There have been a few reviewers online who have slated this disc, believing that Blue Underground have added added artificial grain to the picture. Not being one to fuss over such trivial matters, I am eager to see how this release improves upon the now old Anchor Bay DVD release. Judging from the some of the screenshots I have seen online it looks to be a major improvement.

Giulio Questi's surreal giallo has been recently released on DVD in Italy. The good news is that it improves upon the Japanese DVD release by presenting the film in 16x9 enhanced widescreen. The picture quality is decent, not remastered but appearing to be a straight transfer from a print. The bad news is that there are is no English audio or English subtitles. Rumour has it that when the film was shown in UK cinemas, with Italian audio and English subtitles, the running time was 105 minutes. The running time of this DVD is 85 minutes. As far as I am aware, the longest version of the film appeared on German VHS. I have a fan DVD of the film that contains extra footage taken from this German VHS as extras. Sadly they are German audio only. The search for a complete release of Death Laid an Egg continues.

All of Lenzi's gialli are now available on DVD although some, like this one, are not English friendly. The presentation of the film on this DVD is very poor indeed, having no 16x9 enhancement or digital remastering. 01 Distribution's recent releases are rather disappointing especially when compared to some of their earlier offerings. Still, this will be another fan DVD project at some point when I get some free time. This was the first DVD I have ordered from Amazon.it and their service was very impressive.

It is fitting that my first Blu-Ray purchase of 2011 is my all time favourite film. Early reviews of this Blu-Ray have been positive, mentioning the welcome presence of grain and the extra detail offered. I will be giving it a spin shortly. Thoughts to follo

I am pleased to find that another one of my past fan DVD projects will be rendered obsolete as the German label Camera Obscura have announced that they will be releasing the giallo Tropic of Cancer on DVD later this year.  It would be good if the artwork for the DVD is as good as the one Sutekh produced for my fan DVD (pictured below). 

Promo for the forthcoming Optimum DVD release of Lizard in a Woman's Skin (Lucio Fulci, 1971).  From what I have read online it looks to be a winner.

The American DVD label Code Red have announced that they are releasing the underrated giallo The Dead Are Alive, more commonly known as The Etruscan Kills Again, in July.  This is a welcome surprise given that Code Red's releases have been intermittent at best.  Previously only available as a grey market DVD release from Eurovista which had murky picture quality, print damage, missing footage and an authoring error, a German DVD release eventually surfaced as part of the Bryan Edgar Wallace collection.  This DVD had beautiful picture quality but sadly no English language track.  It was this DVD that I used as the video source for a fan DVD project, adding English audio from the Dutch VHS release.  It will be interesting to see how this release matches up with the German DVD (and my fan DVD).  Needless to say, I will be buying this one as soon as it is released.  Let's hope that Code Red decide to get Alex Cord to recount his memories of working on the film in a DVD featurette.  Maybe they can also get round to finally issuing their long planned DVD release of the backwoods horror gem Rituals (Peter Carter, 1977).

Source: Lovelockandload

Summer must be on its way as several of my recent posts have been about Euro-Cult inspired T-Shirts.  Actually, it has more to do with my doctoral research but it is nice to think that Summer is finally on the way.

On Friday I received The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (Dario Argento, 1969) T-Shirt I ordered from Ellen over at www.giallo-tshirts.com.  I love the design and the print quality is very high.  The yellow (giallo!) bag it arrived in was a nice touch too.  Check out the site for the other great designs.  I look forward to Ellen's next design.

One of the chapters of my PhD thesis investigates t-shirt production in the Euro-Cult cinema fan community.  Having being inspired by Jonny's excellent T-Shirt designs over at the lovelockandload and the more unusual designs over at Giallo T-Shirts I have opened my own Spreadshirt shop in order to better understand the production process.   With some help from Jonny, I produced my first design: the logo for Dario Argento's Profondo Rosso (1975).  I have always wanted a T-Shirt inspired by this film and not having ever come across a decent one I decide to design my own.  I ordered the T-Shirt from Spreadshirt on Thursday and it arrived today.  I have ordered from Spreadshirt before and have always been impressed with their quality.  I chose to use the flock print method with gives the lettering a felt effect.  Though the design is somewhat basic it looks better than I had hoped.  If anyone reading this would like one you can order it through my Spreadshirt shop.  If all goes well, I will be uploading some more Euro-Cult inspired designs over the coming weeks.

Zarith, a member over at the Lovelockandload forums, posted that the French cult DVD label Neo Publishing, which specialised in releasing Italian cult film, are no longer.  It appears that the usual combination of greedy rights owners, consumer uncertainty over DVD and Blu-Ray and niche audiences has led to its downfall.  I only own one Neo Publishing release, their superior DVD release of Lucio Fulci's giallo Seven Notes in Black (1977).  I would have purchased their other releases of gialli but none of them were English friendly.  Apparently greedy rights owners prevented Neo Publishing from including English audio and/or subtitles.  Even though their releases were readily available in English friendly formats over in the US, I believe they would have attracted fans with their unique cover art and lavish presentation (as seen in some of the pictures below) had they been English friendly.  So yet another cult label goes.  I hope this trend stops soon but I have a feeling the current state of the DVD industry will lead to more specialist labels dying.  Neo Publishing's releases will most likely end up being collector's items so it is recommended that fans head over to Amazon.fr and pick up the reduced discs while stocks last.  I am trying to fight the urge to not purchase all of their gialli.