The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

[DarkImbecile]

In 1974, Tobe Hooper quite literally changed the face of horror with his landmark film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Although the hulking Leatherface and his trusty power tool left an indelible mark upon the cinematic landscape, it wouldn’t be until 1986 that the buzz came back... in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2!

Relocating the cannibalistic Sawyer clan to a cavernous, labyrinthian dwelling beneath an amusement park, Hooper’s deliciously demented sequel sees Leatherface and Co. continue their murderous exploits afresh. This time around, local DJ Stretch runs afoul of the Sawyers when she gets mixed up in the brutal slaying of two youngsters. Meanwhile, Lieutenant ‘Lefty’ Enright, is hell- bent on avenging the murder of his nephew Franklin, who perished in the original massacre.

A cult classic in its own right, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 serves up a heady blend of gratuitous gore, socio-political critique and jet-black humour – whilst Dennis Hopper’s unhinged turn as Lefty needs to be seen to be believed! Whichever way you skin it, Leatherface’s second cinematic outing is an uncompromisingly delirious vision from one of the masters of horror.

CONTENTS

• High Definiton Blu-ray (1080p) presentation from a digital transfer supervised by Director of Photography Richard Kooris
• Original uncompressed Stereo 2.0 audio
• Optional English SDH subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Audio commentary with director and co-writer Tobe Hooper, moderated by David Gregory
• Audio commentary with stars Bill Moseley, Caroline Williams and special-effects legend Tom Savini, moderated by Michael Felsher
• It Runs in the Family: a six-part documentary looking at the genesis, making-of and enduring appeal of Hooper’s lm, with interviews including star Bill Johnson, co-writer L.M. Kit Carson, Richard Kooris, Bill Moseley, Caroline Williams, Tom Savini, production designer Cary White and more!
• Alternate opening sequence with different musical score
• Deleted scenes
• Still Feelin’ the Buzz: interview with horror expert Stephen Thrower, author of Nightmare USA
• Cutting Moments with Bob Elmore: interview with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2’s stuntman
• Gallery featuring behind-the-scenes images
• Original trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Justin Erickson

[Finch]

4K in February



Booklet featuring new writing by Johnny Mains, Anna Bogutskaya, Guy Adams and Neil Mitchell
Double-sided fold-out poster
Texas Battle Land theme park postcard
Chili cook-off recipe card
Three double-sided collector’s postcards
DISC 1 (4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY) – THE FILM:
4K restoration from the original negative
4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
Original lossless stereo 2.0 audio
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
Commentary with director Tobe Hooper
Commentary with stars Bill Moseley, Caroline Williams and special effects legend Tom Savini
Commentary with cinematographer Richard Kooris, production designer Cary White, script supervisor Laura Kooris and property master Michael Sullivan
DISC 2 (BLU-RAY) – BONUS FEATURES:
Are We Not Both the Living Dead?, new visual essay by Scout Tafoya
You’ve Got Good Taste: Cannibal Camp and Perverse Parody, new visual essay by Miranda Corcoran
Stretch Lives!, interview with Caroline Williams
Serving Tom, interview with makeup effects artist Gabe Bartalos
Texas Blood Bath, interview with makeup effects artist Barton Mixon
Remember the Alamo, interview with actor Kirk Sisco
Die Yuppie Scum, interview with actor Barry Kinyon
Extended interviews with Tobe Hooper and co-producer Cynthia Hargrave, from Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films
It Runs in the Family, (plus outtakes!) on the film’s genesis, making and enduring appeal
House of Pain, interview with makeup effects artists Mixon, Bartalos, Gino Crognale and John Vulich
Yuppie Meat, interview with actors Chris Douridas and Barry Kinyon
Cutting Moments, interview with editor Alain Jakubowicz
Behind the Mask and Cutting Moments with Bob Elmore, two interviews with Leatherface’s performer
Horror’s Hallowed Grounds, featurette exploring the film’s locations
Still Feelin’ the Buzz, interview with horror expert Stephen Thrower
Behind-the-scenes
Alternate opening credits
Deleted scenes
Trailers and TV spots
Still gallery

[swo17]

Sigh, no Early Works

[yoloswegmaster]

If you're looking to preorder this from Diabolik, then don't bother since Vinegar Syndrome has asked them not to stock it. This is so bizarre since their release came out 2 years and the LE has long been sold out. Grindhouse, however, do have it in stock. No word yet if the other third party companies are following suit.

