Four Flies on Grey Velvet DVD News

I'm not even saying yet that I'll be disappointed in the release. I've already seen many people post on the net things like "I LOVE THIS DVD!!!" and didn't even notice these issues people are now complaining about. It's a lost film, and nearly 40 years old...there's bound to be minor problems.

I'll wait until the DVD arrives to judge it. :eek2:

 

Sure, it happens all the time. But in this case it's the other way around. Not the PAL has been sped up, the NTSC has been slowed down. That's where the difference lies.

Would an original negative not be NTSC by default? (I'm no film buff so please don't kill me..)

 

NTSC and PAL are video formats.

Film of course, is 24 frames per second, so a negative is neither PAL nor NTSC

 

Whadda ya mean you never had the original VCI release? What kind of Argentophile poser are you?:lol:

Anyways, I haven't kept track of who has said what about this Four Flies release but I watched it the other day and had no major quality issues. I do have to admit that I didn't purchase it though- I got it through Netflix. $20 for a DVD is just more than I want to spend these days knowing that I can pick up a used copy in a year or so for half that. And I do feel guilty about it. Buying these discs is what drives the market and keeps them coming and I've consciously shouldered that burden for several years- 1999 until relatively recently (when I've tried to start limiting my purchases). This being because I've got a large collection of movies I always wanted to see, viewed once, yet most will never be watched again.

And I admit I get hung up on all these cut vs. uncut details as well but at some point you just have to be happy that you have a 90-something percent quality version of the film to actually watch.

My biggest complaint about the release was that they didn't have English subtitles for any of the Italian text in the newspaper headlines, letters, etc.

Oh great, now I'm gonna start complaining too...

 

I know. I was merely pointing out the absurdity of passing over this release on the basis that the soundtrack is the wrong pitch and instead opting for an import DVD that theoretically has the correct speed, but will only speed up when played on NTSC equipment and be wrong anyways! :lol:

I don't blame Shannafey for staying put with what he has, though.

 

http://www.avmaniacs.com/forums/showpost.php?p=684848&postcount=251

See, that's the news I really like to hear!

 

The PAL version is still sped up even on PAL systems, so no the pitch would not be correct on any system. So people are simply picking their poison in this case.

Sure it'd be great if this was a Criterion level release, but after all these years I can't fault a company for looking at these problems and finally just saying "Fuck that shit, we'll release it anyways." It's different than say Anchor Bay releasing a "remastered" version of Tenebre by just cropping a LD transfer then tossing in some EE for good measure.

 

Well, pitch is not a problem with me. Never has been. I want to know if you have to turn the volume up and down over and over and over and over and over again whenever the music gets heavy and all that.

 

I never knew that. I had always assumed that a disc mastered in PAL would play at the correct speed using PAL equipment. I wonder why that is?

 

It's quite simple, really: Money issues at the time plus I heard many hit & miss things about it. For my money, it was worth the wait for the cleaned up video image and the commentary track from Alan Jones and Kim Newman from the UK. It's a fine release, though it's most certianly I feel NOT his best Giallo. That honor goes to Tenebre and Phenomena with runner-up honours going to his Deep Red/Prefondo Russo.

It's the same with me and Carpenter: He's my most favorite writer/director (my favorites in order: John, then Romero then Argento), and yet I STILL don't have some of his stuff on DVD. I'm gonna finish out my collection of Romero (like Season of the Witch, ect) and Carpenter films out this year, though, by ordering the stuff from them I don't yet own on DVD though out this year.

 

Yeah I think it's because you're still watching a PAL master. I remember reading something about when you watch a PAL disc with a region-free DVD player in say, North America, your DVD player converts the video to some sort of hybrid video system that your TV can handle. It's not true NTSC or true PAL (because if you look at the running time on your DVD player, the movie is the same length as stated on the back of the R2 DVD case), which is why we still notice the change in speed/pitch. I may be wrong though with the exact details. People in the UK get the sped-up video as well, and I've heard them say that when they watch NTSC versions of films they'd previously watched in PAL, the movies sound "slower".

~Matt

 

I checked it out last night and honestly it's all much ado about nothing. I'm sure people are telling the truth that the audio is slow, but it doesn't bother me at all. The only way I think you'd notice is if you were really familiar with the movie and, really, since FOUR FLIES has never received a legit home video release, how many of us can say they're familiar with it? Anyways, if given the choice I'd rather take the audio that makes a man sound more like man than the one that makes a man sound like he's been huffing helium.

 

LOL bit of an exaggeration of the PAL system? :lol:

But yeah I had a feeling that it might be one of those, "if you haven't seen the movie before you won't notice it" kinda thing.

~Matt

 

Well, maybe just a tad. Still, I bet if one made a habit of huffing helium it perhaps could permanently raise a person's pitch on the par of PAL. Possibly.

 

I'll be gettin' this new DVD. should I still hold to my German bootleg?

 

I wouldn't be surprised if the MYA DVD is in fact a bootleg too. People already are speculating.

I just think it's weird. When you have an original negative why make a PAL transfer? Why not make a NTSC transfer to go with the audio? I'm just trying to understand what went wrong here.

I think they just lied. Like they did when they said it would be the "full uncut" version.

 

What's missing?

~Matt

 

I doubt a bootleg would have survived even this long with touchy studio like Paramount holding the rights. The release date has been public knowledge since late last year--I think MYA would have gotten their strongly worded letter pretty quickly. This isn't a matter of murky copyright waters; Paramount knows exactly what they own. How could they not, with the myriad of requests for Four Flies over the years?

I think, from MYA's end, that things are more complicated than that. Obviously, they bullshat about their DVD being uncut, but the audio problems might just be something they aren't willing to fix until the returns come in. After all, MYA comes to us from the ashes of NoShame, a company that buried itself because of the lavish treatments of their DVD's. Perhaps this new incarnation is just--at this point--going a bit too far in the other direction: not willing to spend the money until they feel it's worth it. An underhanded way to do business, to be sure, since they had to be aware of the audio problem.

Four Flies has been out for a week. Let's see if MYA addresses this issue,and how they do so, in the coming days. If they choose to remain silent, then I know I'm going to be wary about any future claims they make about subsequent releases. I hope that they're going to be upfront, as I'm looking forward to their release of Blood Castle.

 

Right now, I'm in this camp. Four Flies is going to be a birthday present, so I'll get to see for myself soon enough.

 

MYA isn't the first company to come along to misrepresent their releases. Anchor Bay and Blue Underground have been guilty of this many times over over the years and yet still by and large retain the love of the masses. Since FOUR FLIES has never seen the light of day in over 30 years of home video then obviously the backstory is extremely complicated. I don't think that any of us should be playing down what MYA has managed to accomplish with this release, despite the errors.