Update Megaweek, Day 12: ALL the Salem's Lots!

I've never owned Salem's Lot before.  I always appreciated it.  I even saw a few scenes as a little kid when it aired on TV and they were some of the few really scary horror moments for me.  But the fact that it was made for TV did put me off a little in the prime days of DVD.  Couple that with the fact that it never got a special edition, or even could quite decide whether it should be the shorter theatrical cut or widescreen or the TV version or what, and I just never felt compelled to pull the trigger.  But now that Warner Bros has released a killer new HD restoration blu with an all-new audio commentary by Tobe Hooper at a sell-through price, and who could pass that up?  Especially since I've already got the sequel.

Update 12/3/16 - 1/27/17: I figured instead of just having a little, throw-away paragraph about the remake, I'd give that one proper DVD coverage, too, and make this a definitive Salem's Lot post - enjoy!

Update 8/23/21:  I originally ended my post by hoping Scream Factory would give us A Return To Salem's Lot on blu, and now they have.  Ergo, full credit goes to me. 😎  You're welcome, world!

Update 5/12/26: Well, Arrow has issued us now a fairly definitive super edition of the original in 4k.  And in the interest of being thorough, I've added the King of Horror Collection blu-ray, too.  Plus there's been a whole new Salem's Lot movie since the last update, so I added a bit about that as well.  I titled this entry "ALL the Salem's Lots," so now I've gotta live up to it, right?  Also, since this is Update Megaweek, I've also gone ahead and added the Criterion DVD to the Antichrist page.

Stephen King novels don't exactly have a spotless track record for being adapted to film, especially not on television (remember The Langoliers?).  But this one nails it pretty hard, being genuinely creepy and atmospheric with some great, inspired vampire scenes.  If you want an idea of how influential this was, watch Salem's Lot and Fright Night back to back and count all the times they cribbed from it.  James Mason is one cool customer of a villain and David Soul (Hutch of Starsky and Hutch) is surprisingly good as the leading man.  Except for airing in fullscreen with a little extra reliance on close-ups, Hooper does a great job of making this feel like a big-budget film, with a sweeping score and some great effects.  In its full 3+ hour version, Salem's Lot takes it's time building a whole little world of characters to then revel in ransacking.

Is it perfect? Well, no.  As much as I enjoyed seeing Fred Willard perform (well) in a rare, serious part, we do spend the first ninety minutes or so following a sub-plot of him having an affair with Julie Cobb behind George (Law & Order) Dzundza's back, only to have it make absolutely no difference to the overall story (spoilers, I guess? lol).  King likes his over-the-top Norman Rockwell meets broad satire style ensembles, and while Hooper thankfully plays that down and keeps most of the characters real, there are definitely hints poking through.  Plus, the story's Mexican wrap-around does come from the novel, but it's fairly anticlimactic.  And even with Hopoer at the helm, a lot of camera set-ups still have a cheaper, flatter feel than we probably would've gotten from an actual movie.  ...But for all of that, it's still pretty great.

thanks to Arrow for finally giving us this shot.

It can also feel a little less "TV safe" if you watch one of the racier versions.  Not that there's a version with nudity or anything weird in it, but there are different cuts, which I'll break down for us now.  There's the original broadcast version, split into two parts (as it aired, one episode per week) a little over 90 minutes each.  Then there's a theatrical version, made for the European market, which cuts the whole thing down to one feature-length film, under two hours long.  Third, there's an "extended movie" version, which is basically the two episodes edited into one long, 3+ hour piece, which is what was included on the laserdisc, DVD and initial blu-ray.

But it gets a little more complicated than just that, as some extra violent bits were shot exclusively for the foreign theatrical version.  Willard puts the shotgun in his mouth, not just on his forehead, and Ed Flanders gets gruesomely impaled.  Confusingly, the DVD and initial blu released a kind of hybrid cut, with the censored Willard shots, but the uncensored Flanders shot.  Arrow does the same thing, except they add an option to watch the broadcast episode with your choice of the censored or uncensored Flanders death.  And they include all three cuts (broadcast, theatrical and extended), so fans should really be satisfied now.