[dwk]

Reports that with Dolby Vision enabled, this will not play on the Panasonic UB820. If this is true, it already is a Banner year for QC fuck ups by Arrow (this, the looped and missing footage in the director's cut of The Cell and the playback problem, again on Panasonic players, with the legacy special features on Inglourious Basterds.)

[PfR73]

The Inglorious Basterds problem isn't just the UB820. The features won't play right on my Playstation 3. I just received IG yesterday and have already contacted Arrow about it.

[dwk]

Thanls. I clearly wasnt aware that the Basterds playback problem was affecting more than just the various Panasonic players.

[tenia]

I can only hope there won't be any QC issues on the Leones, because that'd be quite huge titles to have such issues on.

[Finch]

A Fistful of Dollars is probably going to be QC'd soon if it isn't already so hopefully they'll catch any issues with the Panasonic machines before it goes to the pressing plant.

[JamesF]

I'm not going to wade in too deep here given I'm not a customer service rep, but rest assured A Fistful of Dollars is being QC'd back to front, by myself and several others. All of our discs are thoroughly QC'ed, for that matter; the Panasonic compatibility issue on this disc is not something that could have been detected at the authoring stage, not least because you can literally only QC UHD builds on one player, the Oppo UDP-203. (At least, last I heard!) Compatibility checks on other players can only take place when we receive pressed checkdiscs from the manufacturing plant prior to greenlighting the disc for mass production. Anyway, to quote a new customer service reply I helped write: "Prior to manufacture, we check every disc works in a range of players, including models by LG, Panasonic, Sony, Samsung as well as the X-Box X/S and PS5. We have purchased an additional Panasonic model to add to our checks going forward, and have reached out to them about the possibility of a firmware update to address these issues; we would recommend all customers affected also reach out to them, as we are confident the disc has been authored to the correct specifications." And further to the latter point, any deviations from the correct spec would have been flagged by the authoring software prior to the build being exported.

Just to hammer home that this is a player-specific issue, I have been told today that there's even a way to play the film with Dolby Vision on it on the affected players (or at least the 820). Quote: "If a Dovi disc has been in the machine previously without it then being switched off, TCM2 plays back correctly. If you power off the machine, turn it on and go to play the disc then it’s playing back, sometimes with a white screen and other times with a green tint. When it plays back with a white/green screen, if you skip out of the feature and then start the film again, it plays correctly." Not that it should take so much effort just to play the film, I agree, and I do understand people's frustration when they just want to enjoy the film with no hassle, but when a disc has zero issues on all but a handful of players by the same manufacturer, I don't necessarily think it's fair to say the disc is the defective product in this conversation. It would be great if we could test every disc on every player in the world ahead of release date, but I'm sure no-one here needs me to explain why that isn't feasible.

[nicolas]

I'm not going to wade in too deep here given I'm not a customer service rep, but rest assured A Fistful of Dollars is being QC'd back to front, by myself and several others. All of our discs are thoroughly QC'ed, for that matter; the Panasonic compatibility issue on this disc is not something that could have been detected at the authoring stage, not least because you can literally only QC UHD builds on one player, the Oppo UDP-203. (At least, last I heard!) Compatibility checks on other players can only take place when we receive pressed checkdiscs from the manufacturing plant prior to greenlighting the disc for mass production. Anyway, to quote a new customer service reply I helped write: "Prior to manufacture, we check every disc works in a range of players, including models by LG, Panasonic, Sony, Samsung as well as the X-Box X/S and PS5. We have purchased an additional Panasonic model to add to our checks going forward, and have reached out to them about the possibility of a firmware update to address these issues; we would recommend all customers affected also reach out to them, as we are confident the disc has been authored to the correct specifications." And further to the latter point, any deviations from the correct spec would have been flagged by the authoring software prior to the build being exported.

Just to hammer home that this is a player-specific issue, I have been told today that there's even a way to play the film with Dolby Vision on it on the affected players (or at least the 820). Quote: "If a Dovi disc has been in the machine previously without it then being switched off, TCM2 plays back correctly. If you power off the machine, turn it on and go to play the disc then it’s playing back, sometimes with a white screen and other times with a green tint. When it plays back with a white/green screen, if you skip out of the feature and then start the film again, it plays correctly." Not that it should take so much effort just to play the film, I agree, and I do understand people's frustration when they just want to enjoy the film with no hassle, but when a disc has zero issues on all but a handful of players by the same manufacturer, I don't necessarily think it's fair to say the disc is the defective product in this conversation. It would be great if we could test every disc on every player in the world ahead of release date, but I'm sure no-one here needs me to explain why that isn't feasible.

