The Frighteners, Or How I Learned To Stop Waiting for Arrow and Love the Turbine

Y'know, I think 1996's The Frighteners may well be my favorite Peter Jackson film.  He's certainly made more ambitious films, and more charmingly scrappy indie flicks.  Heavenly Creatures may be more moving, The Lord Of the Rings trilogy more epic, and Braindead more gleefully gruesome.  But this one just situates in the perfect middle: Baby Bear's Just Right porridge (and featuring Jeffrey Combs' greatest performance after Re-Animator).  Interestingly, Jackson originally presented this to Robert Zemeckis as a potential Tales From the Crypt feature film.  Zemeckis says in the documentary (discussed below) that he didn't think it was a good fit, but wanted to produce it anyway.  Really, he didn't think The Frighteners made a good match for the tone of Tales From the Crypt, but Bordello of Blood did?  The Frighteners' distinct blend of humor turning increasingly dark feels like the ideal encapsulation of the TFtC spirit; the best you could ask for outside of an authentic EC tale.  But hey, whatever got us to this end point, I wouldn't change it now, because the movie we've got now, as it is, is just about perfect.

So it's interesting that it largely lives on now as an extended "director's cut."  I put that in quotes because, in his own documentary on this film, Jackson specifies the theatrical cut is still his preferred director's cut, and he considers the extended cut a fun alternative for fans.  I enjoy the restored material, but I agree, the tighter cut is better.  The extended version, which runs a hefty twelve and a half minutes longer, mostly features more comic bits with the comic relief ghost characters, and there's a pinch too much of that for my tastes in the theatrical cut already.  Some of it is clever, many of the effects are well done and a couple of the action sequences feel a little more fleshed out; but there's a reason he cut it in the first place.  There's only one cut I regret, and it's no coincidence that it's the only cut imposed by censors rather than the filmmaker's inclination towards making a superior picture, where Dee Wallace stabs Jake Busey for their mutual enjoyment.  It's a great little moment that says everything about who they are and where they're at in life; and I'd actually love a third cut of the film that's just the theatrical version plus that.  But c'est la vie.  At least we get to see it in the extended cut.

Universal first released The Frighteners on DVD all the way back in 1998.  It was anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1, but pretty disappointing considering that same year there had been a massive special edition with four and a half hours of extras and a new extended cut, while this DVD just had the basic theatrical cut and a fullscreen trailer.  But in 2005, overseas fans got what we all wanted when Universal released special edition DVD sets in various regions around the world, with everything from the laserdisc and a new introduction by Jackson.  I personally opted to import the German version because it was spread over four discs rather then three like in most other countries.  There was no additional content or anything, but I hoped it might have a better encode?  Anyway, they did make a US version, too, but it was a single flipper disc that dropped the theatrical cut, so it was clearly the worst option.

And apart from reissues with variant covers or whatever, that was it until the days of HD, when Universal did pretty good by the movie in 2011 with a 15th Anniversary edition, which included both cuts and all the legacy extras.  Unlike Jackson's earlier work, it was looking pretty sweet on home video, and that BD carried us over to the 4k era.  In 2022, Germany's Turbine produced an exclusive 4k restoration as a pretty massive, and certainly not cheap, 6-disc BD/ UHD set.  That included a BD and UHD of a 1.78:1 open matte version, which I guess has marginal novelty value for truly enraptured Jackson lovers; but if you asked me, it basically just came down to paying a lot of money for an intentionally misframed version.  So I held out...