Like I said, I've never owned it, but Salem's Lot has been available on DVD since 1999, and I've managed to get my hands on a copy for this piece.  It's in one of those crappy snapper cases and everything.  It was full-screen, but in this case that's acceptable.  But as you'll see, for a 2016 blu-ray, the master was too old to just slap onto an HD disc like the major studios do with a lot of their catalog titles.  So we get a very welcome, updated transfer.  In 2017, Salem's Lot was included in the 2017 King of Horror Collection blu-ray set, alongside The Shining, Cat's Eye and It.  All of these include the extended hybrid cut.  And now, in 2026, it's been restored in a fancy, limited 2 UHD set from Arrow, which restores the film in 4k and gives us multiple cuts: the theatrical, the extended hybrid, the original broadcast, and a bit of a broadcast hybrid (it includes the gorier antler kill), plus a bunch of new special features.

1) 1999 WB DVD; 2) 2016 WB BD; 3) 2017 WB BD;
4) 2026 Arrow UHD (theatrical); 5) 2026 Arrow UHD (broadcast).

[This shot does not appear in the theatrical cut.]

So, let me just start out by saying that the King of Fear BD is exactly the same disc as the 2016 BD (what I expected; but it was good to check and be sure), and all three cuts on the Arrow discs utilize the same master.  So there are basically three transfers to compare: the DVD,. the BDs and the UHDs.  Warner Bros didn't put out much information on what they've done that I've seen, but it looks like they made taken a fresh scan of the original negatives in 2016.  I hadn't been expecting it to look that good.  There has clearly been some color-timing work done, or undone, as you can see in the blue tint removed from the nighttime shot above.  The aspect shifted from 1.32:1 to 1.37:1 on the BDs and UHDs (I'm really surprised, and a little disappointed, Arrow didn't matte the theatrical cut to 1.85 or so).  And, in fact, they're actually a little zoomed in compared to the DVD.  But before you bemoan any lost slivers of picture, you can briefly catch glimpses of boom mics on the DVD, so the slightly tighter framing is surely more correct.  The biggest gain in resolution comes from the jump to BD, where the DVD just looks soft, smudgy and washed in comparison.  There's certainly another jump to UHD (which we do know was scanned from the OCN, with the interpositive used for some exclusive footage in the theatrical cut; and you really don't notice the seams), you can see grain is more consistent, but it's not as dramatic a step forward in that regard.   The Dolby Vision HDR is a nice gain, too; but again, Warner really did a nice job with their blu, so there's nothing that needed correcting; they're just taking us up a generation.

The DVD has the original mono with optional English and French subtitles.  The blu-rays upgrade the audio to DTS-HD audio and have also included optional English subtitles, plus subs in 13(!) other languages and five audio dubs.  They really went all-out.  Arrow dials it back down, but sticks to what's important.  They have DTS-HD on the broadcast and extended cuts, and LPCM on the theatrical, with optional English subs on every cut.

But is this a special edition?  Ehh... it's right on the edge.  It's main extra, and the first substantial extra this film's ever gotten, is a brand new audio commentary by Tobe Hooper.  And it's pretty good.  On one hand, it's actually great, with Hooper answering a lot of questions that come up as a viewer, plus some interesting anecdotes you never would've thought to wonder about.  But on the other hand, presumably to pace himself for a commentary that's over three hours long with no moderator, he pauses.  Like all the time.  He basically says a paragraph's worth of stuff, pauses, then another paragraph's worth, and so on.  So when he does talk, he's not stretching for things to say or low on energy, but that leaves a lot of dead air interspersed throughout.  It's definitely worth the listen, but also takes patience.  But unlike some other slow commentaries, that patience is rewarded.  That and the theatrical trailer are all that's here, but that's still a big step forward.

the trailer at least gives us a glimpse of what the widescreen framing looks like

And Arrow takes another big step forward.  Besides adding the multiple versions, they've added a bunch of new extras.  The Hooper commentary and the trailer are still here, and honestly, they're still the best and most important stuff.  We also get two new audio commentaries, both by experts.  One is Bill Ackerman and Amanda Reyes, which is a little clumsy but very informed and worth checking out.  And the other is by Chris Alexander and sucks.  It's basically just him casually carrying on about whatever pops into his head for the entire run of the film.  Then there's a bunch of video essays and on-camera interviews by/ with experts, and most of these are skippable, too (though they're all better than the self-indulgent Alexander commentary).  Specifically, there are five: an interview with King biographer Douglas Winter, a video essay by critic Grady Hendrix, an interview with Mick Garris, a video essay by film critic Heather Wixson and a video essay by podcast hosts Joe Lipsett & Trace Thurman.  The problem with all of these is that they all basically just repeat info already delivered by Ackerman and Reyes' commentary.  For example, the podcast guys give a smart interpretation of the film's theme of gay panic, but Ackerman already went into all that in the commentary, so they don't wind up saying anything we didn't already just here.  So I'd recommend listening to that one commentary (and Hooper's, of course), but skipping the rest unless you enjoy being bored to tears.

