Retrofilm Four Flies on Grey Velvet DVD

[gothbat]

When I saw this German release as a new arrival on Xploitedcinema's web site I couldn't believe my eyes and without thinking twice grabbed it. Immediately after checking out I got on google and found out that I had just purchased a bootleg and, even worse, I read that this DVD is likely not the uncut version of the film. Upon receipt of this disc I compared the run time printed on the box, 97 minutes, to the one on my DVDr copy from Luminous, 105 minutes. I was becoming very skeptical of this DVD!
Anyway, I finally got around to watching this today and I was pretty impressed. The run time is accurate, the movie on the disc is 96 minutes and 55 seconds long however the run time listed for my DVDr, which claims to be uncut, is not as this one only actually runs for 95 minutes and 54 seconds. While I don't know if the movie I got is uncut, imdb shows 104 minutes for run time, I'm glad I got something slightly longer that what I already had. That's not what impressed me, the quality of the picture throughout the majority of the movie was! This is obviously a composite since some scenes are REALLY grainy (and yet they are still watchable imo) but the rest of the movie looked great! I could clearly make out what was going on in the dark scenes and in decently lit ones, assuming we are not on a grainy spliced in scene, everything looked pretty sharp with great color.
I am by no means an expert on video but, as I said before, I was impressed. Maybe my previous bootleg was just a really bad one but I've never really heard of a good looking copy of this movie. Did anyone else pick this up? I'd be curious to know your thoughts on the image quality and whether or not this is a cut copy (I assume it is but then again I vaguely recall that there is some difference in fps between PAL and NTSC.). One thing is for sure, I think this was worth the money and it will fill the space in my Argento section nicely until there is an official release, if ever. :/

[Griff [Mola]]

While this release might be far from ideal, its still very watchable - something that can't be said for the boots I've come across. You can find a detailed comparison between the better known versions here:

http://whiggles.landofwhimsy.com/writin ... flies.html

[gothbat]

That's perfect! I has hoping to find some DVDBeaver like comparison, thanks for the link. Although he doesn't say it I'm thinking maybe this is the uncut version of the film.

Overall the movie itself is pretty good. I think it's one of the better Argento movies. I hadn't thought much about the movie itself after watching the first copy I got because I just couldn't get past the poor quality of the movie.

[ROBERT]

I have this new German DVD and PQ is good. It has decent colour definition compared to all the crappy boots with the exception of the jarring appearance of the inserted VHS footage throughout. It seemed uncut to me. It'll do until the studio with distro rights releases a definitive version.