An American Werewolf in London (1981) (Limited Edition)

[marcus27]

Received my copy yesterday and popped it in to compare pic quality and audio to the first bluray. I never considered the original bluray "bad" given when it came out on the format and the age of this film.. but man, Arrow has made it look great. There's so much detail in scenes like the Slaughtered Lamb.

The audio is also great. I'm looking forward to watching with the original mono soundtrack, it sounds phenomenal!

I do have a question for everyone. What mode on your AV receiver do you listen to mono films with? Being a 1.0 track, the audio comes from my center speaker by default. This isn't terrible by any means, but it kind of limits the sound stage a bit. If I select stereo, I get sound from the L+R, but not the center. I also have an all channel mono setting.. but this puts the sound through all 11 speakers in my setup. It actually doesn't sound so bad that way.. I wish I had a "mono front" setting that'd use L+C+R. Just curious what others do for an "authentic" experience.

[Geoff D]

If your L + R speakers are properly in phase and you're sitting dead centre then the mono should sound like it's coming from the centre anyway.

[postmodel]

Originally Posted by Lacrimosa

Or, like in the case of Weird Science, it's applying today's commentary to yesterday's film. It's one thing to discuss the historical context of events. It's another thing to inject today's commentary into that context. This is going to have us debating the relevancy of gender politics in 1985 compared to today. Kelly LeBrock's character building herself out of the tail end of second wave feminism to respond to pervasive conservative ideologies that bookended the Cold War is a way farther reach than just saying she was a product of male fantasy and sexual desire.

Or maybe I'm just a dumb movie watcher.

Not to derail this into a thread about another film, I don't see what's wrong with that comparison though. Whether it's intended or not, we are all influenced by our surroundings and the culture we live in. Of course she was a product of male fantasy and sexual desire, but she was not some ditsy dreamgirl that would bow down to her creators. She was a very strong minded, free thinking creation, which fits well with the historical context of what was going on in the world based on that writer's examples.

I also have no issue with anyone's interpretation of a film. If they want to go into a deep dive of what life was like in that era compared to now, go right ahead. There are plenty of people who can't get passed older movies because they can only look at the world today, so sometimes essays like this help. And if someone wants to go into a deep dive as to why you can't compare something from back when to something of today, then go right ahead. It's honestly not too different of an argument. The thing I fear is people who can't make their own decisions on something and rely too heavily on other people's opinion.

Anyway, this transfer is phenomenal. i haven't watched this film in a while and it still holds up. The subway scene still gets me.

[Egbert Souse]

Originally Posted by marcus27

Received my copy yesterday and popped it in to compare pic quality and audio to the first bluray. I never considered the original bluray "bad" given when it came out on the format and the age of this film.. but man, Arrow has made it look great. There's so much detail in scenes like the Slaughtered Lamb.

The audio is also great. I'm looking forward to watching with the original mono soundtrack, it sounds phenomenal!

I do have a question for everyone. What mode on your AV receiver do you listen to mono films with? Being a 1.0 track, the audio comes from my center speaker by default. This isn't terrible by any means, but it kind of limits the sound stage a bit. If I select stereo, I get sound from the L+R, but not the center. I also have an all channel mono setting.. but this puts the sound through all 11 speakers in my setup. It actually doesn't sound so bad that way.. I wish I had a "mono front" setting that'd use L+C+R. Just curious what others do for an "authentic" experience.

I agree - the 2016 disc looks very good, but once you compare it the new 2K, there's nothing to compare. Probably also helps that Arrow's encodes (courtesy of Fidelity in Motion) are consistently amazing.

I use a 5.1 soundbar and mono comes through just the center front.

[Lacrimosa]

Originally Posted by postmodel

Not to derail this into a thread about another film, I don't see what's wrong with that comparison though. Whether it's intended or not, we are all influenced by our surroundings and the culture we live in. Of course she was a product of male fantasy and sexual desire, but she was not some ditsy dreamgirl that would bow down to her creators. She was a very strong minded, free thinking creation, which fits well with the historical context of what was going on in the world based on that writer's examples.

