For anybody who is interested to know, I have the actual tape that was used for the English audio track. It was released in Germany by a company called Taurus Video. The film was not actually supposed to be âcutâ even though the tape runs for only 82 minutes. The problem is that it was sourced from what appears to be an old 16mm print (likely from Greece since it has Greek subtitles) with many frames missing, so it jumps and skips in the middle of conversations, suggesting that on official 35mm prints, these scenes would have been intact with the English dub. The fact that Eureka used this same tape as a source suggests a lot of laziness on their part.
My Amazon UK order of the Eureka release was shipped on May 18th, and it still hasnât arrived here in Belgium. Anyone else in mainland Europe who also hasnât received their order from Amazon UK yet?
Hi! I live in England and it took Amazon UK 10 days to deliver a couple of Blu Rays. You will probably have to wait for another week. Amazon UK are slow compared to Amazon Germany.
Iâm just glad we have the original French audio with subs. I remember when Arrow released Hosseinâs âcemetery without crossesâ, they couldnât get a license for the French audio so made up some utterly ridiculous excuse about French not being the âoriginalâ language. Sure, âoriginalâ can be debatable in some cases, but it was pretty cut and dry in that case. I would have had more respect if they had just left it with the statement about them unfortunately not being able to get the rights to it. Needless to say I didnât upgrade from my German DVD and am still waiting for the definitive release.
My order arrived today.
Excellent!!
I hope it was worth your wait!
Someone gave me a VHS copy of the Japanese disc close to 20 years ago. I think it was in French with no subtitles, so, I got to see it but never really got to understand or enjoy it!
Needless to say the Eureka Blu Ray is a beautiful presentation. For me, the film is interesting but doesnât really work. I see the parallels with The Great Silence but for me, the biggest parallels of the movie are with Django, Kill!. The guilty town, money in a grave, people peering through windows, a lot of peering through windowsâŚ
I donât know what else to say about the film other than it doesnât 100% come off, it never really builds up a head of steam. The plot also seems like a Sartana movie and is as convoluted as one. The backstory and motivations donât 100% add up and at the same time there isnât much mystery to the mystery.
The whole anti-hippie angle is just plain weird and as out of place as gang of Mexican bandits up in snowy mountains in Nebraska.
I want to write a faux interpretation of the movie positing that Johnny Halliday is a traditional early '60s, pre-Beatles rock and roll figure who âsees offâ the threat of the late '60s hippie countercultural musical groups thereby restoring rock and roll to itâs preeminent position, but I havenât go the energy!
My feelings are somewhat similar and I see the same comparisons to other films.
In fact I just published a new review over on my blog site.
Excellent review, Phil.
Quoting from the new blu-ray release thread:
Giusti notes that to be the British title in his Dizionario.
Remember, this is a film whose standard title canât even decide how many specialists there are. It translates as âThe Specialistâ in French (presumably to plug Hallyday) but âThe Specialistsâ in Italian. Corbucci himself describes it as a âpractically entirely French filmâ that âwas a big success in France, but less in Italyâ and that was âstrongly opposed by the censorsâ and where âthe producer made cuts without telling himâ. Frankly, I wouldnât be that surprised if what Eureka is saying about the English audio turns out to be true.
The film might have been uncut, but how do we know the English audio was complete?
It has been confirmed that what English there is on this release comes from a very rough VHS version, made from a badly damaged splice repaired 16mm print. Jump cuts occurring from broken frames and sprocket holes etc
The audio has been processed with noise reduction software, which never really works convincingly ⌠this is an attempt to take excessive hiss off a noisy tape.
The Eureka statement is BS ⌠they didnât source any English language prints - If you have listened to the results from this - and have watched the earlier made fandub version, there is no doubt about it.
What!, ⌠Politicians, newspapers and video production companies never lie ?
PS: They were sneaky about what they were selling from the outset - otherwise they wouldnât have gotten too many pre-orders, thatâs for sure.
I think youâre just going over old ground which has already been discussed here.
I understand why people are upset with Eureka. They shouldnât have teased about offering something which they didnât deliver. Their reputation with fans will have suffered as a result.
But I have to be honest and say I really couldnât give a monkeyâs about not having a complete English dub of this film. It doesnât feature a single English speaking actor in a key role whose real voice Iâm losing out on. And, as we all know, the English dubs on these films are often the weakest. Iâm happy to watch it in Italian or French. What Iâm even happier about is having a good quality BluRay release of it in the UK at all. Up until a few years ago when Arrow picked up the baton we had practically none. Blu or DVD alike. Weâve come a long way and I canât find it in myself to be complaining about a dub I wouldnât even listen to anyway. It would be like bitching if the long awaited Django release didnât have an English Dub. That could be seen as an improvement.
Do we ? ⌠in the case of the original âDjangoâ (1966) absolutely 100% agree - the English dub is horrendous and bad enough to put me off watching the film again for years.
Most contributors to the site arenât multi-lingual and wonât have had the time or luxury to compare versions ⌠also, relying on accurate subtitling is no guarantee of reading whatâs being said on the soundtrack ⌠itâs usually merely an approximate guide to whatâs happening.
It isnât âbitchingâ when your consumer rights have been affected.
I too am quite happy to watch either complete dub version of the movie, but Iâm still pissed off reading in this releaseâs menu their horse shit excuse, their invented version of what has occurred ⌠itâs a downright lie, and thatâs what the point is here.
I can see things from both sidesâŚ
âHang on a minute, ladsâŚIâve got a great ideaâŚerr, err,âŚâ
I donât think there are two sides ⌠just some are more annoyed than others. I agree with most points being made here,
oh to be so laid back.
Best to allâŚ
Iâm with Phil in not caring about the English dub anyway. Iâll only watch it in French since that is without a doubt what the actors were speaking.
As I mentioned above, I found Arrowâs claim about French not being the original language of Cemetery without Crosses far more disingenuous than what Eureka seems to have done here.
That being said, as noted in my comment, I am curious about the history of the film and its release.
Well unfortunately I wasnât able to attend the screenings so I canât say for sure but one (or the one?) of the guys responsible for bringing the print here always hyped it as something that you should never ever miss. âAs rare as Saddamâs atom bombsâ. Uncut print and English version.
And nobody ever commented about any of the audio being in some other language.
Supposedly at the end credits the print also had some different version of the theme song which wasnât available on the soundtrack CD or DVD releases at the time (that was in 2007, donât know now).
And maybe somebody here who owns the disc can confirm this but a post at blu-ray.com says "I listened to the commentary by Alex Cox after watching it and he mentioned that he saw it (I think recently) in the cinema with the complete English dub, a shame that it wasnât on this Eureka release, though I was under the impression it was. "
If true, maybe Eureka should have listened to the commentary.
Personally I donât really care about the extras and I already have the French UHD with English subtitles so the Blu-Ray is somewhat useless for me.
Maybe âbitchingâ was a poor word choice on my part.
Again, a bad choice of words perhaps. What I should have said is that, in my opinion, the English dubs are often the weakest. And I stand by that. Django is only one example. There are lots more. Texas Adios is one. Most, if not all, Giuliano Gemma films would also qualify for me. And itâs nothing to do with being multi-lingual or not. I use the subtitles just like anybody else. Itâs just that some of those dubs grate on my ears and sound fake. Maybe the Italian dubs do too to other peopleâs ears who speak Italian and itâs only my unfamiliarity with the language that causes me to not recognise it.
Iâm the same with Shaw Brothers movies. I have friends who will only watch them in English but Iâm the opposite. I canât stand the cheesy English dubs and prefer to watch in Cantonese or Mandarin and rely on the subtitles. Of course, they could sound just as cheesy to a native Mandarin speaker but Iâm not so it doesnât matter to me.
Anyway, I guess Iâm veering more and more off topic here. Like I said in my previous post. I understand why people are upset and Eureka havenât done themselves any favours. They probably would have been better off not including an English dub at all rather than a partial one. That certainly would have been fine by me.
I havenât received my copy yet but am looking forward to hearing the Cox commentary.
This has me thinking now about the Big Gundown. I watch my German disc because I do like to hear LVCâs voice. I think Milian is dubbed in Italian and English (they hadnât realized the value of his Spanglish and Spitaliano at that stage of his career). Anyway, I have never bothered to compare the English dub with my old Franco Cleef DVD but Iâve read claims that there is a little more English dub included on the Cleef disc than the German explosive media one.