Marilyn Manson-Demystifying the Devil (Unauth) (1998) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Documentary	Featurette-Mrs. Scabtrees 2nd Performance Interviews-Cast-Exclusive Gidget Glen Interview
Rating
Year Of Production	1998
Running Time	85:21 (Case: 90)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Programme
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Chris Nicholas
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Corey James Brian Warner Brad Stewart
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$34.95	Music	None Given

    Before watching this disc I admit that I did not know a great deal about Marilyn Manson (Brian Warner) or the early part of his musical career. This feature consists of a number of interviews combined with home movie footage and some video of the band's early shows that provides a great deal of information relating to the formation and rise to fame by the band. The numerous people interviewed on this disc include former band members, club owners, other performers and Marilyn Manson's former long term girlfriend.

    As this is an unauthorised biography, there are no interviews with Marilyn Manson, current band members or representatives from his record company. Luckily, the feature concentrates only on the early days of the band and seems to provide a balanced look at those times.

    If you are a huge fan of the band you may be aware of most of the information provided on this disc, but seeing the original people involved and some of the early promotional material will be interesting.

Video

    The NTSC full frame transfer is presented in a non-16x9-enhanced aspect ratio of 1.33:1.

    The transfer is consistently soft and at no stage shows high levels of detail. Some interview segments that have been shot specifically for this documentary are of higher quality but it is still very obvious that these have been transferred from an analogue source. During much of the footage, transferred from presumably VHS masters, significant low level noise is present and initially distracting to the viewer. Many segments exhibit extremely poor levels of shadow detail due to the source material. To compensate for the poor shadow detail some segments, such as at 3:58, have artificially had the brightness increased. This results in a greyish washed-out segment showing no blacks and emphasizing low level noise.

    The quality of colour varies throughout depending on the source material used. The more current segments have fairly accurate colours but much of the low quality material appears poorly saturated as you would expect.

    Numerous MPEG artefacts are visible during the transfer, for example at 1:06, but as the viewer becomes accustomed to the various low quality segments these artefacts are easily ignored.

    There are minimal examples of aliasing present during the transfer, with one of the most significant examples visible at 23:40. At no stage are these artefacts distracting to the viewer.

    The most consistent artefact visible during the transfer are analogue tape tracking errors. These occur throughout the transfer and during segments from all sources including the higher quality material recorded for this production. Some examples of these errors can be seen at 15:15, 18:15, 24:01, 26:39, and 30:55. Due to their frequency of appearance, these errors are quite distracting to the viewer.

    As all material appears to have been sourced from video there are no film-based errors.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    A single mono English Dolby Digital 1.0 112 kbps mix is provided.

    During interviews in the feature the dialogue is clear and easy to understand at all times. During many of the low quality live segments, the audio is muffled and distorted as you would expect for material sourced from a consumer camcorder.

    At no stage during the transfer were any audio dropouts detected.

    The surround channels and sub channel was not utilised at any stage.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

Mrs. Scabtree's 2nd and final performance (2:01)

Interview Gidget Glen (20:34)

    As this is an all-region NTSC disc, all versions would appear to be identical.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall