The Masque of the Red Death, Restored

Few films need to be featured on DVDExotica quite so much as this one.  1964's The Masque Of the Red Death is probably the best, and certainly my favorite, of Roger Corman's illustrious Edgar Allen Poe adaptations.

It's after he took these productions to England, where the production values and supporting cast were enhanced considerably, and also tackles one of the most interesting and challenging of Poe's stories.  Or two, actually, as this screenplay rather smartly inserts another of Poe's stories, "Hop-Frog," as a surprisingly apt subplot that plays quite well with this story's themes of nihilism, sadism and existentialism.  Vincent Price couldn't be better suited for role of the cruel Prince Prospero, and he thankfully opts to downplay his scenes, rather than camp it up.  The (appropriately) colorful production design does more than enough to liven up this story already, and the first class supporting actors (Patrick Magee, Hazel Court, and even the young ingénues are surprisingly credible in their plight) and photography (by director Nicolas Roeg!) elevate this to the "high art" levels Corman was aiming for.

There are obvious correlations with Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal, another medieval tale of the rich and poor alike desperately trying to survive a sweeping plague, and of course an ominous hooded figure of death that has philosophical discussions with the lead characters.  But at the same time, this is very much its own distinct beast, thanks of course to its roots in Poe and Corman's natural instincts towards exploitation.  There's also some surprisingly intelligent discussions on Satanism, and even some odd choices - like dubbing a little girl with the voice of a grown woman, or having voodoo priests and samurai appear in a surreal dream sequence - somehow manage to work.  So Masque manages to walk a very fine line of being high-minded without losing any of its lurid, baser appeals.

A blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment you couldn't have spotted before.

That's especially true of this new, extended cut which includes additional short but dramatic footage of bloody violence, fleeting nudity and blasphemous dialogue.  All previous home video editions were trimmed, until this recent 4k restoration restored the footage on Scream's reissue in the US and the more or less concurrent Studio Canal blu in the UK.  They go the extra, but unnecessary, mile now of retaining the censored "theatrical version" as an option, but I don't know why anybody would want to watch it now that we have the complete version.  At least it makes it easy for me to compare their new and old transfers, though.

Here's a look at MGM's Premature Burial transfer if you're interested.

MGM originally released Masque as a double-feature with another of Corman's Poe adaptations, Premature Burial, as part of their Midnight Movies line in 2002.  Then Scream Factory released it on blu in 2013, but only available in their 4-disc 6-film Vincent Price Collection.  And yes, just to be clear, that 2013 BD is the cut version.  But in 2020, the film was restored in 4k with the missing footage, and released as both part of a revised Vincent Price Collection and separately.

1) 2002 MGM DVD; 2) 2020 SF theatrical BD; 3) 2020 SF uncut BD.

The presentation gets (correctly) wider with each generation.  The DVD chops off info along all four sides to create an aspect ratio of 2.24:1.  The first Scream blu brings most of that back, presenting the film in 2.34:1.  and the new blu reveals even more on the sides in 2.39:1.  The colors have also been significantly improved with each pass, with a funky warm hue cast over the DVD removed for the first blu, and the colors are then further fleshed out on the new one.  The grain on both blus is mostly pretty well retained, but it's definitely more consistent on the 2020, as opposed to the 2013, which has patches where it's smoothed away.  And interestingly, the original blu-ray scan features sporadic print damage that isn't on the past DVD or the subsequent 4k restoration - I suppose it's taken from a different source.  There's a lot of white flecks, but more serious wear pops up occasionally as well.  Look at the strange, dark bands along the bottom of the theatrical cut blu in the first set of shots.  Overall, each edition is a substantial and welcome improvement over its predecessor.

As an independent 60s film, the audio is naturally mono and presented so on each disc.  It's lossy on the DVD of course, though they do also include a French dub and English, French and Spanish subtitles.  Both Scream blus do away with the foreign language options but bump the audio up to DTS-HD and retain the English subs.

The MGM was light on extras, but did include a very engaging interview with Roger Corman that's full of great stories.  But that was it except the trailer, and of course Premature Burial, which had its own Corman interview and trailer.