...Especially since there was strong reason to hope for a preferable alternative!  Arrow included a promotional postcard for a Frighteners release of their own in their 2020 4k UHD release of King of New York (confirmed in this unboxing video, screenshot above).  So when Turbine came out, many of us were already in ye olde' "wait and see which is better" mode.  Of course, there still has yet to be an official announcement to this day, and everyone assuming it was just around the corner is feeling pretty deflated.  Speculation is that Turbine signed an exclusivity agreement to be the sole international distributor for this film for X number of years, foiling Arrow's initial plans.  Maybe it's still coming eventually.  But then there's also always the concern that even if it does happen, Jackson will want to create some kind of janky AI-enhanced, 200fps DNR'd redux that would actually be worse than the 2011 blu-ray anyway.  Meanwhile, Turbine eventually released a much more reasonably priced edition that dropped the 1.78:1 discs and the 1080p version, but still included both cuts in 4k plus all of the special features in a very handsome 3-disc BD/ UHD set.  So I finally broke down and gave up on Arrow (which probably means it will be announced tomorrow, amiright?), and copped the Turbine, which I have for you now.

1) 1998 Universal DVD; 2) 2005 Universal DVD theatrical; 3) 2005 Universal DVD ext;
4) 2011 Universal BD theatrical; 5) 2011 Universal BD ext;
6) 2025 Turbine UHD theatrical; 7) 2025 Turbine UHD ext.

The US disc starts us off at 2.40, while the German disc (on both cuts... on every release with the two cuts; their transfers are identical) opens it up a smidgen to 2.35:1.  You can also see the framing shift vertically, showing more along the bottom and less along the top.  This framing persists through the rest of the subsequent releases, which are also 2.35, though the UHD reveals slivers more picture along the edges.  Color-wise, there are never any vast swings.  The original DVD is a bit red, which was corrected by the special edition DVD, and the UHD is a pinch cooler than all previous editions.  Turbine's Dolby Vision HDR pulls a bit out of the shadows, but it's not like the previous blu was crushing stuff.  It is more naturally defuse, though, and the 4k resolution definitely captures the film grain much more thoroughly and naturally.  In short, each edition is a subtle but distinct improvement over the previous, but you'll really appreciate the boost if you've skipped any of them along the way.

The initial 1998 DVD starts us off with the original 5.1 track, optional English subtitles, plus a French dub and Spanish subs.  The special edition keeps all of that and also adds a new DTS 5.1 to the director's cut.  They also add a German dub (of course) and additional French, German, Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovenian, Swedish and Turkish subs.  Then the blu-ray scales back all those options, returning us to just the 5.1 (now in DTS-HD) and French dub (still lossy) with English, Spanish and French subtitles.  And finally, Turbine gives us The English and German tracks in 5.1 DTS-HD, 2.0 mix-downs also in DTS-HD and a new Atmos mix for the extended cut, with optional English and German subtitles.

So, as I mentioned above, the original DVD only included a fullscreen trailer as an extra.  But the the special edition DVD, and the subsequent releases covered here, rounded up all of the extras from the laserdisc, which is a ton.  We're talking four and a half hours, not even including the commentary.  And it's a great commentary.  Jackson delivers it over the extended cut, and enthusiastically discusses all manner of the production, from pre to post.  But then that's like a pittance to the elaborate documentary he crafted, rivaled only by his Lord of the Rings appendixes.  This has everything, from the deleted scenes, extensive behind the scenes footage that sticks with scenes for long stretches of time (as opposed to your usual B-roll, which just gives us frustrating glimpses), outtakes, cast and crew interviews and more.  There's one section where he animates the film's storyboards, scores them and provides an audio commentary for that, pointing out all the ideas that didn't make it to the final film, etc.  It's a real treasure.  Jackson also shot a brief, new introduction to the bonus features for the special edition DVD, which has also made its way to the BD and UHD editions.

Now, besides that, Turbine has created an all new, feature-length retrospective.  And I am not just happy but surprised to report this new doc is great and doesn't simply repeat details adequately covered in the previous extras.  It features a Jake Busey, Dee Wallace and a whole bunch of crew members sharing additional, unheard memories of what it was like when LA came to New Zealand.  Besides just having the additional perspective of time, they get into less promotional-areas that the original supplementary materials skipped, like working with Michael J. Fox as his Parkinson's symptoms were staring to flare up or effects artist Wes Takahashi talking about how he was made to act as a sort of spy for ILM and Zemeckis when working with WETA.  This feels like the filmmakers did what I always pleading for them to do: watch the original extras and cut out all the repetition, so everything is fresh and adds to the conversation rather than repeating it.  So this is a great addition to the already comprehensive collection of extras, which to be clear, have been carried over in full on the Turbine release.

