Ghostkeeper, Back To Haunt You

Code Red has rapidly been re-releasing their DVD catalog onto blu (and I really hope they don't stop before they get to The Carrier!), the latest of which is the atmospheric Canadian horror Ghostkeeper.  And just to amuse myself, I decide to change the format of this review a little bit as a throwback to my coverage of Redeemer, my very first DVD/ Blu-ray comparison on this site, which was another unusual Code Red quasi-slasher.

Update 8/24/17 - 1/24/26: Ghost Keeper is back on the market, this time courtesy of Canadian International Pictures, one of those Vinegar Syndrome partner labels.  It's a new 4k scan, but they only saw fit to release it as a 1080p BD, presumably because the source is still just a 35mm print.  So let's see how much it improves upon the previous blu.

1981's Ghostkeeper is, in a lot of ways, a low budget version of The Shining.  Three characters get snowed in at a giant, closed down lodge, only to suspect that they may be sharing the space with some unearthly staffers.  And like The Shining, it's a question right up to the end of how much of the menace is supernatural, and how much of it is their mental health and them being a danger to themselves.  But it's not only akin to Kubrick's film in terms of premise.  Like The Shining, Jim Makichuk's film is a slow burn, getting a lot of mileage out of a terrific location and surrounding snowy landscapes.  And as with that film, the bulk of the weight is placed on the dramatic performances rather than effects or shocks.  Not that this cast is quite on par with Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duval, but they're pretty strong for virtual unknowns; and the film veers far enough away that this film manages to stand on its shadow as something different and more than just a Shining knock-off.

1) 2012 Code Red DVD; 2) 2017 Code Red BD; 3) 2026 CPI BD.

Despite the back of the Code Red blu-ray case claiming 1.85:1, both of their versions are 1.78:1.  But there's more going on here than just the same master being upgraded to blu.  The original 2012 30th Anniversary DVD gave us a "brand new master from the only surviving 35mm print," and the new blu describes itself as a "2016 HD Scan of the only surviving vault element."  Looking at the framing, you can tell it's a new scan because it has slightly altered framing (the blu is pulled out just a smidge further).  That "vault element," though, appears to be the same print as the DVD, as it shares a lot of the same print damage.  But then again, a bunch of the print damage has been cleaned up; and as you can see in the second set of shots, a few bits of damage are unique to the blu-ray transfer.  In short, though, Code Red blu-ray is a lot cleaner with substantially less chemical marks, dirt, scratches and pops in the soundtrack than their DVD had.  And their HD naturally sharpens some softness and clarifies edges (grain is natural here), though there isn't a whole lot of new detail pulled out of this fresh scan.  The biggest difference you'll notice between the two versions is actually the color timing..

1) 2012 Code Red DVD; 2) 2017 Code Red BD; 3) 2026 CPI BD.

The DVD has a definite greener push that the initial blu-ray corrects.  Hey, just like with Redeemer!  The green push wasn't quite as bad on the Ghostkeeper DVD, but it's still a pretty pronounced difference comparing the two formats.  The white of the snow makes it pretty obvious and easy to spot the difference, but actually it plays an even more important role in the dark scenes, of which there are many.

Then, even more noticeably, this movie has some issues with the black levels.  In the regular daytime scenes, it's not such a critical difference, but the interior nighttime scenes are a problem. To be fair, this is an issue with the aged print, not Code Red's home video transfers.  Except on the DVD, they often looked downright yellow.  So the blu's color timing makes the film look better in these scenes, despite still not being able to bring out much more detail in the image.  In the most extreme cases, like the shot below, you can barely tell what you're supposed to be looking at.  But at least it doesn't look like it was filmed deep within a cesspool.

1) 2012 Code Red DVD; 2) 2017 Code Red BD; 3) 2026 CPI BD.

