BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Horror	Theatrical Trailer(s)	None
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1974	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	83:25 minutes	Other Extras	None
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Movie
Region	1,2,3,4,5,6	Director	Tobe Hooper
Studio Distributor	Force Video	Starring	Marilyn Burns Paul A. Partain Edwin Neal Jim Siedow Gunnar Hansen
RRP	$34.95	Music	Tobe Hooper Wayne Bell

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	MPEG	2.0
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Dolby Digital	2.0
16x9 Enhancement	No	Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192Kb/s) English (Dolby Digital 2.0 mono, 192Kb/s) English (MPEG 2.0 , 192Kb/s) English (MPEG 2.0 mono, 192Kb/s)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	?	Smoking	Yes
Subtitles	French German Dutch Italian Danish Spanish	Annoying Product Placement	Yes, mildly
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Sally (Marilyn Burns), her invalid brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain),  and her friends Jerry (Allen Danniger), Kirk (William Vale) and Pam (Teri McMinn) are off to visit a family grave in a graveyard that has been desecrated. Their troubles begin when they pick up a hitch-hiker (Edwin Neal) who is somewhat unbalanced...

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer severely lacks definition and is quite blurry throughout, making the image very hard to look at, particularly early on in the movie. Shadow detail is poor, and occasional low level noise intrudes into the image. One thing I will say for this transfer is that there is little in the way of film grain present in the final image, which is surprising given the 16mm source material.

    Colours were faded and muted. Some of the intensely blue scenes at night showed some chroma noise, but generally colours were too faded for this to be much of an issue.

    MPEG artefacts were seen on occasion and were of two types; the typical MPEG background blockiness, and also some odd motion blur which was not attributable to motion blur, but rather to MPEG motion compensation artefacts. This is despite the bit rate of this transfer being right up at the 10Mb/sec maximum data rate of DVD.

    Film-to-video artefacts were rare, though there was some telecine wobble during the opening credits. Some video artefacts were present in the image, consisting of video dropouts in the image - these exhibited themselves as white lines across the image periodically - they were more frequent during the latter half of the movie, and were quite distracting, especially since this type of artefact is so rarely seen on DVD. Film artefacts were present, but never to a particularly distracting extent.

Audio

    Dialogue was muffled, distorted and indistinct throughout, making it hard to understand what was going on. Comparing the original and the remastered soundtracks reveals that a significant amount of hiss has been removed from the remastered soundtrack, though the limited frequency response of the original soundtrack remains.

    There were no audio sync problems with this transfer.

    The music by Tobe Hooper and Wayne Bell is eerie and unusual, adding to the effect of the movie nicely.

    The surrounds were used unevenly and rarely. Some rare ambience and music made its way into the surround channel, but generally the soundtrack was front-and-centre only, with some panned monaural special effects being placed to the left and right of the image.

    The .1 channel had very little use with this soundtrack.

Menu

• Audio Commentary
• Deleted & Alternate Scenes (9) & Bloopers
• Theatrical Trailer & TV Spot
• Gallery of Production Photos, Poster Art and Lobby Cards

    The video quality is poor, though this can mainly be attributed to the source material.

    The audio quality is poor, though once again this can be attributed to the source material.

    There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna
24th December 1999