by Dai » Sat Jul 15, 2017 7:13 am
Sometimes a movie or series isn't given the care or attention it deserves for its home video release. What are some of the titles you've seen that were released in forms that were disappointing, insulting, or downright bizarre? Some examples from my collection:
Rodan. The version of Rodan bundled with War of the Gargantuas is great, but this movie had an earlier release that looked like a bootleg, with no Japanese language track, and colour so blown out that it looked like it had been painted over by a toddler.
Kiseki Films DVDs. Kiseki were a moderately successful UK anime distributor in the 90s, but they had run out of steam by the time the DVD era came along. As a result, I don't think they ever picked up any new licences after the late 90s, and just dumped their existing catalogue onto DVD using the same masters as their VHS releases. This was painfully obvious due to the baked-in subtitles with blocky black backgrounds, and instances of damage to the master tapes that made them look like cheap bootlegs. Things get weird when you look at how the releases were organised. Kiskei licensed a mix of anime classics and gore-soaked exploitation trash, and their DVDs were double features that sometimes combined both. The most ill-considered combined The Cockpit with Digital Devil, mashing Leiji Matsumoto's sombre, contemplative anthology of WWII stories together with one of the worst OAVs ever made. But the worst release was reserved for my all-time favourite anime, Gunbuster. This featured the shoddiest attempt at censorship I've ever seen, with repeated footage and freeze-frames amateurishly cut in to cover up instances of nudity. What made this especially bizarre is that the uncensored VHS release was already a PG certificate, and the censored DVD gained the same, so their sloppy work didn't even open it up to a wider audience.
Cobra: Le Film. I'm not usually a fan of releases making heavy revisions to original works, but Manga UK's various experiments in this field did produce a couple of gems. Unfortunately, these versions have generally not seen re-releases on DVD or blu-ray due to expired licenses for the music they used. One of the most prominent was Space Adventure Cobra: The Movie, where the entire score was replaced with songs by Yello, giving it a unique feel. This movie has seen numerous DVD and blu-ray releases in the UK and US, but none of them include this dub. Instead, the only post-VHS release with this version of the English dub is the French DVD from Pathe, Cobra: Le Film! Exactly how they managed to source this dub when even Manga Entertainment couldn't re-use it is a mystery. Also, the DVD has a disappointing non-anamorphic transfer that looks awful compared to the recent blu-ray.