So what about the CPI blu now?  Well, they're the first to really present this film to 1.85:1 for a start.  And they do it by adding a little more to the sides rather than matting down the 1.78 framing.  Grain was already surprisingly well rendered on the Code Red blu, so that's not much of an improvement; and since we're still using "the only known 35mm print" (to quote the back of this case), the fact that it's a 4k scan isn't yielding much more detail or clarity.  It may even be harder to see what's going on in that third set of shots now than it was before.  But the colors still aren't yellow, possibly finding an ideal median, in fact, between the two Code Reds.  And they've cleaned up the print damage even more - look at the second set of shots for a good example of that.  So in brief, it's the best version so far, but the two blus are hardly worlds apart.

Code Red's just presents the original mono track in Dolby Digital 2.0 with no subtitle options.  It has some hiss and pops, but nothing too distracting.  Their blu bumps up the same track to DTS-HD, still without any subtitles.  CPI takes another pass at the same mono track, still in DTS-HD, and finally adds optional English subtitles.

Unlike Redeemer, Code Red's DVD of Ghostkeeper had some terrific extras, and thankfully they've all been carried over.  There's an excellent audio commentary with the writer/ director and the two main protagonists, Riva Spier and Murray Ord.  Then both versions list a "featurette" on the case, but really give us two separate interviews, one with co-star Georgie Collins (the ghostkeeper herself), and an audio-only one that plays as a sort of mini-audio commentary over select footage by the DP, John Holbrook.  Both versions also include a couple bonus Code Red trailers (including Cut & Run on the blu).  But the blu-ray adds something new to the mix, too.  An opening scene (above) that was tacked onto the home video release of this film, depicting an unrelated character getting chased and killed, presumably by the Windigo, outside the lodge.  It's clearly just taken from a video source, full-frame and interlaced; and the director never wanted this scene added to his film.  But it's very cool to get to see it as a special feature.

Now, CPI's new special edition has almost everything from the Code Red disc.  They're missing one key feature: the audio commentary.  But they've made up for it with a bunch of new extras, including two new audio commentaries.  The first brings back Riva Spier and Ord, and could be seen as a replacement for the Code Red commentary, but they lose a critical voice: Jim Makichuk.  They replace him with associate producer and co-writer Doug MacLeod, who is a welcome addition. But losing the commentary is a loss you really feel.  The second commentary is a far more disposable one by the Hysteria Continues guys and film expert Amanda Reyes.  And speaking of podcasts, they include an episode of a podcast called The New World Pictures about, Ghostkeeper, which plays over the film like a third commentary.

But the best is yet to come.  We get new interviews with participants Paul Zaza, the composer, and Dave Makichuk (yes, related, of course) who acted as a story consultant.  Then there's a Q&A recorded at a 2024 screening by Ord, MacLeod and Dave Makichuk.  And we get a couple nice vintage inclusions, specifically a (very) short student film by Jim Makichuk (1971's Night School, above, which looks like it was shot in 8mm, framed at 1.32:1 and ripped from a non-anamorphic 240p source), and the 2013 video pitch he made for Ghostkeeper 2 on Kickstarter.  and if you still want more outsider commentary, we get a video interview with horror expert Chris Alexander, and another with Canadian filmmakers Paul Lynch (Prom Night, Humongous) and David Winning (lots of Hallmark Christmas movies).  This blu comes in reversible artwork, and if you ordered the limited edition, a slipcover.  It also includes a 32-page booklet with essays by Eric Volmers & Yasmina Ketita, plus a vintage interview with Jim Makichuk.  CIP definitely didn't cheap out on this release.

So the initial blu-ray was a nice upgrade of an already pretty solid DVD.  And this new blu is an... incremental step forward.  The PQ upgrade isn't huge, but about as good as we're going to get if all we have is the same old print as a source.  And we've got some nice, additional extras, despite the previous releases already having a fairly satisfying package, and we do lose one of the best parts with the director's commentary.  Each release improved upon the previous one, and so yes, this latest one is the best yet.  A die-hard fan might feel they need both blus, though; and a casual one will probably be equally satisfied with either one.

