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- luckylittlelady
- Rep: 20
Re: Most Recent Horror Movie You've Seen....
Well I saw Saw II the other night as I mentioned in the Saw thread but prior to that it was Dog Soldiers which I really enjoyed.
- Gunslinger
- Rep: 88
Re: Most Recent Horror Movie You've Seen....
I finally watched the Strangers, thought it was pretty good. James, since you said that Ils was the influence for the Strangers I may have to pick it up.
Also saw Dead Clowns..IT REALLY SUCKED!!
- tejastech08
- Rep: 194
Re: Most Recent Horror Movie You've Seen....
I rented 30 Days of Night on Blu-ray. It was alright. I think the horror genre has gotten to the point where it's more about throwing as much gore as possible at the audience rather than actually trying to scare the shit out of you. I'm not a fan of it. This movie definitely had an interesting premise, but I think a lot of it felt so fucking contrived. Lots of excuses for people to be exposed to the vampires when they likely would have survived just staying holed up in that attic. Also, my biggest complaint is the ending. WTF was up with the Blade II-esque ending? Talk about ripping off another movie. LOL. Anyway, the Blu-ray video quality was great and it had really good surround sound too.
Also, I bought Halloween (original) on Blu-ray earlier this week from Best Buy for $15 (on sale). They did a really good job restoring the movie. I have it on DVD and the Blu-ray makes the DVD look like total shit, and I'm not just talking about the clarity of the picture from having a higher bitrate. They cleaned up the print before encoding it to Blu-ray so there's a lot less dirt speckles and such than on the DVD. Only bad thing is the Blu-ray is only the theatrical version whereas my DVD is the TV version of the movie. No big deal though. Also, I got the Shining on Blu-ray for $15 last week. They did an outstanding job on that transfer. I've never watched it on DVD before (seen it on cable and the movie channels plenty of times of course) but I was very impressed with the video quality. I also bought I Am Legend on Blu-ray. It had really good quality but the movie itself was pretty "meh" with the exception of Will Smith's acting. The CGI monsters were horribly done for such a big budget movie. That was one of the only times I have "blind bought" a movie before seeing it, but it was on sale and you don't really get good deals on Blu-ray very often in a brick and mortar store like Best Buy (usually gotta try to find deals on Amazon).
- tejastech08
- Rep: 194
Re: Most Recent Horror Movie You've Seen....
Wow, great info Tejas. I had thought about picking up the Blu-Ray for Halloween, but a friend told me that the regular DVD upscaled looked just as good.
I've got the Halloween: Restored LE from 1999.
There's been so many different transfers of it over the years, who knows. The one I have is the TV version. From what I can tell it came out in 2001, and compared to the Blu-ray, it's a dirty ass print of the film. Lots of dirt specs and crap all over the place, right off the bat, whereas the Blu-ray looks pretty damn awesome especially during the daytime scenes. The nightime scenes have a lot of noise/grain, perhaps because the film was low budget and is so old, but there's still a lot more detail than on the DVD of course. If you can get it for a good price, it's worth it. Best Buy is running that $14.99 deal on it through Saturday I think. 
Re: Most Recent Horror Movie You've Seen....
Well the TV version is like that. The Theatrical cut had a much better transfer.
Basically what Anchor Bay did, was take the TV cut source, and just put it up on DVD, enchance it for 16x9. That's it. They even left it with a Mono soundtrack, for the 'purists'.
The Theatrical Cut is the one that got the great treatment. At the time (1999), it was to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the original film, and AB actually brought in Dean Cundey (Director of Photography on I, II, III) to supervise the transfer. Cundey did all kinds of tweaking, including leaving a blue hue over all the night scenes.
It was very beautiful, and the best the film has ever looked imo.
The 2001 release, at least the Theatrical version, was just a re-release of that version if my memory serves me correctly.
Then in 2003, they did a 25th Anniversary release, called 'Divimax', which saw AB go and do the transfer themselves. Because certain 'purists' thought Cundey (you know, the guy that shot the fuckin' thing) screwed up the original 'look' of the film, AB went back and removed all the blue and restored the original source, closer to just a straight source-to-DVD transfer. Fans were happy, and to this day the fanbase is split 50/50 on which is the better transfer, '99 or 2003. I prefer '99.
I haven't gotten the Blu Ray, which was supposed to be ANOTHER transfer, so I didn't know. A friend told me it was just the 2003 version, thrown on a Blu Ray disc. So I really had had no interest in picking it up.
- tejastech08
- Rep: 194
Re: Most Recent Horror Movie You've Seen....
The Blu-ray is allegedly a cross between the Cundey transfer and the Divimax transfer, with the day scenes being similar to the Cundey one and the night scenes being the same as the Divimax. I personally think it looks great. I've seen comparison screen shots and I think the blue filter was oversaturated on the Cundey version. I don't give a damn if it's what he originally intended. The Blu-ray looks a fuckload better. Here's a post over at High Def Digest where the poster took comparison pictures while watching both on his HDTV:
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/blu-ray … cenes.html
Notice, especially in the picture of the house at the bottom of his post, the large difference in detail. The pumpkin is almost unrecognizable in the DVD one and if you look at the side of the house, the blue filter seems to take away detail on the window and its frames.
There is still a blue tint to the night scenes, it's just not ultra saturated like the Cundey version.