One neat treat Arrow came up with is a video tour of the original shooting locations, though.  That one definitely is worth your time.  They also throw in two stills gallery (including the entire original shooting script), commercial bumpers, the edited antler scene as a separate clip, and a trailer for the sequel.  And if you're a fan of swag, Arrow's limited edition comes equipped.  There's a double-sided, fold-out poster, a slipbox which itself comes in  slipcover, reversible artwork for the amary case, a cute sticker, an Arrow card (mine was for Red Sonja), and a bound booklet with multiple essays and a couple vintage interviews.

And why yes, there was a 2004 remake starring Rob Lowe, as well.  To its credit, it's also a two-part TV series, meaning it didn't have to compress the characters and details into 90 minutes.  It updates the story to 2004, forsaking the scary atmosphere for internet references, lame quips and rapping, but it's got an interesting supporting cast, including Donald Sutherland, Andre Braugher and Rutger Hauer.  Some scenes are new, while others are direct re-stagings of the 1979 film.  The scene where the two men wait in the morgue for the dead wife to rise from under her sheet while the one tapes together a cross out of tongue depressors is a beat-for-beat reproduction of the original scene, right up until the end, where some awful CGI takes over, covering up the actress's face and then she flies up into the ceiling and turns into sparkly computer dust.  But then, there's a whole new subplot about a hunchback who works at a garbage dump and has a crush on a high school girl, which to be fair does actually come right from the book.

So I guess the idea is that this is a more faithful "return to the book," which I appreciate.  It at least justifies this version's existence and gives serious King devotees something to pour through.  But like The Shining and its 1997 remake, it really just shows that talented filmmakers tend to know better than literary purists what works best on screen.  And it doesn't help that a lot of the acting and staging is awfully stilted, sometimes to the point of being downright embarrassing.  You've never seen so many over-the-shoulder dialogue shots in your life, Lowe's narration is downright painful, and the CGI looks like cartoonish garbage, unlike the effects from the 1970s that still pack quite a punch.  So give it a pass unless you're a serious fan who just wants to see what's been changed or kept faithful between this, the original film, and the novel.  The most notable being that the vampire Barlowe is back to being a speaking part instead of a snarling blue monster, some major scenes take place in a different order, the priest plays more of a role and there's no Mexico material.  And as I said, that Mexico stuff was in the book.  Plus with the film's need to modernize, I'm not really sure it can be called more faithful.  It's just... differently faithful.

2004 WB DVD.

But if you are determined to see for yourself, Warner Bros did at least put it out as a no frills, widescreen DVD in late 2004.  And I mean really no frills.  No trailer, no nuffin'.  The film looks fine, though, presented in 1.78:1, which is presumably just how it originally aired on the TNT network.  It's alright for a TV show on an older DVD, suffering a bit in the compression department but otherwise fine.  It's anamorphic, has a 5.1 mix and optional English, Spanish and French subtitles.  Apparently though, this was shot on 35mm, so in theory a fresh HD scan of the negatives could yield a nice improvement.  But that would require people taking an interest in 2004's Salem's Lot, which doesn't seem to be in its future.  And I'm fine with that; I wouldn't buy a blu-ray special edition of this anyway.  Update 2026: Actually, as of December 2024, there is a barebones Spanish greymarket blu-ray out now from Llamentol; that probably is at least a slim upgrade, if anyone cares enough.