The 2022 edition came in an outer slipbox with a hefty 196-page book (but remember, it's all in German), plus a fold-out poster, six art cards and a replica of Frank Bannister's Psychic Investigator business card.  The three disc-set did away with all the swag, but was also released in three cover slipbox variants (using the same art pieces) with a back slip that does pass Grindhouse Mike's "does it fit int he box" test.  There's also a steelbook version of the three disc set that comes in a slipcover.

So who knows?  Maybe Arrow will still come out with their version one of these days, and hopefully not processed through Jackson's virtual reality machine.  But even if that day comes, I'm not sure there's much that bears improving upon here.

The Re-Animator Is the Dominator

Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator is in the weirdly unique position where its unrated version is actually shorter than its censored, R-rated version. By several minutes, too; not just a few seconds. I remember holding both VHS tapes in my hands back in the day and thinking they had to have been mislabeled; but no, it's true. Why? Because the R-rated version, though missing the most extreme, controversial shots like you'd expect, features a bunch of less shocking scenes trimmed out of the unrated version. I guess for pacing. But I grew up with both versions, and so, while horror fans naturally gravitate towards the bloody unrated version, I always thought something special was missing from it. Of course, something special was missing from the R-rated version, too; and if you've seen the film, you know exactly what moment I'm thinking about.  heh

Update 7/17/15 - 6/7/26: Wow, talk about a page in need of an update, huh?  Well, I've skipped a few editions since I originally wrote this, but I'm back with the new 4k UHD from Second Sight.  Oh, and yes, the title of this post does come from the fact that I'm listening to this song.  I'm easily susceptible.

When Elite Entertainment released their excellent 10th anniversary Re-Animator laserdisc, it included, amongst many other things, the unrated version with all of the deleted scenes as extras and a detailed timeline of where each of those would fit into the complete film. I always wanted to use those to make a composite cut, but back in those days, getting a digital recording of a laserdisc and trying to edit a high quality movie file on a personal computer was technically possible, but rather daunting.

So, when Elite came out with their Millennium Edition special edition, I got that; and when Anchor Bay came out with their re-release, including a new 70-odd minute making of documentary I switched to that version. And I've still got that one, so we can use it for a comparison here. Yeah, Image put out a blu-ray; but I never felt compelled to upgrade. And I'm glad I didn't, because a year later, the German DVD company Capelight came out with their own 3-disc special edition blu. And not only did it feature a new and much improved 4k scan and restoration from the original negatives, which frankly would've been enough, but they used that new transfer to create "the Integral Cut," which combined all of the extra R-rated version's footage with the essential unrated moments. It's the Re-Animator I've always wanted... although admittedly some of those long scenes of Bruce Abbot and Barbara Crampton could've been left on the cutting room floor. But still, this is now my definitive Re-Animator; it's great.

Now, Capelight's released a couple different versions of their new Re-Animator blu. A cheaper single disc edition, a combo pack with Bride of Re-Animator, and the one I opted for: the 3-disc mediabook set. The 3-disc set is two dual-layer blus and one DVD, containing all the extras (more on that later). It has the Integral cut, of course, but also the traditional unrated version from the same 4k scan, in case you're not as sure of the new cut as I am. And it has a standard def presentation of the TV cut as well, for completists, or yaknow, just for fun.  It was the cutting edge ten years ago.

But now we've had some new contenders.  Arrow released a blu-ray which is basically the same as Capelight's, but with some extra features mostly about Re-Animator: The Musical.  And more recently, Ignite in the US and Second Sight in the UK have made a new scan (well, I think Ignite made it and SS licensed it) for a proper 4k Ultra HD release, taking it to the next generation for the next decade.  Let's take a look.