The 2013 Scream Factory hung onto the Corman interview and trailer, but also added a brief, vintage introduction by Price and an audio commentary by expert Steve Haberman.  He's quite good, if a little stiff (he seems to be reading a script) full of great info about the original story, the production and pretty much everything you'd want to know about the film.  There's a point where he repeats, almost verbatim, every anecdote from the Corman interview though, which is a little tiresome.  But overall, it's a great addition.  There's also a stills gallery.

And for 2020, everything except the old Price intro is carried over.  In its place, we get a new video interview with critic Stephen Jones and a new commentary by Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw.  The Jones interview is nice, though a little repetitive given the other extras.  And the new commentary is much more lively and conversational, with some - though not a ton of - new info.  Taken on its own, it would be a bit of a let-down, but these guys clearly knew they'd be on the same disc as everything else, and make the wise decision not to rehash all the same details over again, and instead come up with something new, which works better in conjunction with everything else.  So, well done!

So this is a real must-have: the first chance for many of us to get this film on its own, with a very obviously improved new restoration, and some neat new extras to boot.  And this is one of those films where the opulence of the imagery is a key strength of the film, so it really benefits from the improved quality.  Take another look at this version of Masque - what once was often written off as just some good, cheesy entertainment, is actually a seriously compelling film by any standard.

The Two Third Mothers: The Black Cat and Mother of Tears

We've done Suspiria... We've done Inferno... Now I suppose it's time to do the final film in the trilogy.  Both of 'em.  Yes, Dario Argento and his then-wife Daria Nicolodi (R.I.P.) collaborated on the first of the Three Mothers films, about Mater Suspiriorum, the Mother of Sighs, in 1977, and it's become world renowned as a horror classic.  So they channeled that success into the even grander 1980 tale of Mater Tenebrarum, the Mother of Darkness.  And naturally, right after Inferno, they wrote the third film about the final mother, Mater Lachrymarum, the Mother of Tears.  Dino De Laurentiis was going to produce it, but because of financing problems, Argento instead went to work on the less ambitious giallo Tenebrae.  And then Argento and Nicolodi divorced, leaving the trilogy's conclusion in a vague state of mystery fans spent decades asking the director to resolve.

And he eventually did.  But Daria tried it first, giving their original script to Luigi Cozzi, they created what wound up becoming 1989's Edgar Allen Poe's The Black Cat, a.k.a. Demons 6, a.k.a. De Profundis, despite having no legit connection to the Demons films.  There is at least a tenuous connection to the Poe story, as it relates to a line that black cats are witches in disguise and features a black cat in a few scenes.  But in actual fact, this is the story of the third mother, rewritten by Cozzi to the point that Daria quit the film.  So now it's a bizarre, convoluted story that's sort of all over the place.  Like Paganini Horror, Cozzi inserts his sci-fi interests into a horror story, so we get some rather out-of-place feeling shots of outer space and disconnected dialogue about mutants and time travel.  It's a real mess of a movie, but it's full of non-stop wild set pieces, wacky effects, vivid colors, cult actors, and some surprisingly impressive photography.

It's also a fascinating puzzle to try and discern what does and doesn't come from Dario and Daria's original story.  What we're presented with is a group of famous Italian horror filmmakers (including Michael Soavi) making a film called The Black Cat.  It's taking it's psychological toll on their lead actress, a problem only exasperated when they introduce her to their next film: the third film in the Three Mothers trilogy.  Yes, it's a film within a film thing, where they actually talk about Dario Argento by name,  the fictional filmmakers find the ancient tome from Inferno during their research, and they even play Goblin's main Suspiria theme during key scenes.  The idea is that by carelessly invoking the final mother, they are inadvertently summoning her, as she tries to take over the lead actress's body and sacrifice her baby.  The witch also pops into existence on her own to make others do her bidding, including jealous co-star Caroline Munro, an evil film producer played way over-the-top by Brett Halsey and a teenage ghost named Michael who casts illusions and of course that evil cat lurking around.  There's also a good ghost who lives inside our hero and occasionally pops out to give advice, which will ring familiar later.  A surprising amount of the evil is centered around our protagonist's refrigerator.  It may be an objectively bad film by most units of measure, but it sure is a kick, with gross-out gore, explosions, laser beams, a disintegrating fetus, catchy music themes, cars crashing into houses (okay, just one of those) and green slime.

