Evil Dead Trilogy [DVD]

Product Information

In other words, adding black bars on the bottom and top of the image created the widescreen presentation of the film on disc one. I don’t own the original 1999 Anchor Bay full-frame DVD so I can’t compare it to that; but if disc 2 is any representation of that (and given Anchor Bay’s track record for re-releasing films consistently without updating image quality, it probably is), I’d have to say that the full-frame version looks quite similar to the 1.

They discover an old book which, once they have read it, summons up all kinds of horrors: the trees come alive and so do the dead, who take over the bodies of the living. mixes: LPCM and a lossy Dolby Digital, and strips away all the foreign subtitles, just leaving the English. Because the previous extras talked to pretty much everybody involved and already scared up every behind-the-scenes anecdote there is to tell, this new feature had to go in a different direction. In 'Evil Dead 2' (1987) a young couple chance upon the same remote Tennessee cabin as in the original, unleashing the forces of evil with horrific consequences for themselves and their friends. And even though this disc features a Campbell-approved image, I much prefer the Raimi approved transfer from Elite and would like Starz to attempt to acquire it or have Raimi revisit it again.won’t have a problem, but us English Canadians must deal with the bilingual packaging which clutters up the artwork and the back side. But then things get weird, with a collection of extras hosted by a rather irritating lady who sits in a tree [pictured above], with titles like Bruce Campbell: Geek or God? On balance, the Ultimate Edition comes out top, although each release has some of its own exclusive extras, so they're both worth owning. DVD purchasers may see 'anamorphic widescreen' on the cover, without realising that black bars have just been put on the top and bottom of the original 4:3 open matte print, meaning you see less picture in the 'Widescreen' version than in the 'Full Screen' version. This is by far the best feature of disc four as it features interviews with a young Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell.

For the vast majority of the film, the widescreen version was simply the full 1:37:1 open matte transfer with the top and bottom cropped off, creating a 1. Sam Raimi's original was a fun, scrappy low budget horror film about demonic possession that became a surprise hit due to its imagination and some innovative filmmaking techniques. So already that's one reason to hang onto the older DVDs: the blu only has the new commentary, the Trilogy set has the two older ones. Also, the Ultimate Edition has all the DVD extras from the Limited Edition, so really, it's a lot cheaper and easier to locate that DVD edition than to locate the Limited Edition blu-ray.

Another thing that might be worth checking out is if the fullscreen version includes the lightning bolt animation. Since it’s just the three of them in chairs talking about the past, it’s a nice feature to watch the interaction of ladies off screen if studying the culture of actresses. Like many other special editions…well, you’ll have to hang on to the old releases because all features but the commentary are release-specific. Disc 1 is just the UK PAL version of the US NTSC Book Of The Dead DVD as above, but the bonus disc contains the open matte version of The Evil Dead, which is the same transfer as was used on the earlier Anchor Bay 1-5 picture disc DVD releases, and has the zooming editing tweak as previously mentioned. These are little fixes, not creative changes; so I think you'd have to be a real stickler to be bothered enough to only want to a version without them.