SAMSON AND THE 7 MIRACLES OF THE WORLD Blu-ray….

Kino Lorber has announced that they will be releasing a Blu-ray later this year of the neglected SAMSON AND THE 7 MIRACLES OF THE WORLD (1960), directed by Riccardo Freda and starring Gordon Scott, Yoko Tani, Gabriele Antonini and more. This is excellent news. From the sporadic info going around the internet, it seems the Blu-ray release will have the original Italian cut and the shorter US cut. This is perfect. Every PEPLUM release in North America should include both the original Italian version and the often cut US release.

There’s already a beautiful copy of the movie shown on RAI in Italy (screenshot below). The thing is: will the cut scenes, almost all of them at the beginning, will be in English or in Italian with English subtitles. The US version starts approximately 10 minutes into the original Italian cut. No English dubbing has ever been heard of those 10+ missing minutes.

That FURY OF ACHILLES Blu-ray…

I finally got the new FURY OF ACHILLES (1962) Blu-ray disc from GOLDEN NINJA VIDEO. The movie stars Gordon Mitchell in his best role. This disc also includes PERSEUS THE INVINCIBLE (1963) starring Richard Harrison, and THE TROJAN HORSE (1961) starring Steve Reeves.

The movies are not new prints scanned in High Definition. They are up conversions of previous DVD releases. To give you an idea, the PERSEUS one has the SON OF HERCULES song during the opening credits. The original release didn’t have that.

Why was this BD made? I dunno but one can watch these three movies via BD and not from the web I guess. The disc is only $12 so it’s not expensive. If you don’t have these movies then the price might be okay but be sure that the image quality is not High Definition. Personally speaking, since I already have all these titles in my collection, I really didn’t need this disc.

Here are screenshots of the movies.

THE TROJAN HORSE is available on AMAZON PRIME in Canada. It’s the image on the top left. The copy from the BD is on the bottom right. The version at Amazon is not perfect but it is much better that the one on this disc.

SINS OF POMPEII French Blu-ray…

I just got the new SINS OF POMPEII (1950) Blu-ray from France. The Blu-ray worked fine (haha!). The shipping was very fast. And the price reasonable. I’ve examined the movie to give a quick overview of this release.

According to IMDb, the original runtime is 110 minutes. The new BD is 98 minutes. The previous DVD, also from France, was 94 minutes long. So there’s a discrepancy with runtime, which I haven’t checked in detail since I only got the BD yesterday. The extras are barebones. This HD release has two short documentaries, one on the Italian cinema highlighting the movie itself and the other has something to do with propaganda films made to showcase France and its culture (???), both narrated by the same expert.

Anyhow…

The image is nice but the image of the DVD was also nice. The beginning of the movie they state that the movie was ‘fixed’ or restored in 2017. The prints are virtually the same. The only big difference, and it’s a big one, is the resolution. To compare, I placed screenshots of the new BD version next to the old DVD. The size difference is amazing.

 

Georges Marchal

Was it worth buying? Yes, since the movie now looks great in a higher resolution but this transfer offers no new surprises, well, except for the cover which is stunning.

We’re December 10 and…

the SODOM AND GOMORRAH German Blu-ray is still not available even though it says at Amazon.de that it’ll be available on December 9, 2021. This release has already been delayed a couple of times, and as I anticipated, it’s still not available.

Addendum: someone who lives in Germany was able to get it for me….from Amazon. I guess Amazon.de don’t people from outside of Germany to buy it. Anyway, I will give a thorough review of it once I get it.

That SODOM AND GOMORRAH German Blu-ray…

The new German Blu-ray edition of SODOM AND GOMORRAH (1962) is scheduled to be released next week, on December 9. Initially, it was supposed to have been released during spring but it has been delayed. The old German DVD release of this movie wasn’t that good with odd video artifacts reminiscent of old VHS transfers. Hopefully the Blu-ray won’t replicate these issues. Even so I’m taking a wait and see approach with this BD. The new Japanese BD is pretty good even though it’s not complete. Anyway, the German Blu-ray is not yet available on Amazon for pre-order so that’s that. Not a good sign. One should be able to pre-order by now.

There are more Blu-ray releases scheduled which I’ll mention in another post.

A defective Blu-ray…

I recently purchased the Blu-ray for THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD (1965) after I realized I didn’t have it on DVD or any other adequate format. Once I got it the Blu-ray didn’t work. It stops working in the middle of the movie. It’s not the Blu-ray player is not the problem as I played other movies on it afterwards. This is a bummer. I really wanted to view this movie in HD but now I can’t save it for my collection. I bought it on eBay from a seller with no returns. Oh well…

SODOM AND GOMORRAH Japanese Blu-ray…

SODOM AND GOMORRAH (1962) starring Stewart Granger, Pier Angeli and a host of European actors is available on Blu-ray in Japan!

I purchased it and it’s already on its way.

The runtime is only 117 minutes and not the 150 + plus one. Regardless, I’m curious to see the image quality.

Front and back covers. Not the best quality. Hopefully, the film itself will be excellent. I’ll keep you posted on this.

HANNIBAL (1959) Blu-ray from Japan…

As I posted on the main PEPLUM TV blog, there’s a new Blu-ray of HANNIBAL (1959) in Japan. Unfortunately, Amazon won’t ship it outside of Japan. I wonder what the image quality is. Hopefully not as uneven as the HERCULES / HERCULES UNCHAINED ones. There are no screenshots of the movie. Did anyone out there bought it?

The back cover shows that it’s copyrighted by Minerva Pictures and it’s in Full HD.

Amazon. jp