DVD DETAILS:
Vision
The 16:9 enhanced widescreen transfer is somewhat patchy. This unevenness, however, comes from the fact that this version of the film is uncut and that the restored scenes of added explicitness come from different quality master sources (one of which may even be a video). Thus, image quality often jumps between these scenes. Such is a necessary endurance for the complete version of the film to be seen – the DVD also offers the cut version, without the added scenes. Much is made of the ironic contrast between the natural splendour / wastes of the English landscape and the monstrous humans who travel through it. The film emphasizes movement through places, paralleling a moral journey that culminates in the descent into a dungeon hell. It looks drab, with an overwhelming autumnal physicality: its naturalism making for a contrast to the expressionistic colour use of the early Hammer films. Blacks are often deep but there are some additional frame edge problems on occasion. The effective use of a handheld camera adds to the disturbing immediacy to the torture scenes in particular, cleverly manipulating the audience into hating Price as much as they share in his sexual aberration, even implicating them as accessories in the ending. The final journey down a castle corridor through alternating light and dark works as an effective moral flux, as Ogilvy reaches the point of reckoning in his hatred for Price.
Sound
The Dolby Digital mono sound transfer suffers from uneven jumps, again primarily due to the inclusion of select shots taken from different masters. The effect is disconcerting but must be endured to experience the restored, uncut version. The effectiveness of the sound design carries through in ambient details, such as the opening execution amidst the howling wind, suggesting a wild devastation within the natural landscape. An early scene makes good use of the noises of a nearby skirmish that Ogilvy cannot see, introducing the importance of the sound of human conflict disrupting nature. But nature is at best indifferent in response. The score is suitably ominous but in the transfer lacks home theatre fullness. What remains most disconcerting is the frequent stress on human screams and other cries of pain and suffering, making the film rather infernal, as if all England threatens to become a vast torture chamber – indeed it all heads to the final dungeon scene and its auditory barrage of sadism, madness and despair in the human voice. It achieves a quality of life in damnation as the desperation and pain in the voices adds to the immediacy of the film and the sense of unrelenting anguish. In such a bleak world as Reeves depicts, these screams of the innocents make for a terrifying motif. Price’s distinctive voice is doubly chilling as a force of total manipulative, menacing evil and is free from his trademark camp. read more
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