Shout! Factory / Scream Factory

[Adam X]

I get the impression the guys who run the Scream Factory sub-label don't have much of a choice over this sort of thing - their parent company seems to run a fairly tight ship, financially speaking. I'm sure I've gotten a handful of their releases over the years that have plenty of extras, with barely any of them listed on the back cover.

[Nw_jahrles]

Screenshots are up for Friday the 13th 1 & 2 from the new boxset
https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?d1=14639&d2=14638&c=5625
https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?d1=14643&d2=14642&c=5626

Looks like Shout’s aggressive compression management (all their discs have an average bitrate of 36000 it seems) has resulted in the removal of some grain. By no means awful looking, but I’ll stick with my Parts 1-8 collection that cost $30 CDN and takes up the space of one Blu-ray disc on my shelf.

[cdnchris]

I'm actually pretty impressed with how well the first one has turned out (the only one I've watched so far). Looks really good. If I understand it only the first four got 4K restos. (And then the 9th one a 2K one). I never saw the old Blu-rays so can't compare.

Not surprisingly Freddy vs. Jason and the remake are just the Warner/New Line discs

[Adam X]

Jason X also looks to've gotten a new 2K scan. With the last two, yeah, SF mentioned it was that or nothing. Part VI has also had some colour correction done.

Two-part review at The Digital Bits.

[dwk]

Prince of Darkness UHD coming from Scream on January 19th.

[Cash Flagg]

If they had bundled a Donald Pleasence priest figure with raised axe instead of the poster, I would have been sorely tempted to double-dip on the SC UHD.

[Adam X]

So a couple of the films in the Friday the 13th set seem to be missing a tiny bit of sound/video.

We are aware and currently investigating the issues and our next steps. Stay tuned. We appreciate the support and we take this very seriously.

To be honest, considering the giant spanner this year has thrown into the works, with a set this big I'm surprised there's not more issues.

[Murdoch]

I'm hopeful that Shout! will be sensitive to the fans on this one, especially after the Netflix debacle caused so much outrage

I know the Netflix dub got a lot of hate but, even with the translation flubs, I think the voice acting is far superior to the original dub. Carrie Keranen as Misato gave one of my favorite voice performances in End of Evangelion (maybe favorite period). It may be because I first watched the series through the Netflix dub but I just don't agree with all the hate it received even if I do agree the translation of some key lines was screwed up.

Also, while I was skeptical going into the series after the ridiculous accolades it received, I'll admit I'm dangerously close to fanboyism with it. I've come to love it that much and find myself rewatching EoE quite often.

[therewillbeblus]

I think context certainly plays a role, so while you may have seen it first that way, and I even don't have as much of a stake in this fight, I've heard my girlfriend spew deep analyses on why the lines are so critical to remain as they were in a manner that's incredibly convincing and personal. I personally don't care much because I'm not as married to the original, but if I remember correctly some key lines changing remove more acute passion and piercing ambiguity, especially in the final scene. Now that I'm looking into it, this wiki rundown really cements my initial interpretation that didn't seem to be others' in the sci-fi thread. I think one of the changes was the "I feel sick" replacing the "How disgusting" response in the final scene (?) but I can't be sure.

[Murdoch]

I definitely agree that the original dub's translation was stronger (at least from what I've read). I just think the voice actors approached the material with more of a gravitas in the Netflix version whereas the original, at least the television series, felt much more aimed toward a younger audience. I don't disparage anyone for liking the original dub acting more, I just think the newer one's voice actors offer stronger performances.

[therewillbeblus]

That's interesting, and naturally because I've only seen the original I can't compare, but I personally thought the voices were very strong in the first dub- now I'm curious! Though I'm pretty sure an attempt as such would be blasphemy in this house, and I don't know if I'm that curious

[dustybooks]

Popped in the recent blu of A Midnight Clear this evening and I’m happy to say the new documentary in the supplements is considerably more in-depth than I expected and is built from brand new interviews, including Keith Gordon talking about how bad the film’s previous American disc release was and some very enthusiastic words from Ethan Hawke. The film looks splendid too.