Given its cult pedigree, it's been startling how the film has managed to go all these decades completely unreleased.  There's been no previous DVDs, let alone blu-rays - not even a dodgy VHS rip from an obscure region.  No laserdisc either.  But Severin has finally arrived to fill this gaping hole in our collections, even restoring it in 2k from "pristine vault elements," with their Black Friday 2020 blu.

2020 US Severin BD.

Pillarboxed to 1.67:1, Severin's new transfer looks great.  The colors are bold and strong without looking artificially saturated, blacks are deep and the grain is nicely preserved.  The encode is clean and satisfyingly free of digital artifacting.  I daresay this is one of the best transfers I've seen from Severin in a while.  And all of this really helps restore The Black Cat's good name as a legitimate film after existing only in the form of ugly, fullframe bootlegs all ripped, I believe, from an old Hong Kong VHS - the only home video release this film had previously received.  The English audio (there's only one language track on this one) is presented in lossless DTS-HD stereo with optional English subs.

The only extras are the trailer (with some fun narration) and a brief (under ten minutes) featurette interviewing Cozzi and Munro.  It's alright but too short to answer many of the bajillion questions this film raises. Subtract the opening and closing credits, plus all the clips from the film, and we get maybe four minutes from each of them?  Munro doesn't even touch on the famous problems she had with this film.  The most publicity this film ever got is when Fangoria ran a hefty, 6-page spread called "Ripped Off In Rome" all about how she got scammed by the producers.  And Cozzi never tells the story of why this film was turned into a Poe flick, the Demons thing, and just shares a tiny bit of the Three Mothers debacle.  And that's surprising, because this interview was done by the same people who conducted a much better interview with Cozzi about The Black Cat on Arrow's Inferno blu, addressing much more of this stuff, so it's not like they didn't know what to ask about.  It feels like we just got previews of longer interviews that exist somewhere else.  Still, it's a lot nicer to have than nothing.

De Profundis stood as the only closing chapter for The Three Mothers, as unofficial as it may've been, for decades.  It wasn't until 2007 that Argento hired the American team behind Tobe Hooper's Mortuary and the Crocodile movies to pen his true conclusion, Mother Of Tears.  It starred his now quite famous daughter Asia, and they even talked Daria into appearing as a good ghost who lives inside our hero and occasionally pops out to give advice.  Again, it makes you wonder how much, if anything, of Dario and Daria's original Third Mother plans made its way into this.

This movie gets knocked about pretty hard by fans and critics.  It's got a 5.1 on the IMDB (actually pretty high for that writing team), but like The Black Cat, it's a blast.  It's super uneven in terms of quality, which definitely contributes to the "it's awful but I love it" vibe.  Take the special effects: the CGI is pure Sharknado, but it's paired with some genuinely kick-ass physical effects by Sergio Stivaletti.  Impressive fire stunts are intercut with pasted-on CGI flames.  The music never even gets near the genius of Suspiria's famous score, but Goblin's Claudio Simonetti is back and he does provide a score that would out-do most genre films of its time.  Although the title song might've benefited by not having its lyrics in English.  Instead of a black cat we get a nasty monkey, which is a definite improvement, and as the film travels from location to location, you can feel how much money was spent on the film.  The photography looks nothing like the technicolor fantasy of the previous chapters, but it still has an elegant, stylish look to it.  And it's a non-stop thrill ride full of extreme over-the-top kills, magical surprises, and a strong cast.  Asia gives as strong a performance as possible given the material, it's charming to have Daria back even if having her play a Force Ghost was a huge tonal miscalculation, and Udo Kier shows up to get killed.

But it's also a disaster.  The sinister witches of the past films are now presented as Hot Topic goth girls with fake boobs.  The end of the world is mostly illustrated by pairs of middle-aged men in business suits having a shoving match behind the protagonists.  One of the most memorable scenes, again to show just how mankind has descended into evil and madness, is watching these two random dudes in leather jackets and sunglasses bash a car with baseball bats.  The script spends most of its time ripping off The Da Vinci Code, except there's no mystery for Asia to solve, so she just shows up to various locales, meeting new strangers who explain what we already knew from the onset and then predictably die.  The historical exposition is displayed with comic book style illustrations.  It's kind of like the talent is still evident, but they keep making one wrong decision after the next.  But in a way, they're delightfully wrong.  If you go in looking for a respectable film to stand alongside Suspiria and Inferno, you're going to be super disappointed.  But if you're just looking for an unserious good time, The Black Cat's good and this one's even better.