In 2024, we got one more Salem's Lot, this one made as a streaming exclusive for HBO Max.  It's feature-length, and therefore very abridged; but it's also the least faithful adaptation because of the wild liberties it takes.  Like, it ends with a crazy shotgun wielding lady chasing our heroes through a drive-in movie theater surrounded by dozens of flaming vampires.  Given that director Gary Dauberman's only other movie has been an Annabelle sequel, though, this is less awful than I was expecting - it's actually kinda fun!  Every time it replicates a scene from the actual Salem's Lot story, it does it much worse, but whenever he starts doing his own thing, it's an energetic, entertaining vampire flick that's surprisingly well shot.  There's no physical release of this film, which I find a little surprising.  Given the recognition value of King's name and the title alone, I'm sure a cheap, barebones blu-ray would sell well better than a lot of titles that are currently sitting on Walmart and Target shelves across the country.  Or you'd think some label in Germany would license it.  But no, as of this writing, it remains a streaming-only title in every region.

A Return To Salem's Lot cannot be said to be a true sequel to Salem's Lot.  Not only do none of the characters return or get a mention, but the history of the Salem's Lot vampires as told in Return directly contradicts what we saw in the original.  This cannot be the same town after the vampires took over in the first one.  But, having watched them back to back for the first time after previously only having seen them years apart, there are enough similarities that I'm sure Cohen was at least making intentional nods back besides placing more vamps in the same town.  Both have a middle-aged man and a teenage boy for protagonists.  Both films' opening scenes are in Mexico, which is an odd choice each time.  There's a scene in Return of a child vampire hovering outside a window beckoning the teenage boy to let them in, a clear reprisal of one of the original's most iconic scenes.  Of course, in both films, the vampires mostly look like typical humans with fangs, but the biggest baddest one is a blue, monstrous one.  And there are plenty more I could list, including this fun fact: because they couldn't afford to burn a whole house down, Hooper took B-roll footage that wasn't used in Eli Kazan's 1969 film, The Arrangement. And when a completely different house burns down in A Return To Salem's Lot, Cohen clearly used the same Kazan footage.

1) 2016 WB BD of Salem's Lot; 2) 2006 WB DVD of A Return to Salem's Lot.

Salem's Lot fans looking for more of the same are surely disappointed by this film.  Scary vampires really aren't what's for sale this time around.  But if you're a Larry Cohen fan, you should be happy.  There are his usual clever moments, there's Michael Moriarity giving another great and quirky lead performance, and just as you think maybe you're getting a little bored with his character and he's becoming too much of a generic, straight leading man... in comes Samuel Fuller as one of the most entertaining characters in any vampire movie ever.  Also look for Tara Reid looking lovely in her first acting role, Andrew Duggan in his final role and Cohen regular James Dixon, who this time also gets a co-writing credit.  This isn't a terribly ambitious picture; and Cohen's let it be known that he only made the film as part of a contract so Warner Bros would fund It's Alive 3.  It's no passion project.  But if you want a low-key enjoyable watch, hey, here ya go.

For ages, A Return To Salem's Lot was unavailable on DVD, which was awfully frustrating for a Cohen fan like myself.  But in 2006, Warner Bros released it in Germany under the title Salem II: Die Ruckkehr, as an anamorphic widescreen disc to boot!  More recently, in 2010, Warner Archives finally released it, and that's anamorphic widescreen, too.  It's an MOD DV-R, though, so I'd still stick with the import.  But none of that matters now, because this week, Scream Factory is releasing the film on blu for the first time, with an all new 4k scan of the OCN!

1) 2006 WB DVD; 2) 2021 SF BD.

Yeah, it's a little soft and obviously standard def, but I just fired the DVD up on my 65" television and it still looks surprisingly good.  Solid darks, no interlacing.  It's basically 16x9 exactly, but with a little bit of blank space in what would've been the over-scan area, giving us a 1.79:1 aspect ratio.  For a plain old DVD, you couldn't really ask for much more.  But for a blu-ray, of course you can.  And Scream Factory delivers.  Now framed in a proper 1.85:1, it's actually surprisingly tighter not just along the bottom, but on the left.  So, I'll call that just a slim improvement.  But otherwise, the new scan is a strong improvement, with the new scan bringing fine detail grain to fresh, authentic life.  The encode could be a little more natural, with grain getting a little pixelated, especially for a barebones disc (more on that in a sec), but this ain't a UHD.  For a BD, this is quite satisfying and we've clearly come a long way.  Colors are more vibrant and restored to authentic tones (the DVD was a bit on the purple side).  Honestly, I would've taken the old master slapped onto a BD disc, just for the extra clarity.  So this new 4k transfer is a treat.

