Halloween 4K UHD (1978)

[Agent Kay]

My Amazon order just shipped.

The hair?
It's in the post above yours, bottom spoiler

[formula_nebula]

Originally Posted by Ned Schneebly

What is the infamous Halloween hair?

It's right below the window on the BD.

[heraymo]

just wish it came with a digital copy for 14.99 i would have got it

[ROSS.T.G.]

I need to watch this again and again.

[Noremac Mij]

No grey bars or raised blacks on my C8 OLED.

[ROSS.T.G.]

None on my B7 either but DV will look different on every set.

[ewsjr]

Originally Posted by FubarFrenzy

So not trollin I swear!

I own a B7 65 inch OLED with the LG entry 4K player (UP870) with only HDR.

I popped in this disk tonight just to check it out. To my eyes, I'm seeing issues. Mainly in the beginning washed out grays. Something is not right. The edge right side of the screen almost looks like an LCD light bleed.

I went ahead and switched discs to the 1080p Bluray that comes with it. Obviously not as hi rez, but the black levels did not give me the issues like the 4K did.

Trying to figure this out. Was really looking forward to watching but as of now, unwatchable during night scenes. (*didn't even get to the day time scenes yet)

Very interesting that you saw this also. Exact same look on my just fully ISF calibrated 77C8. Just those opening scenes, the rest of the film looked very nice. I, too, put in my 2007 blu and those opening scenes did indeed look way better.

[JMEANS]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Watched this last night, starting off at about midnight right after I'd gone from one American Psycho to another. First off, yes, the pumpkin at the start does look a LOT less orange than the 35th anniversary transfer but something else I noticed is that the geometry of the title sequence was also quite different, the 4K's credits looking fatter and wider which I'll post a photo of at the end.

I've got to say that I spotted no overt flickering whatsoever, maybe just a hint of density flutter in the darkest moments but whatever it is that's making it blatantly flicker on other people's TVs isn't doing it on mine. Goes without saying that I have no contrast enhancers or motion interpolators turned on, but I'll say it anyway. The black levels themselves are indeed quite thin and grey but this is entirely by design as the 35th transfer is very much the same, it's a look unto itself and I'm already used to it from the 35th so no complaints here.

The colour loses the slightly warmer tint of the 35th and looks more muted, not "monochromatic" by any stretch but definitely with a slightly more desaturated vibe. It doesn't always track from shot to shot and things like skin tones can actually look a touch fuller while the surroundings are less vibrant, sometimes it's the opposite. Reds look excellent on the 4K though, looking truly red while the 35th veers towards more of an orangey cast owing to that warmer hue. Even something like the tail lights of the car that Michael drives away in are nicely improved, not so much the main shot with the nurse but that final shot of the car zooming into the night, the lights are almost completely faded in the 35th but still have a deep red on the 4K.

HDR usage is excellent, not in a "I can see it from space" kinda way but in the way that the flat, bright lighting in the daylight exteriors of the 35th is pulled down into something a bit moodier, revealing a nice little extension to highlight detail in the process. And Nick Castle can rest easy, the reveal of The Shape in the closet still looks wonderful as his ghostly visage is slowly brought up from the darkness.

Grain is more abundant than the 35th, mostly due to the grain being clipped out of the brighter spots on that previous SDR transfer, and although the improvement in detail doesn't immediately leap off the screen (if you're familiar with the 35th, anyways) it's dredging up every last bit of acuity that this 35mm anamorphic source can muster. When I was checking the "speed kills!" scene the horizontal lines on PJ Soles' T-shirt are much more finely resolved, for example. Small gains for sure then, ones that some people will have rolled their eyes at when they just read that, but it's not about lines on a T-shirt but more the cumulative effect that this has, the 4K just looks 'tighter' than the 35th.

While things like the infamous Halloween hair have indeed been painted out for the 4K it actually has more overt dirt & damage in other areas vs the 35th, with more white specks and marks showing up. Even on the white-on-black location titles there are little white dots baked in to the optical visible against the black background that aren't there on the 35th, which looks clean as a whistle in those shots. New transfer = new clean-up pass with different priorities so I'm not knocking it, just pointing it out is all.

Something to add re: the Dolby Vision grey bar problem on Sony sets, I watched this in DV even though all that darkness would inevitably lead to the black bars looking quite grey. Sure enough, in the title sequence the whole image looks raised whereas the 35th Blu-ray titles are deep and dark, letterbox dark, so that glowing pumpkin looks amazing, like it's floating in mid-air in front of me, whereas the pumpkin in DV looked a lot flatter because of the raised blacks. However, when I played the 4K in HDR10 I actually got the exact same thing happen on the title sequence as on the DV, the whole screen still looked sightly raised from black and when I spot-checked several scenes - admittedly having to switch the disc from one player to another - nothing stood out in terms of the black bars being truly blacker or not, and some scenes still had a nice amount of density whenever they had a more contrasty light source in the shot (which is kinda how contrast works).