Mother Of Tears came out on DVD as a new release in 2008 from The Weinstein Brothers' as part of their low-brow Dimension Extreme line.  And since the Weinsteins' have the rights, American blu-rays and 4k remasters are probably forever off the table.  Fortunately, it keeps on getting released and re-released overseas.  Yeah, they're stuck using the same old master, but at least you can import a nice, if dated, HD edition pretty easily.  Personally, I went with the recent Happinet blu from Japan, but really there's a ton of fairly equivalent options, so have at it.

2008 US Dimension DVD top; 2020 JP Happinet BD bottom.

Shot in 'scope, Dimension presents the film in a slightly pinched 2.32:1, which the blu corrects to 2.35:1.  Otherwise, as you can see, it's still the same master in 2020: same colors, framing, lighting.  Admittedly, with all its CGI, that would make a new scan even more difficult and expensive, so even though the film grain is soft and haloing to suggest unwise digital tweaking, I think we're going to have to get used to it.  It's a bit crazy, though, that it means The Black Cat winds up with a much higher end, fancier blu.  But it's sharper and clearer than the DVD.  It's just looks like an old blu despite having come out in 2020.

Another plus is that the audio is now lossless.  The English (there's only one language track for this one, too) Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is bumped up to DTS-HD on Happinet's blu.  One step backwards, though, is that Dimension offered English and Spanish subtitles, while Happinet only has Japanese subs.

And that language disappointment carries over into the extras.  The original DVD had a nice, roughly 30-minutes 'making of' with lots of good interviews and behind-the-scenes footage.  They didn't get much from Dario, but they made up for that with a separate on-camera interview.  And there were two trailers.  Not the loaded special edition you'd want, but pleasing enough. 

Happinet carries all of that over, but doesn't offer any English subs, just Japanese ones.  And that's a bummer, since most of the extras are in Italian.  They also included some new special features, including an interview with Argento's friend Vivien Villani who was on set during the shoot, and a new interview with Argento.  But those are all in Italian, too.  The original Argento interview, which is on both discs, is in English though, and both offer an English trailer.  So it's a little disappointing not being able to watch it all, but you could do worse.  Plus, they might win you over with their fancy packaging.  Besides including reversible cover art, a stylish slipcover and an obo, it also comes in a fancy Three Mothers box, designed like the E. Varelli book, to house the whole trilogy.  You can of course put the other Happinet blus in there, but you get the whole box with just this disc, so you can just as easily put in whatever versions of Suspiria and Inferno you own (though the Camera Obscura mediabook doesn't fit, natch), and they even provide custom slipcovers so your editions will match.  It's pretty neat.

So say what you will, but I get a heap of pleasure out of both films, and the fact that they're rather artlessly tacked onto two masterpieces just adds to the cheekiness.  I'll certainly take either one of 'em over Amazon's competently dull Suspiria remake.  And Severin and Happinet have given us some nice new options to take advantage of.

Essential Upgrades: Fellini Does Horror! Spirits Of the Dead (DVD/ Blu-ray Comparison)

Everybody loves anthology horror films, and most of us can appreciate the works of film's greatest masters.  But how often do we get see the two mashed together into one super film?  Well... I'm not sure it's totally happened here either, but Spirits Of the Dead is still a pretty enjoyable, compelling piece of cinematic art.  Federico Fellini, Louis Malle and Roger Vadim come together to each direct a short Edgar Allen Poe story.  And it was released in the US on DVD by Home Vision Entertainment... but you all should really import.

Note 6/4/21: Just wanted to point out that *only Fellini's portion of this film* has been remastered in 4k and included in Criterion's 2020 Essential Fellini boxed set, which I cover here.

Roger Vadim, probably the least well known of the three directors, is up first, and his is easily the weakest segment.  It's kind of the gateway you have to pass through to get to the rest of the film.  Vadim is the guy who did Barbarella, and in fact this film was the same year.  It also stars Jane Fonda, alongside brother Peter Fonda, and the whole thing feels like kind of a self-indulgent affair with stars changing from one unconvincing period piece to another seemingly ever minute.  Still, there is Poe at the heart of the thing, and you the dark side of the story comes through.  Jane Fonda is a selfish and debaucherous countess who thinks nothing of misusing the people beneath her until she eventually meets her cousin, Peter, who challenges her for the first time in her life.  So she kills him, steals his prize black horse, and as you can imagine, something ominous and supernatural is sure to follow.  It's not a bad story, but the presentation is such an odd mix of campy and wooden... If you've seen the recent film The Love Witch, this is definitely the type of film it was playing on.