Four A24s, Part 4: Bring Her Back

The best horror film of 2025, and quite possibly the best film of the year period.  The Philippou brothers' Talk To Me was an impressive debut that outclassed the annual teen horror fare, but with Bring Her Back, I really think they've graduated to an enduring horror classic.  Only time will tell of course, but revisiting A24's blu-ray reconfirmed everything I experienced when I saw it the first time: a consistently intelligent, taught horror story that manages to balance the authentic human drama and the supernatural through and through.  Like if you look at Hereditary, another generally first class horror drama (are the kids still saying "elevated?"), but all the witchy stuff in the last act betrays the weight of everything that led up to it.  It's a really tough balancing act to pull off, keeping these two disparate elements perfectly in tune with each other from beginning to end.  The Exorcist managed it, and Bring Her Back manages it.  And that's on top of everything else it nails.

This movie asks a lot of its child actors, yet gets excellent, nuanced performances out of each of them (actually, something it has in common with The Exorcist and Hereditary); but it's Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water) who really blows you away here, somehow managing to be the most lovable and most horrible at the same time, without sacrificing her perfect veracity for a single moment.  And when I say "most horrible," yeah, this movie goes hard.  Uncompromising is the word; there's no place this movie is afraid to go, but it also never veers away from its sympathetic human story for cheap shocks - not that it fails to shock.  It's got an effective, minimalistic score, terrific camerawork and some seriously unnerving special effects.  And it looks great in 4k.

2025 A24 UHD.

A24's UHD frames the film in its OAR of 2.00:1, except for a few scenes that shift to 1.78:1 (an intentional aspect of the film), like the last shot directly above.  Now, Bring Her Back was shot on digital, so there's no film grain to judge, not even "fake grain" like on Showing Up.  So if you look at all that bokeh behind Hawkins in that second set of shots, for example, it's nice and smooth, but all of her dangling hairs are delicately captured and discernible in front of it, with no hint of blocking, banding or pixelation.  These guys don't cut any corners with their encodes, and in this case, they've even sprung for a triple-layer disc.

And as with the previous A24 discs we've looked at, BHB comes with an impressive 7.1 TrueHD mix, an English descriptive track and optional English & Spanish subtitles.

The Philippou brothers provide a highly enthusiastic audio commentary and also contribute to a good, 20-minute behind the scenes featurette.  Besides that, they've included one not particularly compelling deleted scene; but they did talk about it in the commentary.  So if you listened to that, it's nice to be able to actually see it.  Finally, we get the "Russian video" which is the VHS tape within the film that Hawkins' character keeps referring to - handy if any viewers at home want to try bringing back someone from the dead.  Also included are the standard six art cards.

Most of you guys probably guessed this would be how I ended my Four A24s series: their biggest, most successful cult horror title of the year (Marty Supreme was their biggest money maker in general), and such an artistic triumph.  I'm happy to be Mr. Obvious, though, when it comes to such a satisfying film.  and thank goodness, the quality of its physical release lives up to it.  In a couple years, I could see Second Sight coming through, conducting a bunch of additional cast and crew interviews, recording a couple video essays, and releasing an even more packed special edition, probably in a great big box with a hardcover book.  But they're not likely to improve on this presentation of the film itself, and the most compelling extra will still probably be this commentary.  So this is a pretty safe investment and just a highly entertaining disc.

Four A24s, Part 3: A Different Man

Today we have another BD-only (as opposed to 4k Ultra HD) release; but in this case, I'm a little less surprised they went that route.  A Different Man was one of A24's least successful films at the box office, not even recouping half of its modest $1.4 million budget back, which is a real shame.  If you haven't seen it yet, you might be looking at this movie wondering: is this just a Mask 2.0, another afterschool-spirited film made to tell us to be nicer to people with disabilities?  Like that inane one with Julia Louis Dreyfus and the giant parrot?  Thankfully, no.  This is a weird, thoughtful, subversive little movie, perhaps more in tune with the Jim Carrey Mask than the Eric Stoltz Mask.  Although actually, if you were to moleculary fuse the two together in a Brundle pod, you'd be getting closer.

