Arrow Films

[Finch]

Black Sabbath and Baron Blood coming from Arrow. No release date but Region B lock and specs confirmed:

BARON BLOOD:

Special Features:
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation of three versions of the film: ‘Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga’ with Italian opening and closing titles and ‘Baron Blood’ with English opening and closing titles and the European English export version audio, and for the first time on home video, the AIP version with alternate score by Les Baxter
- Three audio versions: Optional Italian, European English and AIP English re-dub and re-score
- English SDH subtitles for both English versions and a new English subtitle translation of the Italian audio
- Audio Commentary with Bava biographer and expert Tim Lucas
- Bava’s other 1972 film ‘Four Times That Night’ presented on Blu-ray and DVD
- Introduction to Baron Blood by author and critic Alan Jones
- Trailers for Baron Blood and Four Times That Night
- Baron Blood Radio Spots
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Graham Humphreys
- Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the films by Oliver James and Pasquale Iannone, illustrated with original archive stills and posters

BLACK SABBATH:

Special Features:
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation of two versions of the film; ‘I tre volti della paura’ – the European version with score by Roberto Nicolosi & ‘Black Sabbath’ – the re-edited and re-dubbed AIP version with Les Baxter score, on home video for the first time
- English SDH subtitles for English Audio and a new English subtitle translation of the Italian audio
- Audio Commentary with Bava biographer and expert Tim Lucas
- Introduction to the film by author and critic Alan Jones
- A Life In Film – An Interview with star Mark Damon
- Three Faces of Black Sabbath – A comparison of the different versions of the film
- International Trailer
- US Trailer
- Italian Trailer
- TV and Radio Spots
- Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by critic David Cairns and a substantial interview with AIP Producer Samuel Z. Arkoff on his experiences of working with Bava, conducted by Tim Lucas, illustrated with original stills and posters

[cinemartin]

Those look like great packages. If the transfers are half as good as Zombie, these are going to be great!

[Wes Moynihan]

The backlash against the Zombie Flesh Eaters Blu has begun - apparently 6 seconds of boat footage from the post-credit sequence is missing. A shame considering this release ended up in a lot of Top 10 lists...

From Arrow's Facebook page...

The second matter has been very difficult to resolve and that is the missing 6 seconds on the Zombie Flesh Eaters Blu-ray. After three independent QCs and literally hundreds of reviews, no one noticed the missing footage, this was brought to our attention by an eagle eyed customer and since then we have been looking into how to fix this. The missing six seconds are caused by the seamless branching 'in point' being incorrectly positioned 6 seconds late and causes a shot of the New York harbour and the movement of the boat into screen to be missing following the credits. We did not initially consider a replacement programme as the replacement programme for The Beyond has not been in a success in that sadly it has been abused as we have now issued many more discs than we actually manufactured. We have therefore decided that we will have a replacement programme for Zombie Flesh Eaters but at a small cost in order to deter those who have claimed discs by forging proof of purchase. Simply the disc may be purchased from our website so there is no need to send us your disc, or proof of purchase making the process very simple and as pain free as possible. Discs are now being manufactured and we will endeavour to make these available as soon as possible, this will likely be a week or so. The replacement disc can be purchased here...

[JPJ]

"Small cost" is £5 for a disc plus £3 for postage.No wonder that those who bought directly from Arrow are furious...

[Wes Moynihan]

Seems Arrow are now gonna replace discs for free...

Arrow Films & Video
***ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS UPDATE***

Firstly , we would like to thank all of our customers who purchased any Arrow title. Without our customers and fans of what we do, we wouldn’t have a business and would never take that for granted. However, we also ask you to bear in mind that we spend considerable sums on all elements of each release. For Zombie Flesh Eaters, the restoration was one of our most expensive projects to date. We did all we could to make this edition perfect and special and it was 9 months of production time and a huge amount of money in the making. It is incredibly frustrating that anything may have gone amiss that would have tarnished our customers enjoyment of the release.

The idea behind the £5 replacement disc programme on ZFE was not for commercial gain but was conceived for 2 reasons. Firstly as a company with few number of employees it was a way of facilitating the replacement programme without the administrative need to handle each enquiry internally. Secondly, we ran a replacement programme on The Beyond that was systematically abused, we wanted to avoid this situation again.

On reflection, we can certainly see how the £5 plus postage could irk someone who had purchased the product at full price, especially as a pre-order. We would like to apologise therefore for this ill-conceived programme.

