DEVIL HUNTER DVD NEWS

There is a fascinating thread on the upcoming Severin release of Jess Franco's DEVIL HUNTER over at the Mobius Home Video Forum's European cult cinema board [http://z8.invisionfree.co...?showtopic=9648&st=0] focusing on some of the expectations and some of the frustrations faced when putting a complete as possible version of this sought-after title together for a definitive DVD. I'm also waiting for some further clarifications from SEVERIN and will report anything additional here. I must say that I'm pleased they are taking the time and care to do these right.




Here's the most recent update copied from the Severin website:

[Copied from the Severin website]
The nightmare of Franco restoration

As some of you have no doubt noticed, all of our recent releases have missed their street dates. This is due to a number of factors, not least the extra attention we gave to The Inglorious Bastards which took our attentions away from all subsequent titles for several weeks. Please see the new street dates below for our upcoming titles.

Then there's the nightmare of the two latest Franco titles: Bloody Moon and Devil Hunter. In all the hundreds of DVDs we've been involved with producing, these two have been among the most problematic. With Bloody Moon it was a case of the negative missing a few seconds of violence. We went to the trouble of checking the original negative against an old VHS release of the film and saw no differences. The problem was that the VHS we were supplied with from a Franco authority was also cut! It was only when we received the finished Hi Def master from Germany that we realized the problem. A search ensued for film elements of the missing footage but turned up nothing. The only existing film prints in Germany were also shorn of this footage and we could turn up no other prints in countries that the film was released theatrically. The footage was considered lost except for VHS versions of the film. We incorporated the footage into the master from a VHS source but it looked terrible, particularly when compared to the beautiful Hi Def transfer from the negative. Then the German licensor unearthed a broadcast master that had been struck from an uncut print. We were then able to incorporate the footage into the film.

Devil Hunter looked like it was going to be much more straightforward. We had our new Hi Def transfer compared to releases of the film from all around the world by a Eurocult scholar. He happily reported to us that our version was the most complete in the world, containing footage that was not available in any released version. He also urged us to include the French track on the disc as it was a far superior track to the English dub. We were happy to oblige. However, our master did not contain the French track, even though the check disc we had sent to the scholar for comparison purposes did. There was no explanation forthcoming from the lab in Madrid as to why this would be. We had the scholar ship his check disc to us but it got lost in the mail. So we had another Franco expert ship us a DVD-R of a French version to us. Lo and behold this French version was some sort of bastardized TV cut short by 10 minutes. It looked like we would have to go without the French track until we were informed that a copy of the DVD-R had been created before it shipped to the scholar.

Both of these films are now finally off to authoring. If there are no major problems with the check discs then they will be released on the dates below.

Apologies to our Severin loyals for these delays and we will be making every effort in the future to ensure that this kind of backlog does not happen.

Bloody Moon, Devil Hunter and In the Folds of the Flesh will now be released on 28 October.