blow-back for this one was just that expectations were really high.  I've heard plenty worse commentaries, and this one has its share of good information.  But the fact that the DP doesn't seem to want to engage, and Carpenter insists on throwing it back to him routinely even though he seems pretty checked out is a bit of a downer.  Plus, it's just a more technical commentary where they're talking about lights instead of talking about stunts and goofing around on-set like he'd often do with Kurt Russell on other commentaries.  So yeah, it's kind of a dud, but not the unlistenable disaster it seems to be known as.  Anyway, that was all we had on the original 2000 DVD... and the original 2013 blu-ray.  You can see why I wasn't super eager to double-dip.

Cecchi Gori exclusive

So we'll go to the Cecchi Gori disc next, because it's actually not much.  Just three short things, all EPK material.  First is a five-minute promotional featurette, which is heavy on clips from the film and almost more like an extended trailer.  Next is a about four and a half minutes of on-set interview clips, with Sam Neill, Prochnow, Heston and Carpenter.  The best part of that is just getting to hear Heston talk a little about being on a John Carpenter horror movie, which is kinda neat.  Then, finally, there's about five minutes of behind-the-scenes footage, which gives some cool glimpses at how some of the more elaborate special effects sequences were made, and little exchanges captured on set.  Fun little odds and ends, but nothing to make a big deal of.  It also includes the trailer and a full-color insert.

Metropolitan exclusive

France's Metropolitan DVD, on the other hand, actually went out and got the big names to provide brand new content exclusively for their release.  They got new, on camera interviews with both John Carpenter and Julie Carmen, which weren't super long but both quite good and well edited.  Then there's a fairly long, eighteen minute featurette with Greg Nicotero going over the many creature effects of the film.  Honestly, getting this DVD in 2006 was pretty satisfying; the kind of thing that should've always been packaged with the film.  Metropolitan also included the old commentary, plus a couple of bonus trailers.  It was certainly a smarter option compared to the US DVD.

Scream Factory former exclusive

But that was then and this is now.  Along comes Scream Factory, with a whole bunch of new, awesome stuff, and some older stuff.  Yes, they have the old commentary; but they also have a brand new commentary with Carpenter and his wife/ producer Sandy King Carpenter.  And this is a more loose kind of commentary, basically what fans were expecting and hoping for the first time around.  If you've heard the old commentary, he does repeat quite a few observations, but Sandy really is a good partner for John on here, keeping things engaging.  Even more fun is another episode of Horror's Hallowed Grounds, which really, I can't get enough of.  Then, there's about a sixteen minute on-camera interview with Greg Nicotero, which is essentially a rehash of the Metropolitan one.  It's not the same, it's brand new; but he covers pretty much all the same things and even shows some of the same video clips.  Similarly, there's a brand new Julie Carmen interview, which stays fairly close to the one she gave Metropolitan.  Besides that, there's about twelve minutes of behind-the-scenes video footage shot by Nicotero, the five minute promo featurette, the trailer, and an impressive ten minutes worth of TV spots.  It also comes with a slip cover, reversible artwork, and if you ordered it from Shout's site directly, a limited edition poster.

Arrow exclusive

And Arrow?  To start with, they carry over everything from the Scream Factory release, both the older legacy stuff and everything that was new in 2018.  And they're introducing more new stuff.  The best of these are new, on-camera interviews with Jürgen Prochnow and Sandy King Carpenter.  Prochnow's is a little short, but it's good, and someone important from the film we haven't heard much from yet.  Then, there's a bunch of expert contributions, including a third audio commentary by the podcast hosts of Killer POV/ Shockwaves/ Colors Of the Dark, which I have to admit, I got more out of that I thought I would.  And I could say the same thing about Alexandra Heller-Nicholas's video essay, though the other video essay, which is a mash-up of three additional critics, is more skippable.  There's also a new image gallery.

And their limited edition comes in so much phat swag!  First of all, it's a sturdy slipbox, which itself fits into a slipcover.  Inside, the amary case includes reversible artwork.  Then there's a "perfectly bound" (read: it has a flat spine), 60-page full-color booklet, full of photos and (six) essays, as well as a folded, double-sided poster.  And as usual, it includes a card for one of their other releases - I got Salem's Lot.

So, let's review.  How much of the older extras did Scream and Arrow carry over?  Unfortunately, not all that much.  The original commentary and the featurette.  Not the EPK interviews or B-roll footage from the Italian DVD, and none of the new(er) interviews from the French disc.  And yes, I checked, and the behind-the-scenes footage from the Italian disc is not included in Scream/Arrow's behind-the-scenes footage.  They both spend a lot of time covering the same scene of Neill running down the tunnel being chased by monsters, but it's different footage shot by different people.

With that said, though, the new releases make most of what they didn't carry over fairly redundant.  They came up with their own Carmen and Nicotero interviews, got Carpenter to do the new commentary, and found their own batch of B-roll footage.  So on the one hand, if you're a die-hard collector, yeah, all that other stuff is still out there on the foreign discs.  But for most of us, basically all that content is closely represented on the Arrow, plus more, and it has the added bonus (or, really, the more important factor) of being the superior presentation of the film.  I'm keeping my imports, so when I re-watch this film's extras I can include Heston's soundbites and stuff; but if I didn't already own them, I wouldn't hunt them down now.  At the time, importing was worth it.  But Scream Factory finally gave this film the treatment it always should've had, and then Arrow topped it.