We will offer anyone who has purchased any of the Zombie Flesh Eaters Blu Ray releases a free replacement of the disc on receipt of their original disc. We will provide details of where to send the disc very shortly. Anyone who has purchased a disc will receive a refund.
Thanks again for your continued custom

Arrow Film

[MichaelB]

That's a huge relief - I thought Arrow had badly put their foot in it when I saw their announcement yesterday, so I'm glad sanity has prevailed.

I really do feel for them, though: this mistake would never have happened in the first place if they hadn't tried to go the extra mile for fans and give people a chance of watching the film with three different titles! Which I notice they haven't attempted with their upcoming Black Sunday - probably sensibly, even if you select the Italian version, you get the English titles. (This is not a production error, I should probably stress!)

[Wes Moynihan]

I'm glad I resisted the tempatation to grab this on pre-order. I once got burned on a defective disc (a Richard Kern anthologly) so usually I wait until a release has been out in circulation for a while before picking it up. I feel bad for Arrow that such an otherwise fine release, which was among the best Criterion and MOCs releases of the year has been tainted, and annoyingly, that irresponsible guy who posted that Arrow-bashing pre-release review on Zombie Flesh Eaters' AmazonUK page must be feeling pretty happy with himself now...

[manicsounds]

I guess there won't be a recall of the discs currently in shops, and so it'll just be purchase, forward the receipt to Arrow, and receive a replacement disc. Same thing they did with my purchase of "House By The Cemetery"

[MichaelB]

I guess there won't be a recall of the discs currently in shops, and so it'll just be purchase, forward the receipt to Arrow, and receive a replacement disc. Same thing they did with my purchase of "House By The Cemetery"

What was wrong with House by the Cemetery? I know The Beyond had a recall, but I don't remember anything untoward about Cemetery.

[manicsounds]

The disc 2 bonus DVD. Some copies were the feature film instead of the bonus features.

[tenia]

Though I understand how it can be frustrating for a small structure as Arrow to see replacement disc scheme being abused, I'm quite amazed and almost angry to see their decision to basically sell £5 + shipping fees (so £8 for me, in France) the replacement disc for a defect coming from their side.

In the end, I don't especially care about these 6 seconds, but they have aknowledge that they released faulty disc, and if you want a good one, well, pay again.

On the other end, they just issued this :

"We will offer anyone who has purchased any of the Zombie Flesh Eaters Blu Ray releases a free replacement of the disc on receipt of their original disc. We will provide details of where to send the disc very shortly. Anyone who has purchased a disc will receive a refund."

So I guess they understood quickly how a non-free replacement disc is perceived.

[Anthony Thorne]

A novel suggestion - if Arrow stopped releasing discs riddled with egregious fuck-ups, they wouldn't have to keep implementing expensive exchange programs post-release. Just a thought. I think the fact that their 'improved' replacement disc of THE BEYOND still apparently features out-of-synch audio during various scenes says everything required about the state of their QC.

[matrixschmatrix]

Oh yeah, what an egregious fuck up the six missing seconds onZombie Flesh Eaters is. What a bunch of jerks.

[RossyG]

Having been a film fan for a few decades, fuming at every single snip made by the BBFC in the 80s and 90s, I'm very much of the 'every frame is sacrosanct' school of thought and that goes as much for Zombie Flesh Eaters and Commando as it does for anything by Pasolini or Kubrick. I'd say that six missing seconds was a spectacular fuck up that really should have been spotted in advance.

Thankfully, after a moment of panic, Arrow have done the right thing in this case, but there's no denying that they do have some quality control issues that affect some of their titles. It's such a shame as when they're good - The Tin Drum for example - they're very, very good and they're also a great example of a niche label who communicate directly with their fans.

[Peacock]

Will they be pulling all disk from online stores and repressing them or waiting till this batch is sold and then repressing them?

[Anthony Thorne]

I'd assume the latter, as THE BEYOND took a few months with the replacement scheme running before the corrected disc turned up at Amazon.co.uk.

Like RossyG, I've had well enough of petty censorship from both the BBFC and OFLC (in Oz) to simply want fully uncut versions of the Italian cult films I enjoy. Most Eurocult fans who suffered through the moronic censorship regimes of the 80's and 90's want the same, and Arrow are well aware of this. (For reference, one of the major UK horror fanzines is called IS IT UNCUT?). I'm not going to call the Arrow team 'jerks' as they clearly tried hard with this release, but the film is either uncut or it isn't, and Arrow only has themselves to blame for the missing footage here, the miscoloured sepia opening of THE BEYOND, the audio distortion on FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET, the excessive DNR on some other Argento titles, etc etc. All that said, you can imagine the reaction at Arrow when, after all the vitriol they've copped from the above, they discovered their latest deluxe release was the victim of yet another fuck up. They really need to get their act together, and I'm assuming after this latest bungle they will.

