The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Special Edition (1974)

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General		Extras
Category	Horror	Booklet Main Menu Audio & Animation Audio Commentary-Tobe Hooper (Dir), Daniel Pearl (DoP), & Gunnar Hansen (Act) Menu Audio Featurette-The Shocking Truth (70:25) Deleted Scenes-9 Featurette-Killing Kirk Outtakes Featurette-Props And Sets Gallery-Photo Gallery-Poster
Rating
Year Of Production	1974
Running Time	83:20 (Case: 80)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No Dual Disc Set	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5	Directed By	Tobe Hooper
Studio Distributor	Vortex/Henkel/Hooper Beyond Home Entertainment	Starring	Marilyn Burns Gunnar Hansen
Case	Click-Double
RPI	$39.95	Music	Tobe Hooper Wayne Bell

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (384Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (384Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Rather than rehash my previous review, I decided to start from scratch with this one. It has, after all, been over 18 months since Leatherface last graced my DVD player.

    Graves have been desecrated in a sleepy country town in Texas. This news brings Sally (Marilyn Burns) and her disabled, whiny brother Franklin (Paul R. Partain) to town along with three of their friends to check on their grandfather's grave. Fortunately, it seems as if their grandfather's grave has been left untouched and so our team head back into town. Along the way, they come across a seriously imbalanced hitchhiker whom they quickly get rid of. Unfortunately, they don't have enough gasoline to get back home, and the local gas station is out of gas until later in the day. Accordingly, Sally, Franklin and their friends end up going back to their grandfather's derelict house to reminisce and to pass the remainder of the day. Whilst there, they stumble across another house in their quest for gasoline...

    A classic movie that pretty much started the whole slasher genre, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre seems somewhat tame compared to modern-day equivalents. Nonetheless, it still offers a significant number of scares and some seriously deranged acting.

Video

    Let's get one thing out of the way right away. You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was shot over 25 years ago on very slow 16mm film. That means lots and lots of grain and limited shadow detail. No amount of processing is going to get information out of this transfer that wasn't there to begin with.

    This new transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced. The previously-released version was not 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer is not sharp. Foregrounds are acceptably defined, but backgrounds do suffer considerably from a lack of detail, even being completely devoid of details at times. Shadow detail is generally very poor, with anything not well-lit being completely black. Grain is omnipresent, particularly during dark sequences. The middle section of the film, at around the 50 minute mark, featuring Sally running in the forest, is merely a bobbing head in a sea of grainy blackness.

    Colours are generally strongly rendered, although this does vary according to the particular scene being depicted. There is a trend towards oversaturation of colour at times, with skin tones in particular taking on an overly reddish hue occasionally.

    With material as grainy as this, MPEG compression artefacts are inevitable. Pick any really dark scene, freeze frame it and you'll see subtle posterization and macro-blocking without too much difficulty. That level of judgement is, however, a tad too harsh for this transfer. Instead, it is fair to say that MPEG artefacts were not particularly noticed whilst the DVD was running at normal speed.

    There are, however, some possible MPEG motion compensation artefacts present in the transfer, where portions of the image seem to move independently of other portions of the image. An example of this is at 34:30 - 34:32, where the door moves independently of the door frame - quite disconcerting. This occurs later in the transfer with Grandma's teeth.

    By far the biggest problem with this transfer is interlacing artefact. It was this artefact that made this transfer really difficult and fatiguing to watch. So long as there was little movement in the image, it was quite watchable, but as soon as there was significant motion, the image blurred severely, making it all but unwatchable. Whilst a certain level of interlacing artefact is not too much of a problem, in this case, it appears that some inappropriate video processing has resulted in some really nasty and ugly artefacts. As an example, at 17:38, the van drives past a series of telegraph poles. Typically, with appropriately PAL-processed film-based source materials, you would see an image of one pole pan across this scene as; one pole - two poles (interlaced) - one pole. This would blur moderately. In this transfer, one pole is rendered as two to three poles across the entire pan. This suggests to me that more than one level of interlacing has been introduced into this transfer, probably during an NTSC to PAL conversion. The middle sequence of the film, with Sally running through the forest, turns into an absolute mess of interlaced branches and grain and is unwatchable.