Overall then I'm not as bowled over by this as some people because the 35th anniversary BD was already clearly sourced from camera negative and was already supervised by Dean Cundey and it already looked great (for what it is), but the 4K adds a pleasant HDR pass and refines the colours further, along with whatever spatial detail it can find. The lack of the original mono track may well be a deal-breaker for some but I've had a few years to get used to the 5.1 remix (expanded into 7.1 a few years back) and so it's not as heinous an outcome for me as on other remixes of this ilk, and it doesn't completely throw out the original effects and foley in the process.

Couple of pics then, not to compare HDR, sharpness or whatever but just to show the difference in the geometry of the opening titles, the 4K is deffo fatter. If not the exact same frame (difficult on titles) then only a frame or so out. Open them in a new window and tab between them, the difference in size should become obvious.

[Show spoiler]
BD



UHD

Hair today, gone tomorrow (look at the bottom of the image, exact same frame on both):

[Show spoiler]
BD



UHD

Great tech assessment as always Geoff, and I certainly agree of the difference in the pumpkin title sequence. Strikingly so as I prefer the look of the BD 100%. The fact it’s WARMTH is so muted in the UHD is dissipointing.

[s2mikey]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Watched this last night, starting off at about midnight right after I'd gone from one American Psycho to another. First off, yes, the pumpkin at the start does look a LOT less orange than the 35th anniversary transfer but something else I noticed is that the geometry of the title sequence was also quite different, the 4K's credits looking fatter and wider which I'll post a photo of at the end.

I've got to say that I spotted no overt flickering whatsoever, maybe just a hint of density flutter in the darkest moments but whatever it is that's making it blatantly flicker on other people's TVs isn't doing it on mine. Goes without saying that I have no contrast enhancers or motion interpolators turned on, but I'll say it anyway. The black levels themselves are indeed quite thin and grey but this is entirely by design as the 35th transfer is very much the same, it's a look unto itself and I'm already used to it from the 35th so no complaints here.

The colour loses the slightly warmer tint of the 35th and looks more muted, not "monochromatic" by any stretch but definitely with a slightly more desaturated vibe. It doesn't always track from shot to shot and things like skin tones can actually look a touch fuller while the surroundings are less vibrant, sometimes it's the opposite. Reds look excellent on the 4K though, looking truly red while the 35th veers towards more of an orangey cast owing to that warmer hue. Even something like the tail lights of the car that Michael drives away in are nicely improved, not so much the main shot with the nurse but that final shot of the car zooming into the night, the lights are almost completely faded in the 35th but still have a deep red on the 4K.

HDR usage is excellent, not in a "I can see it from space" kinda way but in the way that the flat, bright lighting in the daylight exteriors of the 35th is pulled down into something a bit moodier, revealing a nice little extension to highlight detail in the process. And Nick Castle can rest easy, the reveal of The Shape in the closet still looks wonderful as his ghostly visage is slowly brought up from the darkness.

Grain is more abundant than the 35th, mostly due to the grain being clipped out of the brighter spots on that previous SDR transfer, and although the improvement in detail doesn't immediately leap off the screen (if you're familiar with the 35th, anyways) it's dredging up every last bit of acuity that this 35mm anamorphic source can muster. When I was checking the "speed kills!" scene the horizontal lines on PJ Soles' T-shirt are much more finely resolved, for example. Small gains for sure then, ones that some people will have rolled their eyes at when they just read that, but it's not about lines on a T-shirt but more the cumulative effect that this has, the 4K just looks 'tighter' than the 35th.

While things like the infamous Halloween hair have indeed been painted out for the 4K it actually has more overt dirt & damage in other areas vs the 35th, with more white specks and marks showing up. Even on the white-on-black location titles there are little white dots baked in to the optical visible against the black background that aren't there on the 35th, which looks clean as a whistle in those shots. New transfer = new clean-up pass with different priorities so I'm not knocking it, just pointing it out is all.