I also have no issue with anyone's interpretation of a film. If they want to go into a deep dive of what life was like in that era compared to now, go right ahead. There are plenty of people who can't get passed older movies because they can only look at the world today, so sometimes essays like this help. And if someone wants to go into a deep dive as to why you can't compare something from back when to something of today, then go right ahead. It's honestly not too different of an argument. The thing I fear is people who can't make their own decisions on something and rely too heavily on other people's opinion.

Very reasonable post. Thanks for posting.

A lot of my annoyance comes from retrofitting. Gender politics simply wasn't an issue in 1985 like it is in 2019, so when I see an essay titled "Gender Politics of Weird Science" in the booklet, which goes on to retrofit our philosophies of today to a time when it wasn't even on anyone's minds like it is now, I get annoyed. And I have a hard time swallowing that the creators of the film constructed the character with all that as a building block.
That's not to say the writer shouldn't write it, or that Arrow shouldn't publish it, it's just that I wish they wouldn't.

[yellowcakeuf6]

Originally Posted by marcus27

[Show spoiler]Received my copy yesterday and popped it in to compare pic quality and audio to the first bluray. I never considered the original bluray "bad" given when it came out on the format and the age of this film.. but man, Arrow has made it look great. There's so much detail in scenes like the Slaughtered Lamb.

The audio is also great. I'm looking forward to watching with the original mono soundtrack, it sounds phenomenal!

I do have a question for everyone. What mode on your AV receiver do you listen to mono films with? Being a 1.0 track, the audio comes from my center speaker by default. This isn't terrible by any means, but it kind of limits the sound stage a bit. If I select stereo, I get sound from the L+R, but not the center. I also have an all channel mono setting.. but this puts the sound through all 11 speakers in my setup. It actually doesn't sound so bad that way.. I wish I had a "mono front" setting that'd use L+C+R. Just curious what others do for an "authentic" experience.

The authentic experience would be to listen with the center channel only. That was the way it was done right in any self respecting cinema.
Of course, all screen/front speakers should be identical, but I know many have the scaled down center speakers, so that could be killing some depth and power.
You wouldn't run a mono track through all the screen channels in a cinema because those sitting on the sides would have a garbled listening experience with reduced dialogue intelligibility that would not seem to eminate from screen center.

[sfmarine]

Originally Posted by Retroj23

Your old man has great taste in films. My pops rented Demons by Bava back in '86 for my sister and I to watch. We nearly shit our pants. Good times.

Yeah....he was the best.

Demons ...that's a wild film.

[Pecker]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

If your L + R speakers are properly in phase and you're sitting dead centre then the mono should sound like it's coming from the centre anyway.

Almost correct but not quite the full story, Geoff.

Correct seating for stereo is when the distance from the seating position to a point half way between the stereo speakers is the same as, or slightly greater than the distance between the speakers.

If you sit closer than this, there'll be a 'hole' in the front stereo image.

No problem back in the days of setting up your stereo, just follow that simple rule. But in the age of surround sound, the usual recommended angle for L&R speakers is for something wider than that, which is why centre speakers are necessary.

[Croweyes1121]

Originally Posted by CreasyBear

So become an accomplished writer and get Arrow to publish your article in one of their booklets.

While I'm not published in an Arrow booklet, I am published. Most current example will be as consultant on Jim Bowers's "Superman: The Richard Donner Years" coffee table book, just waiting on the green light from Warner.

Originally Posted by CreasyBear

Poor baby, being subjected to views that collide with your own.