Captain America's Sebastian Stan is surprisingly natural as a nebbish Woody Allen-type, a struggling actor with neurofibromatosis and a crush on his playwright neighbor (Renate Reinsve, The Worst Person in the World).  He agrees to participate in a futuristic medical experiment that transforms him, both physically and circumstantially, until a sort of doppleganger (Adam Pearson, Under the Skin, Drib) arrives to take everything away from him.  What results is a dark, cutting and mind-bending look at the humiliating interplay between art and artist.  Also, the soundtrack is terrific and the special make-up effects won the Academy Award.  I enjoyed writer/ director Aaron Schimberg's first film (Chained for Life) well enough, but this is a much more self-possessed and stimulating work.

2025 A24 BD.

A24 presents A Different Man in its proper OAR of 1.85:1.  This film was shot on 16mm (another reason they might've felt this title would be fine without a 4k), so there's a lot of film grain, which is handy because it makes it easy to judge the transfer.  And I have to say, wow, once again A24 has exceeded my expectations with how perfectly encoded this is.  This is as finely captured and preserved as you could hope for outside of a UHD; and even then, the distinction would probably be fairly mild. 

And they've gone all out in the audio department, too, giving this a 7.1 TrueHD mix with Dolby Atmos, plus an English descriptive track and optional English and Spanish subtitles.

And the extras are strong, too.  Schimberg and his two leading men give a breezy but still incisive audio commentary, backed up by a solid 20+ minute 'making of' featurette.  There are also four deleted scenes, a couple of which we'd heard about in the commentary track, and a fun fifteen minute high-speed document of the entire shoot in 8mm.  Again, no trailer.  I guess A24 doesn't believe in including them.  No biggie, but considering how dedicated to perfection they seem to be with their physical releases in all other releases, it's a bit curious.  We do get another six art cards, this time with pages of the screenplay printed on the back of each one.

A24 is one more consistent production companies in cinema history, especially considering all of the big chances they take with their films.  But still, usually I'm happy to just see them once and move on.  Maybe I'll revisit 'em on streaming a decade down the line when I realize I can barely remember them anymore.  And this is one I really wasn't expecting much of, but it turned out to be a real must-have release for me.  Who knew?

Four A24s, Part 2: I Saw the TV Glow

It took me a while to get my hands on this one.  I Saw the TV Glow sold out fast upon its initial release last summer.  Apparently they seriously underestimated the demand for this title.  And then it popped up on a few online shops, but in very limited quantities.  So if you didn't snatch it up within the first day of its listing, you missed out again.  An alternative Canadian edition came out, but it was missing the special features, so pass.  By the time A24 finally came out with more copies, my enthusiasm had been sapped, and I was questioning whether I really needed this in my collection anyway.  Sure, I'd enjoyed it when it first came out.  It had some great visuals and some funky, weird moments.  But was it really an "I must own it" masterwork, or just a decent new release I got a kick out of?  So I held off.  But I eventually broke down and threw it in the cart when I was ordering some other titles (watch this space for Parts 3 & 4).  And now that I've revisited it on blu, yes, it is a must own masterwork that I needed in my collection.

2024's I Saw the TV Glow is Jane Schoenbrun's follow-up to the her initial cult hit, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.  That was interesting, but it feels like a warm-up for this far more accomplished work.  This film is directed with a more confident hand, with striking visuals and richly layered performances.  It also has a clever, original premise: where young adults' shared obsession with a young adult horror show (a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Goosebumps) overtake their lives to a shockingly literal degree.  This is obviously, not buried particularly deeply in the subtext, a story about coming out - or not - as trans.  But the themes are so personal and universal at the same time, that they should prove powerful for anyone who's ever repressed a dream.