Yes, the German DVD is English friendly.  It has optional German subtitles, but they're removable directly from the menu or the remote, and it gives you the choice of the original English audio (mono in 2.0) or a German dub.  Unfortunately, it has no extras, not even the trailer (neither does the Warner Archives disc), except for a slightly amusing commercial that plays on start-up.  But it does come in a cool, red case.

Scream Factory boosts the 2.0 track to DTS-HD (though it's still a bit hissy) and adds optional English subtitles, making this the definitive presentation of the film by every count.  The sole disappointment is the extras.  There basically aren't any, apart from the trailer ...though even just that does technically put it ahead of the previous discs.  I felt sure we'd at least get a commentary from the King Cohen guy, but oh well.

So at this point, I really can't ask for anything more for Salem's Lot on home video.  I guess somebody will probably release the 2024 version on disc someday, and maybe another region will come out with another edition of one or more of the others some day.  At this point, I'm fine either way.  Salem's Lot has been thoroughly handled, and we can rest peacefully in our coffins.

Two Unsung Recommendations from Dark Force

Yaknow, nobody asked me, so I thought for today I would share two really neat titles from Dark Force that I haven't seen anybody really talking about online.  These aren't brand new, but they're both from the last two years and seemed to have slipped out virtually under the radar.  Like, I'm sitting here getting tired of all these posts about John Woo 4ks, thinking: why is nobody giving these titles some fanfare?

So let's begin with 1996's The Ex.  Do people realize this is a Larry Cohen movie?  It just came out this past October, right in time for Halloween.  And it's one of those titles Dark Force released in conjunction with Kino, so it's easy to find inexpensive if you're allergic to the Dark Force Superstore (though I found it there the cheapest, personally).  If you appreciate his more off-beat fare, like the kind of titles Scream Factory included in his Mystery and Misdirection set, this should be right up your alley.  In fact, it's a little closer to his traditional horror output than any of those; though objectively, you'd probably categorize it as a thriller.

And it's a fun thriller.  Here, Cohen is adapting a novel (John Lutz's The Ex, which had just come out that year), so despite the fact that it went direct-to-video and has a super generic title, it's actually smarter and better made than you would've thought spotting it on Blockbuster's New Releases wall.  It's directed by Mark L. Lester (Commando, Class of 1984) with some solid production values: big fire effects, plenty of locations, a constantly sweeping camera.  Yancy Butler (Witchblade) is delightful as the titular ex, a woman who must've seen Fatal Attraction and thought, I can top that.  She's constantly prevaricating between cleverly twisted mind games, classic femme fatale speeches, and rocketing up her body count.  Nick Mancusco (Nightwing, Stingray and the original prowler from Black Christmas) is her unfortunate love interest who's sort of brought it all on himself and Suzy Amis (a.k.a. Mrs. James Cameron) has the fairly thankless role of the stoic, put-upon wife.  Oh, and the kid they have playing their son is pretty great, too.

2025 Kino/ Dark Force BD.

Given that The Ex was a direct-to-video title from the 90s, and it never got a DVD release, this is already a treat just because this is the first time any of us are able to see it in widescreen.  One might quibble why this is 1.78:1 instead of 1.85, but it's clear this film was always intended to be seen wide.  it looks great, almost suspiciously good.  I was starting to look at this like, is that gain fake?  It turns out, this isn't the old master retrieved from Live Entertainment's basement like you'd expect.  Apparently Lester is supervising restorations his films these days, and the A-list results speak for themselves.

That also goes for its lossless DTS-HD 2.0 sound mix with optional English subtitles.  And there are some solid extras.  They got Yancy Butler and Nick Mancuso to come in for a pair of great on-camera interviews (well, Yancy's is better).  They also include the trailer, to give a taste of its old, boxy 4:3 home video framing, and seven(!) bonus trailers.  And it comes in an attractive slipcover.  First class all the way.

And for our second recommendation, this one was a real surprise, in the sense that I went into it with my expectations on the floor.  Deconstructing Dunning, about obscure but talented cult actor Douglas Dunning, is presented as the first "Dark Force Original," though it becomes clear listening to the commentary that Dark Force bought the documentary after it was completed for distribution.  They were selling this for just five dollars, so I threw it in my cart with something else.  It's like when Code Red used to sell their DVDs of A Day At the Beach for $2.99, desperate to get rid of them.  Frankly, I was expecting a real piece of crap, but it's actually a very good, and quite entertaining, documentary, and you should totally get it!