Appreciate the info, James. According to a poster at Blu-ray.com, they managed to raise the issue with Panasonic and their service rep forwarded the concern to the department that deals with this stuff and the player firmwares.

On a general note, even with DV not working right now, it shouldn’t be the end of the world for Panasonic owners to watch the film in HDR10 as Arrow’s DV layers are thankfully not necessary to rescue improper HDR10 encodes.

[tenia]

I too appreciate the lengthy issue.

I think (if I may) that several people are quite certain even those discs are QCed anyway (I've seen discs prior quite a hefty amount of QC, they are nothing like this), but that by the sheer possibility of comparing, it's just is that lots of discs are not having an issue like on The Cell, or Inglourious Basterds, or (now) TCM2. So of course, people will be bound to wonder what's the difference upstream that led these discs to be fine but those discs not to be. It's just what it is.

This being written, even if a majority of discs aren't having DV issues with Panasonic players, there IS something going on with them, and I do hope that enough people, whether they're average users or people within the industry, will be able to lever Panny into finally looking into this and finding a fix. It's OK for nobody to keep it going without a fix, especially in a market where there aren't many manufacturers left, and UHD is such a touchy technology. If Panny doesn't fix that, we'll be left with what ? Sony's over-the-top DV implementation ? Getting a $1000 player ?

It's all the more an issue that DV is supposed to be quite an incentive tech, the one stuff that a customer should be willing to pay a extra for, so if this doesn't work that well, why did I pay 440€ for a UB820 while I could have paid 280€ for a UB420 instead ?

you can literally only QC UHD builds on one player, the Oppo UDP-203. (At least, last I heard!)

I do hope this bit of info turns out to be outdated, because this player has been discontinued some years ago !

[JamesF]

you can literally only QC UHD builds on one player, the Oppo UDP-203. (At least, last I heard!)

I do hope this bit of info turns out to be outdated, because this player has been discontinued some years ago !

Lucky me for having the foresight to buy one seven years ago before I even joined the team at Arrow!

The error on The Cell is an isolated incident and I don't think it should be lumped in as a pattern of behaviour with the Panasonic compatibility issues on the other two titles, though far be it from me to spoil the fun for anyone who wants to dogpile on Arrow for "not even bothering to QC".

[tenia]

Lucky me for having the foresight to buy one seven years ago before I even joined the team at Arrow!

If that's still the only one allowing this : yes indeed !

The error on The Cell is an isolated incident and I don't think it should be lumped in as a pattern of behaviour with the Panasonic compatibility issues on the other two titles,

It's a completely different matter of course, but from a consumer perspective, it still is an additionnal title that's affected by an issue, and my point being that even so, those of course remain a huge minority of releases overall, but they'll be compared to releases without issues and will generate a simple "what happened here that didn't happen there" question.
Even if there are specifics regarding specific manufacturers, or other totally unrelated issue, it's just a cognitive way of looking at these to ponder things in a comparative manner. I mean : not every single Arrow DV UHD are causing issues with Panny titles, so of course people are going to wonder why this one and not that one. It doesn't mean it's a lack of care, it's just the way the brain goes.

though far be it from me to spoil the fun for anyone who wants to dogpile on Arrow for "not even bothering to QC".

I do hope you're meaning in a general fashion, because my post certainly wasn't aiming at doing this, and though my English-writing style can be a bit dry, I did try and do my best to phrase it as my point above, ie not in an simplistic "ugh Arrow QC sucks" but in a general wondering about how some things can go awry and others don't, and that it's bound to raise some very neutral questions about that.

Same goes for my Leone post : what I meant is that I tend to imagine QC issues are always a pain but getting some on huge titles will affect public image much more than on smaller titles (simply because less people will affected and will them).

[dwk]

The error on The Cell is an isolated incident and I don't think it should be lumped in as a pattern of behaviour with the Panasonic compatibility issues on the other two titles, though far be it from me to spoil the fun for anyone who wants to dogpile on Arrow for "not even bothering to QC".

Even though the issues aren't related, it is still three issues and we are only two months into this awful year. So it is hard to not go "What the hell is up?" Especially as tenia has said, most of Arrow releases do play correctly on Panasonic players.

[JamesF]

Totally fair points (and no tenia, I wasn’t referring to you ) - just clarifying that one actually doesn’t really have anything to do with the other, it’s just a coincidence.