2024 A24 BD.

A24 slightly mattes this film to a proper 1.85:1, and occasionally pillarboxes it to 1.38:1 for the show-within-the-show scenes.  You might be surprised to hear that this film was shot on 35mm rather than digital, and it's very well captured and encoded here.  Film grain is consistent and rendered as well as you could ask for on a 1080 blu-ray.  The director refers to this getting a 4k release in the special features, but A24 only sprung for a BD.  That's a little disappointing (again, it seems like they didn't anticipate the audience this film would develop), but as good as this looks, it's hard to complain.  In other hands, this could've looked worse on a UHD.

A24 has also given this an impressive 7.1 TrueHD mix, with an English descriptive track and optional English and Spanish subtitles.

And the special features are more satisfying than they were on Showing Up, starting with an audio commentary by Schoenbrun and star Brigette Lundy-Paine.  They start off unserious and frankly a little annoying - I was starting to think maybe I should've just picked up that Canadian disc and saved myself the hassle.  But as the film unfurls they find their groove and start providing some genuine insight.  Then there's a 'making of,' which is just over ten minutes, but offers a pretty fun look behind the scenes, followed by a collection of deleted and extended scenes.  Like the other A24 releases, this is a digipack housed in a side-loading slipbox and includes six art cards, in this case styled to look like Polaroids.

So it was a bit of a rocky road, but I'm glad I've finally got my grubby little hands on this.

Four A24s, Part 1: Showing Up

To start off the new year, I'm introducing A24 to our label collection with the next short series of posts.  Now, you might be saying, hey dummy, you've already made several A24 posts: The Lighthouse, On the Rocks, You Hurt My Feelings, Zola...  To which I would say, first of all, "dummy?"  Let's try to keep it civil here.  But no, those were all A24 films they released in conjunction with other labels.  These next four discs are from their own in-house label that they sell primarily through their website.  And depending on the title, specialty dealers like Diabolik might stock a few copies; but they tend to sell out of there fast.  Their first release was Krisha on blu-ray in 2017 and they've got BD and UHD releases of The Smashing Machine due out at the end of the month.

We're starting today with 2022's Showing Up on 4k Ultra HD (they do also have a 1080p BD version).  This film has writer/ director Kelly Reichardt reuniting with Michelle Williams, who'd also starred in her films Wendy & Lucy, Meek's Cutoff and Certain Women.  This time they've created what I would call an especially light comedy about the academic art world.  At least that's the milieu; I guess you'd say the story is more just about Williams stay afloat within this world, which is also populated by her dysfunctional family, passive aggressive landlord, and an ailing pigeon she feels responsible for.  Reichardt isn't really following a plot here so much as just building a world breathing life into it.  It's populated by a bunch of fun supporting players including James le Gros, Amanda Plummer, Matt Malloy (In the Company of Men), Andre 3000 of Outkast and Judd Hirsch.  And the artwork itself fleshes the viewing experience out further.

2023 A24 UHD.

This is framed at 1.78:1.  And, well, as I'm always reminding you guys, HDR screenshots look darker than in an online, SD format, because they're intended to be viewed on a higher nit display.  But even on my HDR set, this transfer is kinda low-lit.  I assume this is a originating factor of the film itself, rather than the home video transfer, since new releases being put out by their own distributor are surely taken more or less directly from the DCP.  It's not like we're judging a restoration made from old film elements here.  In fact, despite the deep 16mm-like grain structure here, this movie was shot on digital and made to look more film-like in post.  But the grain is helpful because it shows us this 3840p disc is perfectly rendering each fleck, authentic or not.  This is as sharp and detailed as you can get.  The saturation isn't super high, but the colors are natural and vivid in those scenes where the artwork is prominent and appropriately muted when characters are in their dingy home environments.

The audio is given an impressive True HD 7.1 with Dolby Atmos track.  It also includes an English descriptive audio track for the visually impaired and optional English subtitles for the hard of hearing.  There are Spanish subtitles as well.