Something to add re: the Dolby Vision grey bar problem on Sony sets, I watched this in DV even though all that darkness would inevitably lead to the black bars looking quite grey. Sure enough, in the title sequence the whole image looks raised whereas the 35th Blu-ray titles are deep and dark, letterbox dark, so that glowing pumpkin looks amazing, like it's floating in mid-air in front of me, whereas the pumpkin in DV looked a lot flatter because of the raised blacks. However, when I played the 4K in HDR10 I actually got the exact same thing happen on the title sequence as on the DV, the whole screen still looked sightly raised from black and when I spot-checked several scenes - admittedly having to switch the disc from one player to another - nothing stood out in terms of the black bars being truly blacker or not, and some scenes still had a nice amount of density whenever they had a more contrasty light source in the shot (which is kinda how contrast works).

Overall then I'm not as bowled over by this as some people because the 35th anniversary BD was already clearly sourced from camera negative and was already supervised by Dean Cundey and it already looked great (for what it is), but the 4K adds a pleasant HDR pass and refines the colours further, along with whatever spatial detail it can find. The lack of the original mono track may well be a deal-breaker for some but I've had a few years to get used to the 5.1 remix (expanded into 7.1 a few years back) and so it's not as heinous an outcome for me as on other remixes of this ilk, and it doesn't completely throw out the original effects and foley in the process.

Couple of pics then, not to compare HDR, sharpness or whatever but just to show the difference in the geometry of the opening titles, the 4K is deffo fatter. If not the exact same frame (difficult on titles) then only a frame or so out. Open them in a new window and tab between them, the difference in size should become obvious.

[Show spoiler]
BD



UHD

Hair today, gone tomorrow (look at the bottom of the image, exact same frame on both):

[Show spoiler]
BD



UHD

Originally Posted by JMEANS

Great tech assessment as always Geoff, and I certainly agree of the difference in the pumpkin title sequence. Strikingly so as I prefer the look of the BD 100%. The fact it’s WARMTH is so muted in the UHD is dissipointing.

Excellent review by Geoff. Honestly though, I think I’m going to skip this upgrade. It’s only $14.99 right now but I have no issues with my current Blu-ray version and there appears to be some dodginess with this title regarding certain scenes, color palette choices, etc, etc.

If it hits the $9.99 bin at a local store and I happen to walk by I might bite but that’s it. No biggy.

[meremortal]

Originally Posted by PrestonXI

I will be seeing a 35mm screening of Halloweeon on October 16 and will report back how it compares to the 4K.

That should be fun. Slashers have probably aged worse than most genres for me as I get older but I'd love to see the Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre films in a theater. As a kid it was pretty nice to see New Nightmare and The Curse of Michael Myers on the big screen.

[monstermidget]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

The colour loses the slightly warmer tint of the 35th and looks more muted, not "monochromatic" by any stretch but definitely with a slightly more desaturated vibe.

Geoff just a question about this point. Looking at the capsaholic comparison the red channel is definitely better and while I'm glad this was also noticeable on disc, the caps also make it look like the UHD has slightly less desaturation across the board (especially noticeable in the 2nd,3rd and 4th caps) dialling in primaries better so that it seems to get rid of some of the grey haze (for want of a better term) that the 35th often had over mid tones in daytime scenes.
I had hoped this would be even more apparent on the actual HDR grade proper, but it would seem this wasn't your experience when viewing the disc in person, any more on this?

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by monstermidget

Geoff just a question about this point. Looking at the capsaholic comparison the red channel is definitely better and while I'm glad this was also noticeable on disc, the caps also make it look like the UHD has slightly less desaturation across the board (especially noticeable in the 2nd,3rd and 4th caps) dialling in primaries better so that it seems to get rid of some of the grey haze (for want of a better term) that the 35th often had over mid tones in daytime scenes.
I had hoped this would be even more apparent on the actual HDR grade proper, but it would seem this wasn't your experience when viewing the disc in person, any more on this?

But then look at caps 6 and 7, the UHD is more desaturated. As I said, in one instance the UHD looks slightly more lively, then in the next the 35th does and so on. In general though I thought many of the daylit exteriors definitely had a fractionally cooler look vs the 35th, this is from directly comparing both SDR and HDR (not SDR to converted SDR ) with the correct colour temperature dialled in, but it never looked "monochromatic", as I've seen it described elsewhere.

[ROSS.T.G.]

Is it possible the slightly cooler look relates to WCG. As said by many members including myself I’m not seeing blanket tints from the format that the so prominent on BD.

[Geoff D]

It's not that the 35th has some hugely pervasive blanket tint, I didn't think I made it sound like it did. But there's just a trace more of a yellowy tone in some 35th shots than on the 4K, and while the 4K's skin tones and primaries generally benefit from this it does make the occasional shot look even more drab than it already is in the 35th.