Louis Malle is up next, with a much more respectable looking entry co-starring Brigette Bardot.  A 19th century Italian military officer races in to a confessional to admit to murdering someone who's haunted him his entire life, a sort of evil doppelganger.  This one brings in some serious acting and has a compelling atmosphere, but even if you're not familiar with Poe's writing, it feels like an old story that takes its time going to a very predictable place.  But it definitely sets you up for something more wild and unpredictable, and Fellini does not disappoint with his conclusive segment.  This really feels like a Fellini film, like Roma or Intervista, and you'll spend a good portion of this film wondering what the heck Poe wrote that could somehow connect to what's on screen.  It stars Terrence Stamp as a troubled Hollywood celebrity who's come to Italy seemingly to be celebrated by the entire country's populace.  Eventually we get to the real Poe material and the devil, but even then it feels like the point of the original story has been a little misplaced, an unimportant detail buried somewhere underneath Fellini's wild spectacle.

So Home Vision Entertainment's DVD came out back in 2001, and even for its time it was a mixed bag.  It was anamorphic widescreen and a pretty healthy looking presentation of the uncut version (there have been several trimmed VHS releases in the past).  But on the other hand, it was a French dub with English subtitles, and barebones.  But finally, in 2010, Arrow came to the rescue with a new scan of the original film elements on blu with the original Italian/ English audio track restored, and a few nice little perks to boot.

2001 Home Vision DVD on top; 2010 Arrow blu underneath.

Arrow corrects Home Vision's slightly off framing of 1.75:1 to a more natural 1.85:1, bringing in little slivers of added information around the sides.  More importantly, the color correction dials back its washed hues to reveal the natural colors underneath.  The old DVD wasn't badly compressed for such an old disc, and it wasn't interlaced or anything, but Arrow's blu naturally reveals a much cleaner, robustly detailed picture with sharper details.  Overall, it's just much more pleasant and attractive to look at.

Even more importantly, though, is that sound.  As I said, the old DVD only had a French dub with removable English subtitles.  Well, that French dub is on the Arrow, too, for completists.  But more importantly, the proper track that mixes English and Italian is here.  It's a better track throughout, but it's especially critical in the Fellini segment.  In that film, Stamp's character is out of his element, often being aggressively addressed by complete strangers in a language he doesn't understand.  Some people speak to him in English, others Italian.  But all of that is lost when the whole thing is dubbed into French; you can't tell when people are speaking his language or not.  You lose part of the story and only fully "get it" when you see the film with this track.  Oh, and yes, there are still optional English subtitles on both versions of Arrow's blu, in fact there are two sets, one for each version of the film, both of which were freshly re-translated for their release.

The 2001 DVD was barebones, too, although it did come with an insert with film notes.  And the Arrow doesn't really have any extra extras per se, either, like commentaries or interviews; but it does feature some nice inclusions relating to the presentation of the film.  In 1969, AIP added narration by Vincent Price, where he read some of Poe's "Spirits Of the Dead" poem over the credits, and that narration is available here as an option.  Again, you get the choice of audio and subtitle versions on this release, and they've included the original theatrical trailer.  It also comes with a nice, glossy, thick-spined booklet, which includes all three of Poe's original stories that these segments are based on, plus notes by Tim Lucas and Peter Bondanella.  Like most of Arrow's releases, it comes in one of those windowed slip-boxes, and includes reversible cover art with a crazy Japanese poster on the flip-side.