As someone who's very politically engaged, I completely appreciate the importance of educating onesself on both sides of a given issue. But that really isn't what I have a problem with. It's simply irrelevant, no matter how many contortions the writer twists themselves into tying the two things together. Pointing out how the ideas prevalent in the sociopolitical zeitgeist at the turn of the decade contributed to an increased fascination with the "body horror" films of the 1980's is fair enough, but I truly see no correlation between Ronald Reagan being anti-abortion and Rick Baker pioneering some timelessly badass transformation effects. If that means I'm not sufficiently "woke" on the subject, well...guess that's just me being a Gen X'er. Either way, essays like this are simply stronger when they analyze the cultural impacts of the film at hand, not shoehorn in their pet cultural issues into a commentary on how all films of a type reflect them. It's not just obnoxious; it's lazy writing.

[MechaGodzilla]

Originally Posted by Croweyes1121

Good grief, I just had to stop reading the booklet. Once the writer began to equate an interest in body horror films with Reagan’s anti-abortion stance, advocacy for marital sex, and “regressive rhetoric”, I had to go get some fresh air. Serves me right for thinking I could avoid politics in getting a freaking werewolf movie.

Originally Posted by BuraddoRun

I'm sure it's more the fact that everyone nowadays feels like they have to inject their political views into everything, which I agree is very tiresome, and not so much that one's political views may or may not differ from the one expressing those views.

Everything is too political nowadays. Sometimes you just want to enjoy a movie, or commentary about a movie, without having to think about politics.

For me, it's not that I think political analysis should be completely off-limits, or that art is never political. It frequently is, and certainly there have been many films - of all genres - produced since damn near the dawn of the medium itself that were made with the intention of delivering some form of political or social message, or reflect the filmmakers' views in a more subtle way.

It's just, it has to actually be there. I dislike this thing of people reading political subtext into something where it doesn't exist. It's done by people on the far-left, the far-right, and everywhere in between. Sometimes to criticize it and slam it as something they view as ideologically unsound, sometimes to appropriate the filmmakers/artists' supposed views and say "see, they agree with me".

There's a big difference between, say, pointing out that Godzilla vs. Hedorah has an environmentalist message (true), that Come and See is an anti-war film (true) and trying to find a connection between An American Werewolf in London's transformation scene and Reagan (very dubious), or interpreting They Live as an anti-Semitic work (someone actually did this, and Carpenter wasn't happy about it).

If the political overtones aren't obvious, I'm very careful about interpreting a work in a political way. I don't want to ascribe views and intentions to the writer/director that I have no idea or good reason to believe they actually hold or intended.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Pecker

Almost correct but not quite the full story, Geoff.

Correct seating for stereo is when the distance from the seating position to a point half way between the stereo speakers is the same as, or slightly greater than the distance between the speakers.

If you sit closer than this, there'll be a 'hole' in the front stereo image.

No problem back in the days of setting up your stereo, just follow that simple rule. But in the age of surround sound, the usual recommended angle for L&R speakers is for something wider than that, which is why centre speakers are necessary.

I don't live in a hall so I never had any problems getting a lovely 'phantom centre' effect from anything I watched in mono coming from front left and right. Same with getting the 'phantom screen channels' between left/centre and right/centre on 6-track 70mm mixes that have had the two screen channels split between the front three speakers for conventional 5.1/7.1 encoding.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by MechaGodzilla

For me, it's not that I think political analysis should be completely off-limits, or that art is never political. It frequently is, and certainly there have been many films - of all genres - produced since damn near the dawn of the medium itself that were made with the intention of delivering some form of political or social message, or reflect the filmmakers' views in a more subtle way.

It's just, it has to actually be there. I dislike this thing of people reading political subtext into something where it doesn't exist. It's done by people on the far-left, the far-right, and everywhere in between. Sometimes to criticize it and slam it as something they view as ideologically unsound, sometimes to appropriate the filmmakers/artists' supposed views and say "see, they agree with me".