[monstermidget]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

But then look at caps 6 and 7, the UHD is more desaturated. As I said, in one instance the UHD looks slightly more lively, then in the next the 35th does and so on. In general though I thought many of the daylit exteriors definitely had a fractionally cooler look vs the 35th, this is from directly comparing both SDR and HDR (not SDR to converted SDR ) with the correct colour temperature dialled in, but it never looked "monochromatic", as I've seen it described elsewhere.

I don't really see 6 or 7 as being desaturated per say(and id image that both frames would have better color volume in their natural non downconverted HDR) but rather that they have correct white balance and the colors are not polluted with tints(green in cap 6/yellow in cap 7) again mid tones still appear better in both.

I wonder if the way the DV is being handled by the various panels might be shortchanging the colour slightly in this case? Some are seeing it as monochromatic while others note a nice improvement in colour while for some its near identical to the 35th colour wise.
I might have to bite the bullet and see for myself, mono or no.

[Geoff D]

Conversions aren't sacrosanct, you don't know what it's doing with the colour volume. Call it what you want but the overall effect to my eyes is that 6 and 7 both have a more restrained look to the colour than the 35th, this is in both the caps and from comparing both discs directly. Is it a bad thing? I'm not sure I said that it was. But it's definitely there.

BTW the colour is the same in HDR10 as DV at my end. It's much more likely that - surprise surprise - everyone's rocking different settings and I'd be amazed if even a quarter of the respondents have had either SDR or HDR calibrated at their end. Correct greyscale simply can't be eyeballed and on a transfer that lives in such a narrow spectrum of colour it wouldn't take big variances in colour temp to make it look like whatever.

[FubarFrenzy]

Originally Posted by ewsjr

Very interesting that you saw this also. Exact same look on my just fully ISF calibrated 77C8. Just those opening scenes, the rest of the film looked very nice. I, too, put in my 2007 blu and those opening scenes did indeed look way better.

Yes, and another item that this 4k disc shows off on my OLED....the vertical banding. . NOOOOOOOOo!!!!

[ROSS.T.G.]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

It's not that the 35th has some hugely pervasive blanket tint, I didn't think I made it sound like it did. But there's just a trace more of a yellowy tone in some 35th shots than on the 4K, and while the 4K's skin tones and primaries generally benefit from this it does make the occasional shot look even more drab than it already is in the 35th.

No, no, I wasn’t implying you said that, you said slightly and I agree with your assessment. I’m noticing more discs are either pushed cooler or warmer from their BD counterpart even when they stem from the same master.

[monstermidget]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Conversions aren't sacrosanct, you don't know what it's doing with the colour volume. Call it what you want but the overall effect to my eyes is that 6 and 7 both have a more restrained look to the colour than the 35th, this is in both the caps and from comparing both discs directly. Is it a bad thing? I'm not sure I said that it was. But it's definitely there.

BTW the colour is the same in HDR10 as DV at my end. It's much more likely that - surprise surprise - everyone's rocking different settings and I'd be amazed if even a quarter of the respondents have had either SDR or HDR calibrated at their end. Correct greyscale simply can't be eyeballed and on a transfer that lives in such a narrow spectrum of colour it wouldn't take big variances in colour temp to make it look like whatever.

Of course, tis always wise to use caps as a rough guide only(which is why i expect it too look slightly different in actually, and why I asked for your elaborations in the first place ).
I would have to disagree about the UHD caps being less colorful/ more desaturated than the 35th caps in this case though.

Yea folks settings and their panel variances have to be taken into consideration, still this one does seem to have less of a consensus than usual...colour wise at least.

[horroru]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Watched this last night, starting off at about midnight right after I'd gone from one American Psycho to another. First off, yes, the pumpkin at the start does look a LOT less orange than the 35th anniversary transfer but something else I noticed is that the geometry of the title sequence was also quite different, the 4K's credits looking fatter and wider which I'll post a photo of at the end.

Thanks for taking the time to post another excellent review Geoff.
I mentioned earlier in this thread I experienced the exact same thing with the pumpkin in the opening credits.
ROSS.T.G. posted back he thought it looked better - that's the one thing I've found in making the jump to 4K, as you stated "everyone's rocking different settings" and of course different TVs. I'll read a review (like the IT review on this site) and they'll say it's not much of an improvement and on my TV it looks like a definite improvement.
ROSS.T.G. I would guess your TV is professionally calibrated, mine is not (only done to the best of my enthusiast abilities). Wondering if I would get a huge bang for my buck by getting a professional in here to do it correctly, would it be worth the money....