1) 2007 Anchor Bay 2007 DVD; 2) 2013 Capelight Integral BD;
3) 2013 Capelight Unrated BD; 4) 2013 Capelight unrated DVD; 5) 2013 Capelight TV BD;
6) 2025 Second Sight Integral UHD; 7) 2025 Second Sight Unrated UHD.

I'll get one thing out of the way right off the bat: not only are Capelight's Unrated and Integral cuts using the exact same transfer, so is Second Sight's Integral cut, which despite being on a UHD disc is still just 1920x1080.  Their unrated version boasts the new transfer, but their Integral cut is just a carry over from 2013 (and the same is true, for the record, of Ignite's release), no upgrade to be had there.

Now, let's get into the framing.  Anchor Bay's 1.82:1 aspect ratio may be more correct than Capelight's 1.78:1 numerically, but seeing how it chops off Dean Halsey's hand, I'd say the Capelight more properly reveals more.  But Second Sight finally perfects it with an exact 1.85:1 ratio and most of the picture AB lacked.  Also interesting is the TV cut, included on one of the blu-rays but in standard definition none the less. Sure, it's the fuzziest and worst looking of the lot, but it's also open matte.  At 1.32:1, while it has all the same picture on the sides (compared to the older framing, of course, as seen on the AB shots), there's additional picture on the tops and bottoms.  Ugly, boxy misframing, of course, but fans may want to at least pop it in and scan through it as a curiosity piece.

The new colors, even starting with the Capelight, are far more natural than the red-heavy look of AB disc. Grain is very real there, too; though of course the UHD really perfects it.  Its Dolby Vision also pulls out a smidgen from the shadows, but honestly not very much.  Capelight's restoration was already excellent, there wasn't much else to do in 2026 besides tweak the AR and slap it on a proper 4k disc.  The colors and HDR differences are pretty subtle.  Don't get me wrong; it's excellent, arguably perfect; The Re-Animator was just in a really good place already.

Anchor Bay starts us off with stereo and 5.1 remixes, and no subtitles.  Besides the multiple German audio tracks, the unrated version (on both Capelight's blu and DVD) sports 5.1 and 2.0 stereo English mixes. And it's got optional English subtitles as well. The Integral cut doesn't have the subs or 2.0 mix, but does have a DTS-HD 5.1 English track. Capelight has also added an isolated music score.

And Second Sight?  They've gone back and restored the original mono in DTS-HD, as well as the stereo and 5.1 mixes on the unrated cut, as well as included English subtitles on both cuts.  Unfortunately, not only does their Integral cut only have the 5.1 remix, but it's lossy.  Their one point of downgrade.  I think they really regard the Integral cut as just an extra.  Oh, and they've dropped the isolated score. Another niggling disappointment.

Extras are a pretty solid lock for the Capelight blu, carrying over everything from past editions. Re-Animator covered itself in the special features department pretty early on. The old laserdisc already had two excellent audio commentaries with all the major players, plus the long list of deleted scenes and trailers. Then the Millennium DVD set added interviews with just about everybody, plus some storyboards and odds & ends and even an isolated music score; and those extras have stuck with just about every subsequent release. Anchor Bay, being Anchor Bay, of course added something new to the mix: that 70 minute documentary I mentioned earlier. And that, along with all those other extras have been ported over to Capelight's release. No, they didn't really come up with any new extras, but there's not much left that needs to be added that wouldn't just be redundant at this point. Re-Animator already came fully-loaded.

The media book packaging includes a nice 24-page booklet, but the text is all in German. Looks nice, though. There's also a couple inserts and auto-playing bonus trailers for other Capelight releases on each disc. But that's the only non-English friendly content. Every cut of the film and all of the extras are in English.