[L.A.]

Friday the 13th replacement disc program.

[cdnchris]

We don't have a thread for Friday the 13th as far as I can see and just don't know if its worth starting one, but I just had to scream into the void what a horrendously boring turd of a film Jason Goes to Hell was. I'll defend a few of the films in the series: I still find the first one to be fairly tense, the sixth stops being serious and has some fun with the character, and Freddy vs. Jason is complete nonsense and all the better because of it. Most of the films are garbage, but holy hell, at least none of them are as dull or as incompetently made as Jason Goes to Hell. I watched the unrated version so maybe the theatrical version had some meat trimmed (and I don't care enough to find out), but everything just goes on. There is no sense of pace, every scene is dragged out beyond what's needed, even the gratuitous sex scenes/nudity just going on way past their welcome. Maybe it's an attempt to build tension, I don't know, but there's none to be had at any point in this film.

The opening sequence is probably the best example of all of this, as we watch a woman go to a cabin and, for what feels like an eternity, ever so slowly get settled in. We know Jason is going to pop up (even though he died or turned into a kid or whatever the hell happened in the 8th one), it's just a matter of when. It cleverly plays with expectations in a couple of ways (like how it feels as though Jason might just pop up in a mirror) but it keeps doing this and just drags it all out. Eventually we get to the expected gratuitous nudity, and they manage to even drag that out. We just wait for something to happen, and then finally Jason shows up in the least effective jump scare ever committed to film. The scene then slowly progresses as Jason is trying to kill her, amazingly with no sense of urgency at all, and the two just clumsily bumble about during the chase (until we get to the absolutely ridiculous conclusion, that seems to be handled in all seriousness). Jason gets bigger with each film, but he's always looked like a sleek killing machine, smoothly moving through the woods to strike his next victim. In this one he has all agility of comatose yak. The victim runs from him but that is not necessary at all.

Not that that Jason's more portly size and stumbling motion matters because Jason ends up not really being in this, since most of the film is him possessing people or something. The plot doesn't make sense but it doesn't matter, I made it through all of the other films, plot is the least of my concerns by this point (and its not like the films really stick to any form of continuity anyways). But there's no tension, no sense of fun, and worst of all, no sense of competency from anybody involved in the production. The early films were obviously made by people who had very little experience but I think they did fine enough jobs on a technical level (the fourth shows more skill and comes off feeling like a more professionally made film). But a lot of this film feels like they literally just did one take for everything and said that was good enough, and the worst one has to be the final shot of the Freddy glove coming up to get the Jason mask: it's such an awkward shot and it looks like the guy reaching out got stuck at one point and had trouble performing the required action. It's so terrible.

Again, I don't know if there is much of a point just ranting about this film because yes, as a whole it's not a very good series. But I was still shocked at the absolute awfulness of this film. Even fucking Jason X, the one where they give up and send Jason into space/the future, shows more skill and creativity than this dreadful thing (and it has David Cronenberg just going for it in a short cameo). The budget even appears to be lower in that one and it also looks way better than this film could ever dream of looking. Just a dull dull dull shit-stain of a film.

[domino harvey]

I had to look up what I said about it in the Horror List Project because I honestly couldn’t remember anything about it, but that’s prob for the best

Jason Goes to Hell: the Final Friday (Adam Marcus 1993) Different tent, same geek show. Would be a terrible alien invasion-style story on its own, as a Friday film it's maybe a shade better than its immediate predecessor. Has one legitimately interesting gore scene involving the ingestion of a bodily organ that the film still butchers, pun intended, via inept handling on the part of the filmmakers. Lots of early nineties gloss on this garbage. For fans of sentient evil worms crawling into the vaginas of dead women only.