Cal State, Long Beach, CA, January 2020

And A24 tends to cook up some nice extras for their releases.  The main special feature here (the specialist?) is an audio commentary by Reichardt, her DP Christopher Blauvert and Michelle Segre, who made a bunch of the art featured in the film.  It's a good chat, but they're diligent in crediting all the local artists whose work appears throughout the movie, and unfortunately this winds up equating to them spending a lot of time dropping an alienating and seemingly endless list of names that means nothing to almost all of the listeners.  Still, most of it is engaging and insightful.  Then there are two "short films" by Reichardt, which are nice to have here, but it's kind of overstating the matter to call them short films.  They're under ten minutes apiece of 1.66:1 footage of some of the art pieces from the film being created.

And that's it; no trailer or anything else.  Like all of these, it's a digibook in a side-loading slipbox and includes six art cards (particularly appropriate in the case of this movie).  Of the four, this is the slimmest special features package.  But it's an ideal presentation of the film itself, which is a joy that doesn't need to be adorned with bonuses.

Kenneth Branagh's A Midwinter's Tale for Christmas

Happy holidays, everybody! After the last couple horror and cult titles, I thought we could lighten our spirits with a gentle faux-Shakespearian comedy by Kenneth Branagh: 1995's A Midwinter's Tale. This is a film that fans had been pestering to get on DVD for ages, Apparently, the fullscreen VHS was fairly abysmal. But it took until 2010 for Warner Bros to finally release it as part of their Archives MOD collection. I was a little less fussed about the whole thing, since I owned the old 1997 laserdisc from Columbia Tri-Star, which was nice and widescreen. But I'm also always happy to upgrade my old laserdiscs to a more convenient format when I can. So I think this would be the perfect time to compare our two viewing options of this quiet Christmas film.

Update 12/24/25 - 12/24/25: It's Christmastime once again, ten years to the day from when I first made this post, and we're updating this post with Warner Archives' 2023 blu-ray edition.

I used the term "faux-Shakespearian" because this isn't actually another of Branagh's impeccable Shakespeare adaptions along the lines of Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, or Love's Labour's Lost. There is no Shakespeare play called "A Midwinter's Tale." Instead, this is a small, cheerful comedy about an eccentric but mostly determined group of actors who assemble to stage a production of Hamlet on Christmas Eve. Of course things go wrong, people fly in all directions, and of course everybody learns to work together and pull it off in the end.

Originally titled In the Bleak Midwinter, it's a small, privately financed black and white comedy made partially as a break from the studio system after 1994's Frankenstein, feeling sort of like Branagh's Clerks, with simple stagey shots (the stills look impressive here, but you'll find the camera never moves, just settling on a set-up and staying there for minutes at a time), campy jokes and an ensemble of colorful characters played largely by the supporting actors from his previous films. Besides his alumni, though, there are also fun turns by Joan Collins and Absolutely Fabulous's Jennifer Saunders and Julia Sawalha. It's not a masterwork like some of Branagh's grander accomplishments, but it's an agreeable little comedy I can't imagine many people disliking, and one you can easily forget and return to again and again.

1) Columbia Tri-Star 1997 LD; 2) Warner Bros 2010 DVDR; 3) Warner Archives BD.

So, I wasn't as excited as most fans about Warner Bros putting this out in widescreen since I already had it that way on the laserdisc; but I have to say their DVD does look better. The AR is roughly the same on both discs - the laserdisc claims 1.85:1 on the back, but is more like 1.80:1, and the DVD is 1.78:1. But Warner Bros manages to find more picture on all four sides. The grain looks fairly grainy for standard def and detail is definitely more refined than on the laser. Edges look artificially enhanced on occasion; but for an MOD DVDR, it's pretty good.

But of course, the new HD master is better.  The aspect ratio has been adjusted to 1.66:1, which mostly uncovers more vertical information, but trims the sides a little bit.  Gone, thankfully, is that edge enhancement, which looks more obvious to me now that I'm comparing it to the blu without any of it.  It's a brighter image, which brings out a little more detail from the previously murky shadows.  Grain is surprisingly light, even less evident than the DVD.  It's probably worth noting that almost every other Warner Archive that was released the same month as this was from a new 4k scan; they were probably sitting on this master for a while before they put this out.  But it's certainly a strong improvement on everything that came before it.  And that includes the original mono audio which has been bumped up to lossless DTS-HD.