Redundant or not, though, we have new extras now.  Like I said, between Capelight and now, Arrow added the musical-related stuff, plus a new interview with Crampton, that goes over more of the rest of her career, and a long featurette about Lovecraft adaptations on film.  Second Sight hasn't carried over the musical stuff (though for the record, Ignite did), but they do have the Crampton and Lovecraft interviews.  Then Ignite and Second Sight share a bunch of new stuff, including Re-Animator at 40, a new conversation between Brian Yuzna, Combs and Crampton, which is a nice look back, but repeating many of the same anecdotes we've heard already in these things.  But there are also new on-camera interviews with editor Lee Percy, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon and a featurette where filmmakers like Mick Garris and Joe Lynch sing Re-Animator's praises.  And Second Sight has a couple of exclusives, both by expert Mike Muncer: a video essay and an audio commentary.

Second Sight's release comes as a single UHD disc or a limited edition which throws in an extra BD copy of the film, plus a 150-page hardcover book and six collector's art cards.

You could tell the people at Capelight really cared about this film, and came up with a blu-ray package that didn't just upgrade our old DVDs to HD but really strove to give us a definitive release.  Other countries are started to pick up on their 4k scan and integral cut and release it around the world, including Second Sight (hey!), Arrow and Umbrella.  It wasn't until 2025, when they were able to land this film on a higher gen disc, that there was really cause to upgrade.  And even now, more casual fans may be satisfied with any of the BDs with the Capelight scan, and hold out for a UHD restoration of the integral cut, too.  But there's no denying that they've been topped.  Time comes for us all.  And then we're left carrying our heads around in a small surgical pan.

The Strange and Unexpected Dead of Night

"This is the dead of night.  It has nothing to do with time.  It can happen in sunshine or in moonlight, in the best of weather or the worst.  For the dead of night is a state of mind: that dark, unfathomed region of the human consciousness from which all the unknown terrors of our lives emerge.  The dead of night exists in all of us, and no one knows at which strange, unexpected moment it will make itself known.  So tonight, for your entertainment, three tales: one of mystery, one of imagination and one of terror."

Today I'd like to talk to you guys about 1977's Dead of Night, a made-for-TV mostly horror anthology by highly regarded creator Dan Curtis.  It's a triptych of stories written by the master of such tales, Richard Matheson.  The first is a very Twilight Zone-like tale of wistful, nostalgic time travel with a twist, and not at all a horror story, called "Second Chance."  I'd compare it to Speilberg's segment in Twilight Zone: The Movie, but a little more pleasingly clever.  In it, Ed Begley Jr plays an classic car enthusiast who restores an antique 1920s roadster, and in it, is able to travel back to the days of his youth, and enjoy some very Back To the Future-like experiences.

The second story, "No Such Thing As a Vampire," is based on a Jack Finney short story and moves us into clear horror territory.  In fact, you may have seen a recent news story that the BBC has discovered a long lost episode of a "show so terrifying it was destroyed."  That was a 1968 episode of Late Night Horror called, you guessed it, "No Such Thing As a Vampire."  Yup, it's an adaptation of the same story, in this case starring Patrick Macnee and Elisha Cook Jr. - a period piece set in 19th century Romania.  So if you want to get ahead of BBC's airing of their lost episode in September, you can watch this one.  Interestingly, Curtis made this earlier than the rest of this movie, in 1973, because he thought it could've been a pilot for an entirely different television series that never ended up happening.  So lucky for us, he found a home for it here.

And speaking of tales told elsewhere, we come to our third story "Bobby."  This is the highlight of the film, and evidently Curtis realized it, too, as he completely remade it in 1996 for his anthology film Trilogy of Terror 2, with Lysette Anthony in the Joan Hackett role.  Both versions are quite good, but this one's better: a thrilling and atmospheric spin on the old Monkey's Tale.  I get a kick out of this entire film start to finish, but honestly, "Bobby" is the reason I need it in my collection.  Dead of Night starts out pleasantly watchable and then steadily ramps up to a Hell of a climax that can stand alongside your favorite horror films of any era.