Admittedly, this film isn't for everyone.  It would fit more at home in the Criterion Collection than the Scream Factory line-up, with an admittedly pretentious bent compared to something like Nightmares.  It's still a fun, anthology horror film, but it's alternatively too campy, dry and then anarchic for more conventional audiences.  It's still pretty great, though.  And by all means, if you are going to get this film, make sure and get the Arrow version, not the old DVD.  And if you already have the old DVD, this is definitely one to replace.  It's even region A/B/C, so my fellow lazy Americans, you have no excuses.  😜

Hideous Beast Whose Craft Had Seduced Me Into Murder: The Black Cat (DVD/ Blu-ray Comparison)

Last year, Arrow released a big, fancy box set of two Italian horror films: Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key and The Black Cat, two very loose adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe's famous short story. Fancy but also pricey; and while Your Vice... is an interesting movie and definitely worth a watch, I only really wanted the Fulci film. So I waited, and happily, this Spring, Arrow has released The Black Cat as a stand alone blu in both the US and UK, and it's not even missing any of the features from the set!

So, how out of whack with Lucio's film from Poe's story? Well, a good deal, naturally, but maybe not as much as you'd expect. All the barebones and iconic images are basically in here. Guy has a weird relationship with his cat, hangs it in a little noose, there's a fire and the cat's shadow is burnt into the wall, guy kills a lady and walls her up, and the cats here the cat mewing behind the wall and the guy is found out. All that follows through. But for a full-length film, you've gotta flesh things out, so there are a couple more characters who get killed, a more convoluted story and there's a little more mystery. Now horror icon Patrick Magee is the cat owner, and a medium who talks to the dead. He still goes after his (now ex)wife, but also her kids, and whoever in the village who he feels has wronged him. Mimsey Farmer (Four Flies On Grey Velvet) is an American photographer who stumbles into his spree and Fulci icons David Warbeck and Al Cliver are the cops on the case. Oh, and this time the cat isn't just the victim of its owner's cruelty, it goes around hypnotizing people and murdering them on his behalf. That's a big change.

It's also a big part of the fun, though. If there was one reason to go to the theaters and see this movie, it was to watch a cat kill people. My favorite scene has always been when the cat manages to open a heavy, gated door in pursuit of a local villager. So what if literary purists might get mad, Fulci's a people pleaser, and he's gonna give us what we want. There's a lot of great atmosphere to this film. It may not be as bonkers as House By the Cemetery or City of the Living Dead, but it's got a great style to it. The locations are spot on and the soundtrack, particularly the main theme - this time by Pino Donaggio rather than Fulci regular Fabio Frizzi - is evocative, even if it isn't very Fulciesque. Magee is a perfect Poe villain right out of the box, even if our hero characters are a little dull. It doesn't have the great, outrageous moments of his best work, but it's a stylish and entertaining little horror film, and you can recognize a lot of the maestro's signature touches. It's a good time just so long as you don't tie it down with too many Fulci-specific expectations.

I was after Arrow's blu-ray because my old 1990s DVD from EC was in serious need of an upgrade. Most fans would've already replaced it with the 2001 anamorphic DVD from Anchor Bay, or the 2007 reissue from Blue Underground, but their being completely barebones left me too apathetic to bite. So when Arrow announced their special edition, I was ready. So I've got my old EC disc and now the new 2016 Arrow blu, plus I even borrowed a copy of the Blue Underground DVD, so we can see just how this film's come along.

EC DVD top; Blue Underground DVD mid; Arrow blu-ray bottom.

Oh boy, look what an upgrade I got, jumping from EC to Arrow! Others got some decent mid-ground in the middle with their AB/BU DVDs, but there's still no question Arrow's is the new king by a large margin. I mean, let's look at this. EC's is non-anamorphic, interlaced, and almost looks like a widescreen videotape that's been digitally compressed on disc. It also has less picture on all four sides than the BU DVD, clocking in at about 2.08:1 instead of the film's proper 2.35. The BU DVD is anamorphic, non-interlaced and a lot clearer, but it's still not as detailed or clear as Arrow's blu, and Arrow has managed to uncover even more picture on all four sides than BU, particularly horizontally. You could actually make a case for BU having a nicer array of colors than Arrow (both of course trumping EC's, which look downright muddy), but it's no match for the clarity of image which really brings this picture to life, replacing digital noise with authentic film grain.

Audio-wise, Arrow's DTS-HD track is of course the best for being lossless, but they have another major advantage in this department: they provide both the English and Italian versions. The previous editions only featured the English dub and no subtitles. But Arrow has both and two subtitle options: English and English HoH, so fans should be happy about that.