The laserdisc had nothing by way of extras, so I wasn't too surprised by all the online reports of Warner Bros' DVD being entirely barebones as well. Being a DVDR, it doesn't even have smart chapter stops; they're just every 10 or 15 minutes, and the menu's completely generic. It's not entirely a wasteland, though, as neither the case nor posts I've read about this disc mention it, but it does have the film's trailer on it, which even the laserdisc didn't have. So that's nice. On the other hand, the laser had closed captioning, while this DVD has no subs or anything. And it's got better cover art, because whose ever idea it was color everybody's glasses yellow on the laserdisc cover really ought to take some vacation time. And now the BD is still essentially barebones, but it's the best of the three with the trailer, proper menus, optional subtitles and even less colorized artwork.

So sometimes Kenneth Branagh makes great films, and sometimes he makes fun things to catch on cable one night. This falls into the latter category, but it's one of his best out of that secondary tier.  Plus it's a Christmas film, and we certainly need more of those that aren't schmaltzy and terrible (this is only moderately schmaltzy), so it could be a good one for your collection.

The Slightly More Definitive Rabid

So, Arrow had a little trouble with their release of David Cronenberg's commercial debut, Shivers, what with TIFF remastering a cut version of the film and David himself approving it without apparently looking at it. But they're fixing it (gotta love it when these companies do the right thing by their fans), and eventually they'll be reissuing their loaded special edition blu-ray with a proper uncut transfer which is finally here! In the meantime, they created a similarly packed special edition of Cronenberg's follow-up feature, Rabid, which happily is not cut or otherwise problematic. In fact, it's pretty great. So while we wait for that Shivers fix, let's take some time to appreciate Arrow's Rabid.

Update 5/8/15 - 12/23/25: It's a decade later, and Rabid's circled back around for another swipe at the crown, this time via Scream Factory's 2025 2-disc 4k UHD special edition.

Rabid is in a lot of ways very much like Shivers: a weirdly sexual, medically induced form of slimy body horror turns into a contagious disease that makes people lose control and become homicidal. But this one's bigger in scope - where Shivers was confined to one apartment building, the chaos in Rabid spreads throughout the entire city of Montreal. It also stands apart for being the one straight film by the quite famous model/ porn star Marilyn Chambers. And she's quite good here; it's a little surprising she didn't go on to more regular acting work. Anyway, the whole film is much more intelligent and gripping than its description makes it sound like it has any right to be. And it's thanks almost entirely to David Cronenberg who really knows how to tell this bizarre yet curiously relatable story.

So Rabid got a very healthy 2015 upgrade in the UK with this Arrow's blu-ray/ DVD combo pack, but we don't have to look at it in a vacuum. I've also got the 2004 US special edition DVD from Somerville House, which was the best release going for a long time.  Metrodome's disc in the UK, which I used to own, was a better, anamorphic picture, but it was cut - so forget that.  Heck, now in 2025, you can pretty much forget every past release, thanks to Scream Factory's new BD/ UHD film upping the film to 4k.  Well, maybe.

1) 2004 Somerville DVD; 2) 2015 Arrow DVD; 3) 2015 Arrow BD;
4) 2025 Scream Factory BD; 5) 2025 Scream Factory UHD.

Right off the bat, the Somerville disc isn't even anamorphic, plus it's interlaced; so the fact that it's standard def isn't even the worst part. It's also the same basic 1.78:1 framing, but zoomed in closer so there's less picture around all four edges. The colors are pretty different, too, though there it's hard to say which is better. The Somerville looks a little more natural, but Cronenberg doesn't always seem to prefer natural, so that's maybe a little up in the air.  But clearly Arrow's transfer, which was done by Lions Gate and the fine folks at TIFF, has blown the old DVD out of the water in all other respects: detail, naturally rendered film grain, compression (it's a dual-layer disc, of course).

