A notorious horror classic returns in all its depraved glory. This infamous video nasty updated the classic Giallo blueprint for the gorified 80s, courting controversy and drenching the viewer in crimson arterial spray.
A razor-wielding psycho is stalking the horror writer Peter Neal, in Rome to promote his latest work, Tenebre. But the author isn’t the obsessive killer’s only target, the beautiful women who surround him are doomed as one by one, they fall victim to the murderer’s slashing blade…
Will fiction and reality blur as fear and madness take hold? Watch in terror as by turns the cast fall victim to the sadistic imagination of Dario Argento, Italy’s master of horror.
CONTENTS
Newly remastered High Definition digital transfer of the film
Presented in High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD
Optional original English & Italian Mono Audio tracks (uncompressed PCM Mono 2.0 Audio on the Blu-ray)
Optional English subtitles for Italian audio and English SDH subtitles for English audio for the deaf and hard of hearing
Audio Commentary with authors and critics Kim Newman and Alan Jones
Audio Commentary with Argento expert Thomas Rostock
Introduction by star Daria Nicolodi
The Unsane World of Tenebrae: An interview with director Dario Argento
The same company that provided Arrow with the HD master for Tenebrae also supplied Blue Underground with masters for their worst reviewed discs (Django, City of the Living Dead etc) so, for once, it doesn't seem to be the sole fault of Arrow. All the same, the disc is a shocker if it's anything remotely like the screengrabs I linked to/pasted.
According to Arrow, it wouldn't have happened at all without Zavvi's input - they wanted to redo Tenebrae ever since the possibility of getting their hands on a superior master became reality, but they couldn't crunch the numbers without that particular deal.
Hard though it is for sane people like us to believe, the specialist steelbook market is massive. In fact, I think it's actually growing while the market for optical media in general is decidedly shrinking.
Perkins Cobb wrote:So the logical outcome will be a future in which people buy empty steelbooks to park on the shelf next to their TV while they stream the movie over the internet.
That's not too much different from the people who currently buy music on vinyl (to have an "artifact" and to support the artist) but listen to music almost exclusively via their phones.
Well, at least they're committed to completely doing it wrong. Like, if you streamed the movie because you didn't care about physical packaging, or if you spent extra for the stupid steelbook but were also seeking the quality of Blu-ray, either of those things would be at least halfway defensible. And we wouldn't want that.
Anyone had a dispatch notice for their preorder yet? Zavvi haven't responded to my query and I have to say considering that they are the only retailer who are getting this for the foreseeable future, I'm not impressed at all.
edit: apparently, the street date has been pushed back to December 23 as per Zavvi's page for Tenebrae (though in my order history, the expected shipping date still says December 16).
Tenebrae looks very good indeed on the remastered disc. A far cry from the disastrous first disc. Enjoyed the Strickland appreciation and the rest of the booklet very much.
Which version do you all prefer: Engish or Italian? I'm trying to decide which to watch first.
The two other giallo movies I've seen were divisive: Deep Red sounded fine in Italian, but I was distracted by some dubbing issues in Fulci's The Black Cat.
I liked it well enough in English. Most of the cast spoke English and it was filmed that way and at least three of the leads voices were retained and were not dubbed by other actors. I felt it worked shockingly well despite Italy's dubbing obsession. It not being disorienting is certainly something I can praise it for right?
A disappointing revisit: Truly a mystery film that doesn't benefit from repeat viewings, as the first 90% is rather dull once you know where it's heading - a lot more than Argento's other considered-top-tier works. That last ten minutes or so, though, are still an absolute riot. Argento's commitment to his ludicrous ideas is so assured that he somehow succeeds in selling all of them, but it hardly matters when fired off this rapidly. The film also seems like a direct response to complaints of Deep Red et al's predictability, and since we now know he can properly fuck with us around a twist, I wish Argento had done so more often