[beamish14]

I love Jason Goes to Hell for the same reasons why I adore Jason X and Takes Manhattan/Toronto-it amplifies the inherent
silliness of the series exponentially. The beginning of Goes to Hell, with Jason being ambushed by a SWAT unit and incapacitated with
seemingly thousands of bullets is hysterical, and amplifies the point that an atomic bomb probably can't take out this guy.

[colinr0380]

I am in the middle of cdnchris and beamish14 in that I also think Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday is the worst Friday the 13th film, mainly because it is the one that feels as if it forgets what a Friday the 13th film is for the majority of the film to go off into strange body hopping worm beings and body horror of people who have been used and discarded melting into puddles of goo, before the ultimate in 'throwing everything at the screen to see what sticks' ending of the Freddy glove cameo that really feels like a throwaway gag that for some reason got taken seriously as pointing towards an actual collaboration until an actual Versus film was made (I quite like Freddy vs Jason for the record!), weirdly quite similar to the way that the xenomorph skull turns up briefly in the Predator's ship near the end of Predator 2. I don't think those things were intended seriously at the time, just as little in jokes, especially by having New Line's established horror villain establish his dominance over the newly acquired franchise by dragging the villain to hell! In a way it was more about branding than actual content by that stage, even if it eventually managed to develop into something more after years of trying.

Of course the counter argument is that there had already been eight previous films that were incredibly iterative already so the formula was (arguably, I like the comfy loop of the classic Friday films!) in need of a shake up, but I still think Jason Goes To Hell was a shake up much too far with its ancient evil and cults chasing after Jason (which is a bit similar to the cult business that appeared in Halloween 5 & 6. Which itself was probably influenced by the cult stuff from Omen III!). Which the later films kind of acknowledge by completely ignoring much of the plot developments in it!

But I think the opening scene doing the ultimate parody of the girl going off alone to the cabin in the woods, stripping to her underwear and taking a shower in a gloomy cabin with poorly working light fittings until her 'invocation ritual' ends up conjuring up Jason, who then chases her through the woods before she reveals that she is the undercover officer leading Jason into a SWAT-team sting was really great. (Although that also shows that the filmmakers knew exactly all of the tropes of the Friday the 13th film that they go on to ignore completely after that for stuff about ancient evil and cults, which feels almost contemptuous of the franchise it is a part of. It is worse than the issues with Part V because at least that film felt as if it was flailing around at a loose end after the "Final Chapter" of Part IV killed Jason off too thoroughly) And I just find amusing now that the main bad guy who gets possessed in the second half of the film is played by the actor who went on to play Robert F. Kennedy in that Cuban missile crisis film Thirteen Days!

I pretty much agree with the recent Red Letter Media videos that Part IV and Part VI are the best, with Part IV being the best 'classic' Jason (with the best cast with Corey Feldman and Crispin Glover) and Part VI the best 'zombie' Jason entry. But I also really like the surrounding entries of Part 2 and III (which I think gets a bit unfairly denigrated in the Red Letter Media video! The 3D is a bit obnoxiously overdone but I quite like the atmosphere), and Part VII: The New Blood. This may also be a silly aside and I don't know if anyone else feels the same way but I do think that a lot of what film you like in the series (probably because everything is so stripped down plot and character-wise) comes down to what kind of houses the action is taking place in that you prefer! Some of the house/cabin environments in Part III, IV and VI look really cosy and I could see it being quite fun to spend a relaxing spring break there with a group of friends, if it wasn't for all of the murders taking place in them!

But I do think that despite there not being great continuity between films (which only gets completely discarded with the shift to the New Line series where, as gets pointed out in the video, the question of how do we get from Jason being killed off in the regularly flooded with toxic waste sewers of New York at the end of Part VIII to the opening of Jason Goes To Hell? And from being dragged off by Freddy to being in the facility run by David Cronenberg in Jason X? It is probably best not to ask these questions! But even before the New Line series threw all continuity out of the window Part V has that stinger ending with Tommy Jarvis that gets completely ignored for Part VI, perhaps for being too absurd!) there are some treasurable moments in every entry. For example in Part V, which is my runner up for worst installment after Jason Goes To Hell, there is still that excellent opening nightmare sequence with Corey Feldman briefly returning as Tommy Jarvis (That does seem to be a key feature of the Friday the 13th films: they often have very strong openings! The one exception weirdly being the first film which goes to another level once Betsy Palmer turns up at the climax!)