It's certainly flawed; but it's flaws are rolled into its appeal.  Some of these interview subjects are beyond "off the cuff."  John Landis looks like he was stopped on the street, surprised but still happy to be on camera; and the film begins with director Nicholas Meyer (Time After Time, Star Trek 2) complaining about how they ambushed him for this interview.  But that's a heck of a lot more entertaining than your average talking head!  Dunning gives the filmmaker tremendous access as he's kicked out of his home by his roommate, living in a storage space and getting extensive oral surgery.  We also get Dunning reconstructing his time in prison like a sequence from The Act Of Killing, and Laurene Landon being perfectly candid, and still a bit puzzled, about how Dunning stalked her.  Some of the people interviewed really hate him, and at certain points we find out why; but most people who've worked with him remain genuinely supportive, and this film had me feeling the same.

2024 Dark Force BD.

Deconstructing Dunning is presented in 1.78:1 and the HD footage looks great when it does.  Like many docs, this is composed of mixed media, including some vintage rapes, interviews shot on lower quality cameras, and some sections where Dunning is given the camera and allowed to film what he likes on his own... which tends to be completely out of focus.  But that's the film, not the transfer, which is surely taken from the official DCP and looks as good as it possibly could.  Audio is a lossless stereo track in DTS-HD, but there are no subtitle options.

And there's a collection of great and terrible extras.  First up, we get "Savage Tracks Vol. 6" where "Demon" Dave DeFalco keeps walking away from the mic, calling Vinegar Syndrome on his phone, and everybody is talking over each other about god knows what.  A good chunk of the time is devoted to somebody "sneaking" into the recording session dressed as an ape?  I've never listened to a Savage Track before, but this one was enough for me.  BUT, they did get Dunning and the film's producer to join them, and when they get a word in edge-wise, the producer adds some good tidbits of information, and Dunning continues to be a wild character.  They also include the entire, unedited interviews with Bert I. Gordon and Franco Nero, which Dunning himself interview, and are quite something.  Dunning keeps asking them questions about his life, and they are baffled.  Finally, we get the complete collection of abusive phone messages Dunning left his former boss, which we heard highlights from in the film.  There are also a couple promo trailers under the previous title Resurrecting Dunning.

These are what I've been having a great time with lately.

Larry Cohen: Man of Mystery & Misdirection

Here's a fun, new Shout Factory (or I guess, now, Gruv) exclusive: 'Larry Cohen: Mystery & Misdirection,' a 3-disc set of arguably lesser Larry Cohen films, two of which are making their long-awaited HD debuts.  Specifically, 1984's Special Effects has been released on blu before, by Olive Films (now OOP, as Olive is sadly no more), in 2016, following a 2004 MGM DVD.  But it's the first time for 1977's The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover and 1989's Wicked Stepmother, which hadn't even been available on DVD before, apart from two short-lived MOD MGM DVRs.  And they're nicely packaged together in Scream Factory's slim set.  Yes, this is under the Scream banner, despite only one of the films being halfway to a horror movie.

The biggest criticism of Hoover would probably be that it feels like Cohen produced a TV movie for the theatrical market.  Cohen, known for stealing high profile locations, pulls off some of his greatest heists in this one, but much of it still looks flat and stagey.  Cohen is determined to cover Hoover's fifty-year legacy with the FBI, which means he has a ton of story to cover in under two hours.  Full of short scenes and a massive, revolving door of characters, this movie flies by at a breakneck speed.  Rip Torn is more or less our point of view character, but he doesn't really enter the story until the second hour.  Zip, zip, zip, major historical figures come in and go out.  But this being Cohen, he still fins the space for quirky personal moments and presumably improved humor.  He's helped by Broderick Crawford's authentic performance, and a murderer's row of great character actors like Andrew Duggan, John Marley, George Plimpton, Jose Ferrer and of course James Dixon, who's in all three of these.  But Hoover's story is a fascinating one at heart, and Cohen's got all the angles on him.

2011 MGM DVR top; 2025 Scream Factory BD bottom.

This movie looking better than it ever has should help with its reputation nowadays.  MGM's DVR was anamorphic widescreen, so I was fairly happy with it for its time.  But while Scream's blu, which is a new 2k scan taken from the original negatives, is still 1.85:1, it pulls back to reveal more picture along all four sides.  More importantly, it has deeper, richer colors, with less washed highlights and blacks.  And MGM's disc was interlaced, which this new release corrects.  It's just a nice, obvious improvement in every way.