[perkizitore]

Four Flies on Grey Velvet is a Shameless release, not Arrow.

[Anthony Thorne]

My mistake.

[MichaelB]

And also, the excessive DNR is out of Arrow's hands - they're as conscious of (and annoyed about) it as everyone else, but Italian labs seem to swear by it. And once it's on the master, it's impossible to remove, at least without going back to 35mm basics and redoing everything from scratch, which is outside the budget of small indie labels except with absolutely guaranteed best sellers. (And that's assuming they're even allowed to access 35mm master materials at all, which is often not the case.)

In fact, this is one of the reasons they jumped at a chance to create their own scan from the original camera negative of Zombie Flesh Eaters - unlike the vast majority of Italian exploitation titles, no DNR was used at all in the entire process. And the results speak for themselves.

Arrow have by no means been the only ones to fall victim to this practice - even the BFI got its fingers burned over Saló, and for the same reason. And of course the row over Criterion's Children of Paradise is still ongoing: again, the label's only fault was to license a master that was already DNRed to oblivion, presumably because it was a bestselling title and there wasn't a viable alternative.

[Wes Moynihan]

Interesting stuff Michael...

I ended up going with the Arrow Blus of Dawn/Day of the Dead and City of the Living Dead as my weapons of choice but it took me a huge amount of time to decide if the Arrows made for better viewing over their US counterparts. In the end I went with the Arrows but I'm not so sure, opinion still seems fiercely divided. For me this is the most frustrating aspect of the whole Blu-Ray experience...

[MichaelB]

What would be ideal would be if rightsholders simply made raw 2K scans of their best-quality materials and handed that over to the distributors.

Individual labels would then have the choice whether to apply digital tools, whether for damage removal or DNR, they could do their own grading, and although this obviously wouldn't mean an end to comparisons and arguments (look at Criterion and the BFI's sourced-from-the-same-scan Red Desert!), it would at least mean that distributors wouldn't have to deal with someone else's unwanted but unremovable crap, for which they'd invariably get the blame.

I know it's a completely utopian fantasy, but one can always dream.

[Wes Moynihan]

I wish I had picked up last year's issue of Sight & Sound with the article on film grain because I'm a complete novice in this area, so much so that I thought the BFI's Salo looked perfectly fine to me when I saw it. Recently though I sat down with Tartan's DVD of Hired Hand and the image did look excessivley waxy to me, so perhaps my next viewing of Salo will be disappointing. I'm wondering if DNR has ever been used positively for a transfer ? It seems to be the general concenus that Blue Underground did the right thing by not applying it to the Blu of Dead & Buried which I know from the DVD edition contained a swarm of grain, distractingly so at times I thought...

[MichaelB]

I wish I had picked up last year's issue of Sight & Sound with the article on film grain because I'm a complete novice in this area, so much so that I thought the BFI's Salo looked perfectly fine to me when I saw it.

I think it partly depends on your equipment as well as your experience. I have two Blu-ray setups at home - the first in my office, which has been professionally calibrated and which therefore mercilessly reveals exactly what's on the disc, and the other one in the living room, which is essentially a PS3 plugged into a Panasonic plasma, with decidedly amateur calibration via a ten-year-old DVD of Digital Video Essentials.

And a lot of the time, I find I'm perfectly happy with stuff playing downstairs in a normally-lit room that I'd be horribly picky about if watched in the office in the dark. For instance, I couldn't miss the shortcomings of Don't Look Now on either setup, but I found them much easier to tune out when watching from the living-room sofa.

[Bürgermeister]

What would be ideal would be if rightsholders simply made raw 2K scans of their best-quality materials and handed that over to the distributors.

Individual labels would then have the choice whether to apply digital tools, whether for damage removal or DNR, they could do their own grading, and although this obviously wouldn't mean an end to comparisons and arguments (look at Criterion and the BFI's sourced-from-the-same-scan Red Desert!), it would at least mean that distributors wouldn't have to deal with someone else's unwanted but unremovable crap, for which they'd invariably get the blame.

I know it's a completely utopian fantasy, but one can always dream.

Out of curiosity which release do you prefer, BFI or Criterion?

[MichaelB]

Out of curiosity which release do you prefer, BFI or Criterion?

I haven't seen the Criterion: I had (and was very happy with) the BFI disc already, and in any case I was region-locked when the Criterion came out.

In any case, there's no definitive answer as to which is "better", since the only people who can speak on this with absolute authority are now dead - so it really depends on whether you prefer the colour scheme in MOMA or the BFI's 35mm reference prints, which each label used for their own grading.