Another reason to be happy is the extras. Anchor Bay and Blue Underground came with nothing but the trailer, which was pretty disappointing. Even EC had done better - they included the trailer, as well as a 46 minute Q&A with Fulci and Warbeck from 1994's Eurofest. Plus, it had a photo gallery and a nice fold-insert with alternate artwork and Fulci's filmography. But don't go our of your way to dig up a copy of the EC disc now, that same Q&A - all 46 minutes of it - was later included on Grindhouse's blu-ray of The Beyond. So get that instead.  8)

Now, Arrow really delivers a nice special edition. First up is an interview with film critic Stephen Thrower, who really hits it out of the park. This is one of the best talks of this nature I've seen on a disc outside of The Criterion Collection. He is very informed, with all kinds of details not only of this film, but Poe's original story and other film adaptations of The Black Cat, and he brings it all together into a really fascinating listen.

...There is one little point I'd disagree with him on, though. He points out that in the film version, a lot of the kills are somewhat random, just people on Magee's hit list because they're villagers, and he seems to resent everyone around him. But I think the film takes more time to establish motives than he noticed. He kills his ex (similar to the original story), and the kids in the boathouse are her children that she had with the man she left him for. And the guy who falls onto the spikes was the guy who always talked about him in the pub, disparaging Magee and warning people away from him. Then Farmer and Warbeck, of course, are getting too close to uncovering his guilt. The only victim not fully explained is the one in the opening credits, but even there we know there's something going on there, because Magee goes to his grave to talk to him later in the film. But that's a nitpick of a great discussion. I only bring it up because I was so engaged. When I read the list of extras for this, I thought, "eh, okay, an expert chat's better than nothing," but I was really pleasantly surprised.

Then Thrower takes us into the next featurette, one I was looking forward to more, and which turns out to be equally enjoyable: he takes us on a tour of the film's locations. It turns out the real life village is just as interesting as it appears in the film. Next is an on-camera interview with actress Dagmar Lassander, which is a little dry as it covers her whole career. But she's interesting, and they do splice in an extra phone interview to include her comments on her death scene in this film. And for the last of Thrower's pieces, there's a very long (70+ minutes!) interview with David Warbeck. He of course passed away in the 90s, so this is a nice vintage discovery. Filmed at his home, it does get a little excessive at the end when they start pontificating about censorship, but most of it's really interesting, and Warbeck is a very charming raconteur. So definitely check it out, but if you start getting antsy, you could turn it off before the last fifteen minutes or so without missing out on much.

Besides all of that, the trailer's here, too, plus reversible artwork and an all new audio commentary by Chris Alexander of Fangoria. This one I would just characterize as "better than nothing." On his commentary for Contamination, he seemed really enthusiastic, an informed champion of the film. But now on Nightmare City and Black Cat, he doesn't have much to say. He's informed enough to give us the basics, but admits he hasn't seen the film in a long time, and so he's just watching it with us, unprepared, almost treating it like it's his personal podcast. Yeah, he lets us know at the top that he's never going to get "too fussy with this stuff" on his commentaries, and I appreciate that it's not one of those 'awkward scholar reading a 90-minute essay' tracks; but instead we wind up learning more about him than the film. He goes on about things like how much he prefers his friend's new film to the recent horror film The Editor, and how he can get movie stars on the phone any time he wants.

On Contamination, he knew lots of obscure facts and had talked to the filmmakers, and yeah it was still pretty casual and drifted into a few indulgent tangents, but you got a lot out of it and wanted to follow his lines of thought. Here we get TMI about why he doesn't find Mimsey Farmer sexually attractive and a complete history of his career that you just want to walk out of the room during. I don't want to over-sell its faults; it's not terrible. He does talk more about The Black Cat than anything else, makes some good observations and it's worth listening to if you already own the disc. But maybe in future, Arrow should just bring him in for films he's particularly interested in.

I'm very pleased with this disc and really recommend it. If I already owned one of the anamorphic DVDs, I might not have bothered with this, since it's not one of Fulci's wildest. But I'm glad I have it now, because many of the extras were better than expected, and seeing this film presented so well, including the Italian language option, actually got me to appreciate the film more. And it's one I already enjoyed. This is the kind special edition this film has always deserved and we're just finally getting in 2016. Next stop: Blue Underground's Manhattan Baby!