There's a big difference between, say, pointing out that Godzilla vs. Hedorah has an environmentalist message (true), that Come and See is an anti-war film (true) and trying to find a connection between An American Werewolf in London's transformation scene and Reagan (very dubious), or interpreting They Live as an anti-Semitic work (someone actually did this, and Carpenter wasn't happy about it).

If the political overtones aren't obvious, I'm very careful about interpreting a work in a political way. I don't want to ascribe views and intentions to the writer/director that I have no idea or good reason to believe they actually hold or intended.

I've been struggling to compose a post on this topic that didn't come across as too inflammatory or too blasé, but like always you've hit the nail so squarely on the head you've damned near obliterated it: that really is exactly how I feel about it.

I literally wrote in an abandoned post that if something isn't overtly political then there's no need to drag politics into it. It's not that voices & views aren't to be heard, not that people want to stifle debate if they don't agree with it (which one could argue is as much of a tactic of the left as it is the right, but I digress), it's that there's a time and a place for such debates and far too many of these commissioned pieces are clearly being refracted through a modern political prism no matter how much people protest they are not.

We get enough about politics in the news day in day out, particularly here in the UK with the ongoing paralysis of the UK parliamentary system, and I just don't need to have my favourite movies politically dissected by virtue-signalling academics in order to understand and appreciate them. Political talk is banned on this very forum for a reason, it's just not the platform for it, and nor should a beloved movie be used as soapbox to flash one's woke credentials either.

[MechaGodzilla]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I've been struggling to compose a post something on this topic that didn't come across as too inflammatory or too blasé, but like always you've hit the nail so squarely on the head you've damned near obliterated it: that really is exactly how I feel about it.

I literally wrote in an abandoned post that if something isn't overtly political then there's no need to drag politics into it. It's not that voices & views aren't to be heard, not that people want to stifle debate if they don't agree with it (which one could argue is as much of a tactic of the left as it is the right, but I digress), it's that there's a time and a place for such debates and far too many of these commissioned pieces are clearly being refracted through a modern political prism no matter how much people protest they are not.

We get enough about politics in the news day in day out, particularly here in the UK with the ongoing paralysis of the UK parliamentary system, and I just don't need to have my favourite movies politically dissected by virtue-signalling academics in order to understand and appreciate them. Political talk is banned on this very forum for a reason, it's just not the platform for it, and nor should a beloved movie be used as soapbox to flash one's woke credentials either.

Thank you for the compliment, and yes, we agree on this.

To Arrow I would say, you are very welcome to include political analysis in your booklets/supplementary material, but I would prefer if you limited it to films where it's relevant. Like, if a film deals with race relations or the plight of the working class, by all means, have someone talk about the relevant subject. Don't force a subject on a film that has nothing to do with it.

[The Fallen Deity]

I haven't read the book yet but now I'm scared to!

This wouldn't be the first time that Arrow have included a pretentious essay.

The Dawn of the Dead one is particularly bad.

[Member-425016]

I don't even know what to say other than-I cannot believe how great this transfer is--and--This standard Blu-Ray looks better than many of my 4K catalog titles..with HDR!!!


Well done Arrow.

[Geoff D]

To Arrow, Universal and John Landis I will only say these two words: THANK YOU!!!

[DR Herbert West]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

To Arrow, Universal and John Landis I will only say these two words: THANK YOU!!!

^ This. Blues Brothers next, please.

[Bobbyjoe766]

Yes, thank you for the inclusion of the original mono audio track.

[The Sovereign]

Originally Posted by Filmfan73

I don't even know what to say other than-I cannot believe how great this transfer is--and--This standard Blu-Ray looks better than many of my 4K catalog titles..with HDR!!!


Well done Arrow.

Loving all the great feedback! I’ve been traveling a lot for work lately, but got home today and I see that my copy is waiting for me at my office. Not sure what else I’m watching Halloween night, but American Werewolf is a certainty.

[sfmarine]

Originally Posted by DR Herbert West

^ This. Blues Brothers next, please.