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.

Must See Reality

2023's Reality is a film I've been itching to talk about for a while.  It's the superior of two films (though the other one's not bad either) about Reality Winner, the former NSA translator who was sent to prison for leaking classified documents to The Intercept about the Russian government's attempts to hack US voting machines during the 2016 presidential elections.  Don't worry if the subject matter doesn't grab you; it's a taut psychological thriller with a unique capacity to force you into the anxiety of being interrogated.  It's also the perfect reminder of how impressed we all were with Sidney Sweeney when she was undeniably talented indie darling, before she became some kind of weird sex symbol of the culture wars.  She's really great in this, playing against Josh Hamilton (Kicking and Screaming, The House of Yes) and a whole supporting cast who are all perfectly, terrifyingly banal.

What's so unique about Reality?  Well, it's one of very few, if any, examples of Verbatim Theater in film.  Yes, it started out as a play, and even on stage, Verbatim Theater is pretty rare.  The concept is simple: to take a real world transcript of an actual event, or in this day and age, an audio recording, and perform that as your script, word for word, including every pause and tic as it actually happened in real life.  Probably the best known is Bloody Sunday, a 2005 London play built out of the Saville Report study of the 1972 Bogside Massacre in Ireland.  The most most famous example up to now on film would surely be The Colour of Justice, a 1999 BBC TWO production based on the courtroom transcripts of the Stephen Lawrence murder trials.  Man, do I wish the BFI would give us that on disc; I'd love to see it.  Here in the US, the closest examples I can really think of are the work of Anna Deaveare Smith, who conducted and curated hundreds of interviews based on a handful of subjects, like the LA riots, then performed all of the interview segments herself, first on stage and later on HBO.  We desperately need those VHS-only releases updated to disc, too - they're so great!

But Reality is the truest, purest example yet: it's literally based on one, unedited audio recording, performed in real time, from beginning to end.  It enables director Tina Satter to slip you inside the interrogation in a way no traditional dramatization or documentary could, leaving you with this strangely relaxed sense of danger, in a way that reminds me of Eric Rohmer's Triple Agent, but of course in a very different style.  And admittedly, I could see some of the strength of Reality being diluted if lots of films and shows started doing this same thing - it does seem like a fairly repeatable gimmick.  It wouldn't be quite so exciting if its novelty were stripped away and we were seeing it on Court TV every day.  But it would still be pretty damned effective, and honestly, I'm surprised we haven't seen more of it.

Reality was first released on DVD in Australia from Madman in 2023.  But it didn't hit blu until 2024 when Metropolitan put it out in France.  I'm always anxious about French discs' subtitles being forced, though (to be clear, I don't believe they are; I just didn't want to risk it) so I held out for the German release from Plaion Pictures a few months later (that subtitle on the cover translates to "TRUTH HAS ITS PRICE," if you were curious).  To this date, those are still our only three options, and I wouldn't hold my breath for any more, as it was acquired by HBO Max to be a streaming exclusive here in the states.

2024 German Plaion BD.

For starters, you'll notice plenty of grain in the image, but it must be fake, post production stuff, because this was shot on digital (confirmed in this interview with the DP).  It still lets us gauge how well the image is presented on disc, though, in that the grain is sharp and clear.  This is a contemporary film, so we're not worried about how well the elements have been preserved or scanned.  But it would surely have to be softer on the DVD, and looks like it could look a little bit better in 4k, but not much.  The aspect ratio is 2.00:1 (that interview claims it should be 2.1, but I just checked on HBOMax and it's exactly 2.0 there as well), and audio consists of the original English 5.1 track, plus a German 5.1 dub, both in DTS-HD with optional German subtitles.  And on-screen slugs are in their original English.

Extras ain't much.  There's an all too brief featurette that barely explains the concept and lets us hear from the director, Sweeney and even the real Winner.  Unfortunately, it's like five minutes long.  They filmed her in multiple locations, and they have that little footage to show for it?  Where ya stashin' the goods and why can't have a look?  Anyway, besides that, there's just English and German versions of the trailer and a couple of bonus German trailers.  And they do give you reversible artwork so you can hide the ugly green ratings logo, which is a welcome touch.

Apart from trailers, extras are the same in France (and Australia), so you're presumably just as well off getting one blu as the other.  But you should get this film, because it's a great and unique film, and you don't need to still be interested in Russiagate to appreciate it.

Update Megaweek, Day 14: Do You Dare Consume Jean Rollin's Grapes Of Death?

Let me squeeze in a great, little cult horror film with an... off-beat home video history real quick before I get into a couple of new releases: 1978's The Grapes Of Death by Jean Rollin.  I'm not normally a big fan of Rollin's; I feel like I'm just indulging his private fantasies whenever I watch one of his vampire films.  And while I'll admit there are usually some effective images to be pulled out of them, it requires sitting through too much plodding, generic softcore to get to them.  For me, it's enough to watch all the trailers; I could've done without seeing most of the films.

Update 8/9/19 - 5/15/26: It's the last day of Update Megaweek, so let's end on a fancy, new release I'm really excited for - Indicator/ Powerhouse's Grapes of Death 4k UHD limited edition.  And what else can I get in under the wire?  How about the US DVDs of Eric Rohmer's Summer Tales and A Tale of Winter?  Get all these discs off my to-do list!