But now Scream Factory has come to take the film to 4k, with a fresh scan of the CRI negative (color replacement... basically a generation in between the original camera negative and prints that would've been struck from it).  And interestingly, they've opened it up to 1.67:1, revealing another smidgen of additional picture.  The colors have been re-timed again - the second set of shots is most obviously cooler, but the colors have changed throughout.  In the first set of shots, it actually looks more like the Somerville (should his robe have blue or green spots?  I wish I knew).  Grain isn't super clearly captured, even on the UHD.  It's actually a more modest upgrade than I expected, which I guess is more to Arrow's credit.

All three discs offer the original English mono track, though the Arrow and SF are lossless (LPCM and DTS-HD respectively.  Somerville also has a French mono dub, but lacks subtitles, which Arrow and SF both do have.  Arrow also threw in an isolated music track, which Scream dropped.

Extras-wise, it's another big win. First of all, the DVD special edition already delivered the goods with Cronenberg's commentary, which is excellent, and his video interview, plus the theatrical trailer.

Then Arrow adds a bunch of new stuff, too. There's a second audio commentary, by William Beard, who wrote a book on Cronenberg. He's quite well prepared and has plenty to say, another very good commentary. Then there are interviews with producer Ivan Reitman and Don Carmody of Cinepix, both of which are fun and insightful. And there's another good interview with Joe Blasco, which is good but also rather short. David Cronenberg's episode of The Directors, a 50+ minute retrospective of his career with a lot of big name stars (including Chambers), is here too. It's turned up on a couple of Cronenberg's releases, so if you're like me, you've already got it on your Scanners DVD or something else - or maybe you've even got it on its stand-alone DVD, since it was originally released separately. But it's quite good, and a number of fans probably haven't already got it, so it's cool they gave us another opportunity.

Then there's another featurette on Rabid and Cinepix, which is mostly pretty redundant, where one woman tells us things we already heard on the other features... though we do get a bit more from Biasco as well. Really, my only complaint about the extras, which are otherwise excellent, is the redundancy. You'll hear certain anecdotes, like how Cinepix started in softcore porn or how Marilyn Chambers was the Ivory Snow soap girl, literally four or more times. It starts to feel like a bit of a chore by the third time they come around.

The DVD had a nice little 2-page insert with notes, but Arrow trumps that with a 40+ page booklet, including an interview with Marilyn Chambers. And for hardcore collectors, there's a steelbook edition available as well; but me, I like the reversible cover art with the original poster art, as you see above.

And now we have Scream Factory's edition, which both adds and subtracts.  All the DVD stuff is here, as is most of Arrow's.  They dropped The Directors, which isn't too surprising, as well as that short Biasco interview.  But they make up for it with new stuff.  First of all, I should point out that Scream released this on blu in 2016, so shortly after the Arrow but well before this.  And that edition had some unique extras, which have been carried over here, including an on-camera interview with Susan Roman, who played Chambers' best friend, a unique commentary with two pornography experts (focusing, naturally, on Chambers' career), as well as a critical visual essay.  Plus they added a photo gallery, a TV spot and a dew radio spots.

So those are nice additions if you're coming from the Arrow, but if you already had the 2016 Scream blu, they've only added two new things for 2025: a pair of expert interviews, which, eh, are okay; but they don't add much to the conversation that all the other extras didn't already.  I'm happy to take 'em, but these shouldn't be the reason you triple-dip.  It does also come in a nice slipcover.

So, yeah I'll go ahead and call Scream Factory's latest edition of Rabid the new definitive edition.  But it's not going to blow your mind.  And you'll still want to hang onto your Arrow discs.  Or not.  The extras we lost aren't that big a deal.  In fact, it's pretty minor if you already have The Directors on another disc, like many of us do.  It's all rather incremental.