Dead of Night made its DVD debut in 2009 as a bit of a special edition from Dark Sky Films.  Honestly, I kind of thought that would be the beginning and end of it.  Most TV stuff, unfortunately, doesn't make it past DVD even to this day.  I mean, can you believe White Lotus is DVD-only in the year of our Lord 2026?  But regardless, just in time for Halloween, Kino stepped in to issue a new, fancier Dead of Night blu-ray with even more goodies.

2009 Dark Sky DVD top; 2025 Kino BD bottom.

Happily, this isn't just the same old transfer slapped onto an HD disc.  The aspect ratio has been corrected from 1.28:1 to 1.33:1, and we can also see the framing has been adjusted up and to the right.  We've got all new color timing, which is mostly an improvement, though there are some sequences (like the final scenes of the first segment, which are a little red on the DVD, but otherwise more realistic).  And the HD is a real improvement, with actual film grain replacing smudgy compression.  It's not vast, because this movie has a generally filtered hazy look to it anyway, and the fine detail and grain is still on the soft side... 4k this ain't.  But for an inexpensive special edition of a TV movie you never thought would see blu in the first place?  Pretty nice.

Dark Sky gives us the basic Dolby Digital mono track in 2.0 with no subtitle options.  Kino bumps that up to DTS-HD and adds subtitle options.

So the primary extra on Dark Sky's DVD is another Dead of Night, also by Curtis.  Yes, he made a pilot for a TV series called Dead of Night, which never got beyond the pilot stage.  Unlike the film, it wasn't to be an anthology with a fresh story every week, but the on-going saga of a trio of ghost hunters.  The episode, entitled "A Darkness at Blaisedon" actually came first, airing on ABC in August of 1969 (back in those days, they used to show unaired pilots to fill time during the summer rerun season).  In this one, a psychic inherits a mansion and hires our two male leads to see if it's as haunted as she's been told.  Of course it is, they figure it out, and she winds up joining the team to go on adventures that never wound up getting filmed.  Kino carried over all of Dark Sky's extras over, including this.  In both cases they're just giving us a 1.28:1 video transfer (it was presumably shot on tape), but the DVD does make some slight improvement, cropping the noise around the edges and critically, correcting the interlacing.  Plus, while the mono track is lossy on both discs, Kino once again adds subtitles that Dark Sky forgot.

Besides that, Dark Sky (and Kino) include a collection of deleted scenes and outtakes, mostly from "Vampire."  There's also a stills gallery and "isolated score highlights," which runs a good 46 minutes.

Yes, all of that's on the blu-ray; but now there's more.  For starters, we have a new audio commentary by the Video Watchdog himself, Tim Lucas.  Apparently, he's watched this film multiple times, but I found myself wishing he paid more attention.  Like he criticizes "a curious cut-away here to Anjanette Comer in her garlic necklace asleep in an entirely different room, which must have been imposed at this juncture to cover a mishap involving the two-shot with Patrick Macnee and Horst Bucholz."  But you can clearly see throughout the scene that she is in the same room with them, and they very naturally cut to Comer when Horst turns to check on her.  That's a tiny quibble, but at another point he starts talking about the ending of the first segment, revealing he didn't understand the final twist or crux of the story.  And he goes on a long tangent, explaining his incorrect take and saying "the film didn't quite have the coverage needed to make it obvious."  It's obvious if you're not looking at your phone during the movie, man.  I'm citing these moments because they made me roll my eyes in the moment, but in fairness, they don't really harm the commentary experience, since we don't go to expert commentaries for their opinions on the work anyway.  And Lucas comes prepared with a ton of information and observations, adding some solid value to the disc.

And there's more.  We also get two on-camera interviews with Curtis biographer Jeff Thompson, one for each Dead of Night.  A lot of what he says is also in the commentary, but they're still worthwhile.  Plus, we get a bonus trailer for Burnt Offerings (another Dan Curtis joint) and a nice slipcover.

So is it worth the double-dip?  For sure.  It's an all new transfer and an upgrade in every single department.  And yes, even if TV movies usually fail to excite you, this one is a cut above, for those ready to appreciate it.