But The Grapes Of Death is different.  There are still plenty of Rollin trademarks (i.e. pretty girls running through ruins in the middle of the night wearing see-through nightgowns), but this is more of a conventional movie, which normally would be more of a criticism than a compliment.  But in Rollin's case, I think he benefits from having more of an engaging plot to follow.  It's basically a zombie film, but in 1978 before the genre became played out.  The titular grapes come into play because pesticides have contaminated a village's wine, turning everyone into mindless, blood thirsty madmen.  Marie-Georges Pascal travels out there to meet up with her fiance, but is quickly chased off course and runs from place to place looking for non-zombified allies to help her make her way home.

It plays like a cross between The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue and The Crazies, with some dependable people slowly turning madder and more dangerous as time passes.  There's lots of great little melodramas as the film dives headfirst into supporting characters' subplots.  And Rollin concocts some delightfully madcap sequences once cult/ porn star Brigitte Lahaie enters the picture late in the second act, carrying a burning torch in one hand and leashing two killer dogs in the other.  It's sort of a blast, but also an unrelentingly tragic, nihilistic depiction of humanity slipping away and dying in agony over and over, with Pascal escaping from one scene in a nightmare into another, but never able to break free.  I kinda love it.

Grapes has been released all over the world, but two key US editions seem to encapsulate all you really need to know about this film on disc.  First, Synapse put this out as a "Special Edition" DVD in 2002, and then in 2013, Redemption Films (who also handled the UK DVD in 2005) and Kino Lorber released it on blu.  There is a newer, UK release from Black House, but from what I've been able to glean online, it's essentially the same transfer, but minus the extras.  But now it's gotten a brand new, limited edition (mine is #5066 of 6000) 4k restoration on a proper UHD from Indicator/ Powerhouse, which a bunch of new, better special features as well.

1) 2004 Synapse DVD; 2) 2013 Redemption BD; 3) 2026 Indicator UHD.

Until Powerhouse finally stepped in, this had been some underwhelming, old master stuff.  Synapse presented the film in anamorphic 1.64:1, which Redemption opened up just slightly to 1.62:1, revealing slightly more image around the edges.  Then Indicator widened it out some more, to 1.67:1, displaying more picture on the left-hand side specifically.  All three discs are taken from the original 35mm negative, but the blu comes off awfully soft.  Other reviews online I've read chalk this up to Rollins' camerawork itself, which is demonstrably true; but now that we can actually see the film grain (which ranges from faint to completely smoothed away completely on the BD, but is perfectly captured now), we can finally tell for sure exactly how much detail should be in the image.  Even the DVD looks sharper, although on closer inspection we can see a lot of that is just video/ compression noise.  The blu is darker, which is an advantage in the brights, which are a bit over-contrasty, if not quite blown out on the DVD.  But on the other hand, it seems to lose some detail in the shadows.  At least the colors are deeper.  The DVD is definitely dated, looking noisy and washed out at times, but the blu is a rather underwhelming upgrade to HD.  The UHD, of course, doesn't have any issues with the brights or shadows, and flat-out just looks so much more beautiful than anything that's ever come before it.

All three releases present the original French mono, in lossless LPCM on the BD and UHD, with optional English subtitles.

The special features are interesting, too.  Synapse labeled their disc a "Special Edition," but it's a bit light, consisting primarily of one featurette interviewing Rollin and Lahaie.  It's an interesting overview of past work, but they don't talk about The Grapes Of Death at all, so it's a little disappointing.   And that, two trailers and a photo gallery are all that make up Synapse's edition.

Despite Synapse's interview falling short of discussing the film we were all there for, though, I was sorry to see it go when Redemption put out their version.  They've replaced it with their own interview with Rollin... where he again neglects to mention Grapes Of Death, even in passing.  Instead he talks about art and science fiction literature, which is sort of interesting, but come on.  There is a brief (102 seconds) intro, though, where they do manage to get him to say a word or two about the film, but it's a very minimal piece.  It's just an introduction.  Besides that, we get the trailers, a collection of trailers for other Rollin films, and a nice, 16-page booklet by Tim Lucas.

The Synapse stuff is (mostly) back now in 2026.  They've re-edited the interviews, possibly for copyright reasons.  They also include the Redemption extras, unedited, plus a half-hour retrospective on Rollins' work (in conversation with Rollin himself) from an old German DVD.  They do talk a little about Grapes in that one.  So all legacy extras have been assembled here, which is satisfying.  But even better is all the new stuff.  We get an expert audio commentary by Jeremy Richey, who wrote a book about Sylvia Kristel, and an on-camera interview by the always thorough Stephen Thrower.  Best of all, is a new 32-minute retrospective, which is mostly centered around an interview with co-writer Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, but also includes Brigitte Lahaie, Natalie Perry (very briefly) and some vintage interviews with Rollin.  So we finally get some solid coverage of this particular film, in addition to Rollins in general.  Also included are two trailers, two image galleries and an 80-page booklet.  The booklet and digibook are housed in an attractive slipbox with the classic poster art.

This film is a grim treat, and it's about time we got it looking up to snuff.  Synapse's disc was decent for its day, but this movie always felt like it could look better.  Now that's been proven.  This is a real must-upgrade now matter what version(s) you've owned before.