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Horrible/1981/D'Amato/MYA release; aka Absurd, Rosso Sangue, Monster Hunter
Topic Started: Jul 25 2009, 09:59 AM (3,043 Views)
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Aristide Massaccesi directed this gory flick under his pseudo P. Newton, although he is
best known as Joe D'Amato. There is no much to tell about the story, cause this old uk nasty
is well known - not only to D'Amato fans.
A greek mutant (Luigi Montefiori alias G.Eastman) murders people while being pursued by a priest (Edmund Purdom).

Couple of days ago i recieved D'Amatos Horrible by MYA.
DvD is in widescreen, offers two audio tracks (ital and engl), no extras.
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MYA Communication mastered the dvd from the shorter italiano goreuncut master,
which offers a very nice quality, in my opinion.
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Unfortantly some scenes are missing in the italiano version (dialogues only), so they had to be inserted from
a vhs source to present this movie completely uncut (int version).

Guess all you guys know what i'm talking about - if not - here they are:

scene #1 / at 00:06:40 / 26 secs
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.. hey grandpa

scene#2 / at 00:08:08 / 1m 45s
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.. he's not gonna make it

scene#3 / at 00:11:07 / 1m 42s
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.. there is no much hope for him (dialogue between sgt Engleman and mrs Bennet)

scene#4 / 00:23:16 / 13secs
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.. Nikos (Luigi Montefiori) nightwalk

scene#5 / 00:45:33 / 1m 1s
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.. partytime

scene#6 / 01:25:19 / 12secs
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.. Nikos is hunting Katya (Katya Berger)
(this is the only scene missing from the german/astro dvd .. btw)

To tell the truth i'm very disappointed about the inserted quality cause even the
uk medusa vhs offers a much better picture.

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screenshot from Medusa pre-cert, fullscreen, fully uncut

Don't get me wrong - im not against fully uncut "made" prints but in my opinion it would have been much
better (at least in this case) to present the missing scenes as a bonus and leave the print like it is.
Besides the ital language track is shorter (inserted dialoques are in engl only).

However, best release on dvd so far ..
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videohunter
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Nice review work skyline , but to be honest the dvd from the looks of it ,is a huge disapointment , I much rather have the UK precert !
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cinehound
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Nice work, skyline!
I'm not sure if I prefer the bad quality scenes as extra bonus. In fact I rarely check the extras of the discs, my main target is always the movie, so I rather prefer to be there into the movie...
But I agree with videohunter - what a terrible cover it is!
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Stephen Gladwin
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Wait I'm a little confused. Are these "missing" scenes re-integrated back into the film, or are they just included as extras? If they ARE just included as extras and not part of the film as they should be, then count me out on this release. If they ARE included in the film, well, it's still disappointing there will be a drop in quality, but I'll still buy the DVD...
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thx guys,
indeed, cover artwork sucks! vhs artwork will allways beat dvd artwork.

@ Gladwin
re-integrated into the film, in lower quality.
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Chris K.
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From what I heard, the scenes taken from a lesser source have been inserted back into the film. My guess for this goes as follows: the Italian release cut didn't have those scenes but were only present in the English International release, which was also prepared by D'Amato, making that cut 6 minutes longer than the Italian original. When MYA got access to the materials, it seems they "discovered" that the Italian cut was shorter. Where they got access to the clean Italian print is beyond me, but if it was from a rights owner they should've had the longer English print or probably just didn't want to bother looking into it. So instead of doing any investigating to find out if any 35mm materials are available for the missing scenes, MYA just used a VHS master instead.

And while this might be the best DVD release so far, I must say MYA is having a real problem not doing 16x9 anamorphic enhancement for titles such as this. The clean Italian print does look like a new transfer, so I find it a bit odd that MYA wasn't keeping tabs on the transfer.
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Chris K.
Jul 26 2009, 05:19 AM
but if it was from a rights owner they should've had the longer English print or probably just didn't want to bother looking into it. So instead of doing any investigating to find out if any 35mm materials are available for the missing scenes, MYA just used a VHS master instead.

looks like a small distr to me.
http://www.imdb.com/company/co0263170/
old titles, everything in 2009 released, maybe 2 years licenses?
Sometimes new distr don't have the money for big investigations,
so everything has to go fast.

There are allready 2 german dvds out there with 1.66, lbx ratio, Astro and Lp.
Both offer a miserable quality. Trully, i expected an anamorphic transfer this time,
cause it's nowadays standard, at least from a us distr.
well .. maybe next time.
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Chris K.
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The other issue is that MGM claims to own the US rights. However, I heard all MGM has is a video master under the title "Monster Hunter", which was used in the mid 80s by Wizard Video and Lightning Video. Since the master was stored in the vaults of Charlie Band's Empire Pictures, which MGM bought Empire from Trans World Entertainment in the early 1990s, there seems to be an assumption from MGM that they now own the film. If that's true, they really can't do anything with it since it's an old out-of-date VHS master.

And so far, MGM hasn't come down on MYA for putting the title out.
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Bill Knight
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Thanks for the rundown on the dvd.

Mya Communications was formely the company called NoShame.

I think this is the reason that many dvd companies passed on this title over the years. I know more than a few have and the reason was that the element was not complete.

A title like this would have been out long ago in the USA when all of the Italian zombie and cannibal films were making their mark on dvd.

It's cool that they took the time to re-insert the scenes but I'll be passing on this dvd.
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MIDNIGHT LEGACY
Giving the films the respect they deserve!
http://www.midnight-legacy.com

eBay auctions (rare VHS tapes from around the world):
http://shop.ebay.com/midnight_1/m.html?_nk..._from=&_ipg=200
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Chris K.
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I'm willing to bet there are 35mm elements of the longer English version out there as it's circulated on video so much, and usually not from the same tape master either. It seems to me the Italian rights owners, that is if there are any, just gave MYA what they had "in reach" so to speak, which usually seems to be the case unless the owners are pressed harder by the buyers.
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