I don't mind Jason X though it is rather too winking and arch with lots of post-Scream knowingness and Buffy-style Joss Wheedon-isms ("He's screwed" is a truly groan-worthy one liner! As is "this sucks on so many levels!" But I do love the return to Crystal Lake sequence which finally allows for the censor truncated sleeping bag kill in Part VII to get done over properly!). The reason for the David Cronenberg cameo at the opening of Jason X is likely because the film was directed by Jim Isaac who had previously worked on the special effects for Naked Lunch and eXistenZ (I think this was part of a trend of the late 90s and early 2000s of special effects technicians being given the chance to take the helm of director on films, with rather predictable results of the effects being good but the story somewhat slight - Virus directed by John Bruno, who worked on James Cameron's films, is the other one that comes immediately to mind), and the other great nod to Cronenberg's films is the other cameo by Robert A. Silverman appearing on a viewscreen as the person running the city that our spaceship is coming to (and ends up going straight through, utterly destroying it!). Silverman is all over early Cronenberg: one of the patients in Rabid; one of Oliver Reed's patients in The Brood; the artist getting raided by the assassins in the middle of Scanners; a threatening investigator in Naked Lunch; and finally caught in a perpetual dialogue loop awaiting the proper reply as D'Arcy Nader in eXistenZ. So whilst its not my favourite Friday The 13th film, its really worth watching for any fan of Cronenberg's films because of those couple of cameos!

[L.A.]

We're releasing a new 40th Anniversary Limited Edition MY BLOODY VALENTINE Blu-ray Steelbook with an Exclusive NECA Action Figure and Lithograph. Coming soon to fill your hearts on February 9th!

Pre-order & more details @ https://bit.ly/35fL9dP

[dwk]

Scream never gave any advanced notice for this, The Return of the Living Dead went OOP on November 13th.

[EddieLarkin]

For those that are Region B compatible, this release uses the same superior source as the Scream Factory disc but unlike that one actually uses the full original theatrical soundtrack.

[Adam X]

Plus you get all of the Scream, MGM & Second Sight extras rolled into a single release.

[therewillbeblus]

I know the Netflix dub got a lot of hate but, even with the translation flubs, I think the voice acting is far superior to the original dub. Carrie Keranen as Misato gave one of my favorite voice performances in End of Evangelion (maybe favorite period). It may be because I first watched the series through the Netflix dub but I just don't agree with all the hate it received even if I do agree the translation of some key lines was screwed up.

I'm revisiting EoE with the new Netflix dub, and I agree that the supporting parts have stronger voice actors. Gendo, for example, has more ambiguity in his voice, as opposed to the harsher overstated tone in the original, which serves the character's enigmatic qualities well here. Misato's vocal acting is interesting, because she is very good- but in order to attempt to get at the original dub's range that hits a squeakier tone at times, the actress occasionally dips into some vocal fry that sticks out as strange. No complaints here, just some observations- but I've been pleasantly surprised by the voice acting overall.

[Murdoch]

I appreciate the response, twbb. I'll have to watch the EoE original dub then, my opinions were based on the series. Hopefully the forthcoming GKids release has both.

[therewillbeblus]

I appreciate the response, twbb. I'll have to watch the EoE original dub then, my opinions were based on the series. Hopefully the forthcoming GKids release has both.

Same, I posted one major issue I have with the word-changes though in the sci-fi thread, and I'm pretty sure the final lines in the film are problematic too. Otherwise, I wasn't bothered by the other changes I had read about (or maybe just didn't notice them)

[L.A.]

Tattoo (Bob Brooks, 1981) coming in August. Anyone seen it?

Since this is not coming after all despite the company announcing the title, has this ever been released on DVD?