And that includes the 2.0 audio, which has been boosted to DTS-HD.  And Scream has included subtitles for the first time.  Extras are slim, not entirely absent like they were on MGM's 100% barebones disc.  Scream has got the original theatrical trailer, and more interestingly, an on-camera interview with historian Daniel Schweiger about the impressive, bombastic score by Academy Award winner Miklós Rózsa.

Next up is 1984's Special Effects, a fun little murder story about a filmmaker, a sinisterly cold Eric Bogosian, obsessed with capturing the moment of real death in his next movie.  He starts off as a fairly stiff and tame thriller, hampered greatly by the creative decision to completely re-dub leading actress Zoë Lund (Ms .45) with an unconvincing Southern accent.  Yeah, her character's supposed to be from Texas, but they really should've gone with whatever was coming out of her mouth on set, because the effect is so distancing.  Anyway, fortunately, Cohen packs in enough twists and clever ideas that the film slowly succeeds at drawing you further and further in.  Stick with it, and you'll be hooked on this twisted little tale.

2025 Scream Factory BD.

This is the only disc in this set not to feature a new 2k scan.  In fact, by all accounts, this is the same transfer as Olive's previous blu-ray, apart from any minor differences in encode.  So fortunately it's a pretty good one, with a crisp 1.85:1 image and the soft focus grain always at least being hinted at.  The colors are strong, contrast is attractive.  It's presumably a master that was delivered to them from MGM, creating HD masters of their own archive.  And like the previous BD, this one also includes 2.0 DTS-HD with optional English subtitles.

Unlike Olive's blu, though, this one's fairly barebones.  It just has the trailer (which, for the record, was also on the MGM DVD and Olive BD).  But Olive had an important special feature: an audio commentary by Cohen himself, along with the director of his documentary, King Cohen.  So in that respect, this is a disappointing step backwards.  And I've heard it.  Cohen always does good commentary tracks, but this was still one of his better ones, helped by the fact that this is one of his less discussed works, so it's not as familiar territory.   So... oh well.

And speaking of "oh well," that feeling brings us to our final film...  Ha ha  No, no.  Actually, 1989's Wicked Stepmother, while clearly no masterpiece, is better than it would appear.  In the tradition of silly comedies like My Stepmother Is an Alien or My Mom's a Werewolf, comes Bettie Davis's final film, and Cohen's silliest ever.  Yes, even more so than Full Moon High, which is in the ZAZ vein.  This plays more like a sitcom.  And it is packed with television stars, including Tom Bosley from Happy Days, Richard Moll from Night Court, Lionel Stander from Hart To Hart, Barbara Carrera from Dallas and David Rasche from Sledge Hammer!  But it is packed with gags, some of which are genuinely funny, and silly special effects, some of which are admittedly wretched.  And the spirit of this movie is to just walk right into and embrace the eye rolling aspects.

2010 MGM DVR top; 2025 Scream Factory BD bottom.

Wow, I forgot MGM's old Wicked Stepmother was nonanamorphic.  Yeah, it's a good thing we can replace it.  Besides that, it's another new 2k scan that adjusts the aspect ratio from 1.87:1 to 1.85, fixes the problematic interlacing, corrects the drab colors, clears up the compression noise and sharpens up the detail of MGM's lower than usual resolution.  The difference is vast and obvious.  And again, the 2.0 audio is boosted to DTS-HD and optional English subtitles have been added.  Plus, we get a couple nice extras.  The DVR has nothing, but the blu has the theatrical trailer and an on-camera interview with the editor, who has some great memories of working with Cohen and is pretty candid about the conflicts behind the scenes.

The set itself is just one amary cased housed in a slim slipbox.  For diehard Larry Cohen aficionados, this is essential.  Two HD exclusives with a couple nice new extras.  The Special Effects blu is more just a bonus disc for casual fans, since completists will still need the Olive disc for the commentary anyway.  And those folks may be put off by the non-insubstantial price point.  It depends how interested you are on these particular, lesser known movies.  But I'll say, for my part: my appreciation has grown for each of them on every revisit, and I'm glad to have added this set to my collection my it's still available.  Limited to just 2500 copies, the option may not be on the table for long.