    I have two issues with this artefact;

1. The previous release of this DVD did not suffer from anywhere near this level of interlacing artefact. Subsequently, pans were far easier to watch.
2. According to the notes in the booklet that accompanies this DVD, this transfer was taken from a high definition source created from the original negative. Appropriate processing of this high definition source material should have completely avoided this exaggerated level of interlacing artefact.

Old transfer Note particularly Frames 10, 12, 14, and 16 which show only a single pole, as it was on the original negative.

New transfer Note particularly Frames 9, 11, 13 and 15, where you can see 3 interlaced poles instead of 1.

    Other film-to-video artefacts are not a problem. There is insufficient detail present in this transfer to have aliasing crop up, so that isn't an issue. Some minor wobble of the credits does not really distract, and the occasional vertical jump on scene cuts is not bothersome.

    Surprisingly, film artefacts are not a significant problem for this transfer, with amazingly few to be seen.

    There are no subtitles present on this DVD.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are two audio tracks present on this DVD; English Dolby Digital 2.0 and English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0. The 2.0 soundtrack has some minimal surround information encoded into it, and is best listened to with surround decoding enabled.

    The dialogue is variably understandable, ranging from clearly understandable to muffled and hard to make out. The overall frequency response is quite limited, with no highs and no lows included in the recording, which further limits dialogue intelligibility. Occasionally, distortion can be heard in the dialogue. Hiss is not bothersome. Audio sync appeared acceptable.

    The music is variably present. For much of the earlier part of the movie, the music was provided by the van's radio, and was appropriately jaunty, nicely juxtaposed against the creepy nature of the on-screen happenings. As the movie progressed, some strident atonal music was introduced which also added to the overall sense of tension and foreboding.

    Fundamentally, this is a mono mix, with most of the action arising from the centre speaker. Limited stereo presence for the music occasionally broadened the soundstage, as did occasional directional sound effects and some very occasional surround usage added a little further ambience to the mix.

    The subwoofer occasionally received some redirected signal. When it did, it tended to come as quite a surprise - it got a series of uneven beats during the forest sequence which seemed out of place.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    Most of the extras are presented on a second disc included in the package.

Main Menu Audio & Animation

Audio Commentary - Tobe Hooper (Director), Gunnar Hansen (Actor), Daniel Pearl (Cinematographer)

    There are occasional drop-outs and pops during the audio commentary which are a little distracting.

Featurette - The Shocking Truth (70:25, 1.33:1 DD 2.0 mono)

    Technically, the quality is all over the place. Much of the interview footage is very dark indeed and quite grainy, so it isn't all that easy to watch. There are several quite significant video tape flaws in the transfer, including a really nasty looking one at 27:54.

Deleted Scenes (6 + 3 Alternate Takes)

Featurette-Killing Kirk

Outtakes

Featurette-Props And Set

Gallery-Photo (8)

Gallery-Poster

Booklet

• 16x9 enhancement
• Documentary-The Shocking Truth

• Trailers
• TV Spots

    When comparing the original release in Region 4 to this release, this new 16x9 enhanced version is definitely significantly sharper...until the image starts to move significantly. Then, it dissolves into an interlaced mess. Whilst the original Region 4 release has a softer picture, the relative clarity of pans make it much easier to watch. I suspect that at 68cm or below, the interlacing blur won't be too much of a problem, but it will be for anyone watching this on a decent-sized screen.

    For now, I have to say that transfer-wise, the previous release of this DVD is to be preferred to the current release. Extras-wise, the opposite applies. Not having seen the R1 version, I cannot comment on its relative quality.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall