Announcing The Ultimate Horror Of Dracula 4K Release

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Hello, and welcome to The Extras.
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I'm Tim Millard, your host, and joining me is George Feltenstein of the Warner Archive, for a very special announcement.
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And George, why don't we dive right in with this big news today?
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Well, last year we we did something very special that was very rewarding for both Warner Brothers and our friends and partners at Hammer Films in UK.
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There was a wonderful restoration of the Curse of Frankenstein that came out as a 4K set from the Warner Archive and came out from Hammer in the UK, where they hold the rights.
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In the UK and Ireland, we have the rest of the world.
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We collaborated on that restoration, but they also went the extra mile and created a limited edition collector set that just blew people's minds.
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And we're not set up to do that kind of thing because Warner Archive is a very small operation.
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But I'm happy to announce that for Horror of Dracula, aka Dracula, depending where you live, we too will be issuing the same limited collector's edition that Hammer will be releasing in the UK.
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We had wonderful partnership discussions at the outset for this.
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And I'm terribly excited and very proud and very grateful to the folks at Hammer because their passion for their library and their heritage and legacy is peerless.
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And it's the kind of thing that I admire greatly.
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And I wanted U.S.
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consumers to be able to have the opportunity to buy that from us.
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And that has happened thanks to the cooperation and kindness of the folks at Hammer.
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And I should also call out our wonderful 17-year relationship business partners here in the U.S., Allied Vaughn Entertainment, with all of us working together.
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October 27th will be a day after the UK, because Street Date is Tuesday in the U.S.
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and Monday in the UK.
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But we will be offering the exact same Deluxe Collectors Limited Edition of Horror of Dracula, as we call it in the U.S., that Hammer will be releasing the day before in the UK.
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And there will also be a traditional release with the discs and no fancy booklets and posters and all the other things that are coming with the deluxe edition.
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We'll be offering consumers a choice on October 27th.
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That's really the big news.
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Well, the limited edition box set is loaded.
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Maybe you can take us through some of the details of what's on each disc.
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Well, I think first and foremost, I should talk about the way that the discs are configured.
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Right.
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So you have a unique situation here.
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You have a UK version that is now uncut as director Terence Fisher completed it.
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And that's at a 1.66 to 1 aspect ratio as seen in the UK.
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And then you have the version of the film that has been in distribution, general distribution, for the last, let me do my math here, 68 years.
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And that follows also in a 166 to 1 aspect ratio.
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So that's disc number one.
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And on disc number one, you also get a 2026 introduction.
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There's a piece about Christopher Lee proving them wrong.
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There's a sensor card, there's clapper boards, there's textless titles, there's a UK trailer, a textless UK trailer, and even one of those eight millimeter cutdowns, just like they had on The Curse of Frankenstein.
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So I think that's really like everything a consumer could possibly want.
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Also, with the director's cut, you get a commentary featuring Lucy Bolton and a commentary with Jonathan Rigby and Marcus Hearn from 2012 that was on the hammer disc.
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And then with the UK theatrical version, mean the cut version, there's a new commentary by Lisbeth Miles and Paul Cornell.
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So there's just a lot of material on disc one.
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But then you get to disc two and it suddenly goes from Dracula to horror of Dracula.
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It's the US version.
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Gotcha.
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So the US version in a 1.85 to 1 aspect ratio director's cut.
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And then you have the traditionally seen Sig for the 68 years 185 US version without the extra footage.
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So both of those are on that disc.
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And then there is a documentary about director Terrence Fisher, which is quite wonderful.
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It's a piece called Gothic for Christians.
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There's the US trailer, a textless US trailer.
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And for those of you who don't know what a textless trailer is, a Texas trailer is what it sounds like.
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It has absolutely no text, it's the images.
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And a Texas trailer is usually used to be the source for trailers from different languages all over the world.
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So it's industry speak, but I thought I should clarify that for those who don't know.
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We also have a German trailer and a textless German trailer, and there's an eight millimeter black and white trailer cut down.
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So those are discs one and two on the 4K.
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And then in the Blu-ray version, that's discs one and two of that.
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In the limited collector's edition, those become discs one, two, three, and four, and the remaining three discs are Blu-ray discs stuffed with special features.
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So there are, I believe, some legacy special features as well as new special features.
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There are all sorts of other rarities mixed in.
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Hammer found a work print of Dracula, which was a work in progress version of the film that was assembled while they were in post-production.
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And I believe what was going back and forth between the British Board of Film Censors, there's gorgeous packaging.
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You can see the packaging online, but when you see it in person, it'll blow your mind.
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It comes with a double-sided poster, eight art cards, which are reproductions of lobby cards.
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There's a 200-page book just featuring new articles on the film, the cast, the crew.
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There's a 60-page comic reprint of the comic strip from the 1970s from the legendary House of Horror.
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And for those who don't speak English but want to own this, there are English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Japanese subtitles on each version of the film.
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So if you don't speak the language, you can understand what they're saying.
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And that's that's pretty amazing.
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And the new pieces that have been created cover everything that you can think of.
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Going back to, you know, even the whole issue of Bram Stoker's original novel and how people approach that.
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I think that really what Hammer has done here, and we're so grateful to be a part of it, is they've thought of every possible thing you would want to do.
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And there are, I think, five new commentaries on this from all sorts of different people.
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And one of those commentaries is from two people that you and I both know well: Constantine Nazarer and Dr.
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Steve Haberman, who were there for me six years ago when we issued our Christa Frankenstein Blu-ray and have participated on a lot of Warner Archive editions where we were able to create new commentaries.
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And I'm so grateful that they're a part of this disc.
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I don't think there's anything involving and related to this motion picture that isn't covered in the material that's been brought here.
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This is a collector's dream.
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So we have basically three different Dracula choices for the holiday, which is great for Halloween.
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So whatever fits your desires or your budget.
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Yeah.
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And just to be really clear, if you want both the 4K and the Blu-ray, that is the limited collector's edition.
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That's the one you're going to want to get.
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Right.
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And it's got the whole shebang and everything.
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With three additional Blu-ray discs filled with features.
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Yeah.
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With everything.
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And then there will just be the 4K, and then we'll be a Blu-ray.
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There will not be a combo of those because that would just be a huge amount.
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You're a good chunk of the way already to the limited edition.
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So I think that makes a lot of sense here.
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It is also exactly what Hammer is offering in the UK.
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And we wanted to be aligned with them.
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And this works out well for everyone.
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So there's a choice for whatever road you want to go on.
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And we'll have you know more details as this develops and it's released with all of the extras that will be on those individual releases as well.
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So today we're just announcing everything, and people can check out the Warner Classics uh Facebook page and the extras, Facebook, and other social media to get more of those specifics and of course the hammer site as well.
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So that will all be And moviesing.com.
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And moviesing.
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And I'm sure all the other retailers as uh as well will have all of that.
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Yeah, I I think people will be anxious to want to put this up for pre-order as soon as possible.
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They won't be dragging.
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They'll be excited.
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Exactly, exactly.
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And just to clarify for listeners, the limited collector's edition MSRP here is $99.98, and that's in US dollars.
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And the 4K two disc set is $39.99 US dollars.
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That leaves the two-disc Blu-ray at just $34.99 and again US dollars.
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And everybody should just check with the retailer before they purchase.
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But that's the suggested retail price, and retailers may have something different.
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But I thought those were all very, very good values.
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And I'm I know that you're wanting to also have it for the same price as the Hammer releases.
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I think that as wonderful as the Curse of Frankenstein is, and how it put Hammer on the map for building a new generation of iconic horror on the screen.
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I think from those golden years at Hammer, that Dracula, aka horror of Dracula, is really the great film.
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It is a, it's everybody working to their best, not to diminish the importance of Kirsa Frankenstein, but it was almost like it prepared them to go even further.
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And I consider it a masterpiece of horror cinema.
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Now, the title of the film and why it's different in the UK and the US is very interesting.
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The filmmakers wanted to make Dracula.
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And around that time, late 1957, early 1958, the universal horror films made in the 30s, uh, specifically Baila Lugosi's Dracula, Boris Karlov's Frankenstein, etc.
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They had just hit domestic television syndication, and they were huge.
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And Hammer made a distribution arrangement with Warner Brothers for the Curse of Frankenstein.
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They made a distribution arrangement with Universal International for Horror of Dracula.
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And it was the people at Universal that decided the title for the U.S.
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should be Horror of Dracula because they didn't want people to be confused by Baylor Lagosi's Dracula, which was creating a sensation basically to a whole new generation of people.
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They wanted to really clarify that this was something new, something different, hence the differentiation in the titles.
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Now you say, well, if Universal International released this, how did it end up back at Warner Brothers?
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So a little bit of trivia here is that the people that were running Seven Arts Associated or Seven Arts Productions, Elliot Hyman and Kenneth Hyman, they were very involved with Hammer's activities.
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And before or kind of at the same time that Seven Arts was buying out Jack Warner's stock and would eventually own Warner Brothers for about two years, and it was called Warner Brothers Seven Arts.
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The Seven Arts people obtained those rights and ownership of the first three films, which includes The Mummy, which followed in 1959.
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Those are owned by Hammer in the UK and Ireland.
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We own the rest of the world.
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So uh we had the negative, we had all the supplementary film and audio elements.
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So the collaboration on the Christa Frankenstein was magnificent.
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We supplied Hammer with what they needed, and uh Mark Stanborough at Hammer oversaw Restoration at Silversalt in the UK.
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And I think people loved that release.
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I certainly did.
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It was even better than what we were able to achieve with our 2020 Blu-ray, which I'm still very proud of.
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Now we have Dracula slash R of Dracula in a way that most people have never seen it.
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Because aside from the quality of the restoration, the 4K HDR restoration is mind-blowing and the color correction is spot on and beautiful.
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I've heard mention of a Japanese cut.
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What's the story behind that?
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So when Terrence Fisher, the director of this film, completed it and delivered it to Hammer, and Hammer brought it to the British Board of Film Censors, they found certain sequences were not acceptable.
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Even though they were giving it their famous X rating, it was just too over the top for 1958.
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So cuts were made in the film.
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And yet people would often remark that it had extra gore and extra this and extra that, little tiny bits in Japan.
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So about 15 years ago, maybe it was 14 years ago, 12 years ago, I don't I don't know the chronology exactly.
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I don't remember.
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But Hammer in the UK, which was owned by different people at the time, proceeded on a restoration of horror dracula, or as they call it in the UK Dracula, that would reinstate some of these sequences that had been seen in Japan from a beat-up 16 millimeter print that was mercifully uh discovered, you know, and everyone was so excited about that, particularly Dracula's deterioration scene, Christopher Lee, of course.
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Yeah.
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We had released a Blu-ray a couple of years ago working from what Hammer had supplied us, which was very kind of them, and we tried to improve the color correction, but it it left something to be desired.
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Now, I had not personally been involved with this film prior to what we did with it, I think in 2017 or 2018.
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I would say in the early days of DVD, I was peripherally like around.
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I wasn't overseeing, but there were DVDs released of these classic hammer horror films with no supplementary material, which was very infuriating to the fans because context is so important.
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And your former colleagues were desperate to get the approval for the funding to do new pieces, and the funding was denied.
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So we had always been at a little bit of a disadvantage.
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Interestingly, there was a collaboration between Warner Brothers and the BFI on Dracula around 2008.
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People who no longer work here were involved in that.
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That didn't happen.
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So, fast forward to two years ago, Hammer reached out to me and said that they wanted to collaborate on the Chris Frankenstein.
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We know that happened.
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The collaboration was so wonderful on all ends that we wanted to immediately, you know, ratchet in, moving on to Dracula.
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And the question was put to me, are you sure you guys don't have that missing footage?
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And I said, Well, I'll I'll check because it was up to other people, not me, it was up to other people to dig into the inventory and find the best elements.
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But I happened to spend a great deal of time, I don't want to say playing, but exploring our inventory because we're always finding something new.
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Yeah.
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And when I was going through the inventory for what we call horror of Dracula, I found in the color safety separations, and I should say they're actually what we call RGB, red, green, blue.
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They're black and white, kind of polar opposites of yellow, cyan, magenta, technicolor.
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But these were made as protections uh to restore color if something should happen to the negative.
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Well, there were three inserts separations.
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Separations are silent film elements, and they were marked Japanese.
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And I said, how can safety separations uh be uh equated with a language?
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They don't have subtitles and I just didn't understand it.
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And the weirdest thing about it is the date in our inventory that these were uh created, what I really think that meant was when they were entered into the inventory was 2014.
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So this kind of after Warner Brothers and the BFI had worked together, uh I just found it very puzzling.
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And I thought, I think these are the missing sequences from Dracula.
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So I collaborated with our amazing, wonderful preservation team.
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And knowing that we were going to collaborate with Hammer on this new restoration, the icing on the cake would be as if those inserts really were what I thought they might be.
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And they were evaluated and confirmed to be the missing sequences.
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They were the inserts.
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Wow, wow, wow.
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So when I let Mark Stanborough and the fine people at Hammer know that we had the magic beans, uh, they were pretty happy.
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Well, let's get into the details of the restoration, George.
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Did you partner with the Hammer team?
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How the partnership has worked is basically we scan everything here at Warner Brothers Water Tower Color, as it is now known, because I want to clarify that Warner Brothers motion picture imaging has changed its name.
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So I'll be talking about Water Tower Color in the future as well as today.
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But our people had the elements inspected and everything was scanned, and we sent everything to the fine folks in the UK, and the restoration began, and they were, I would say, beyond elated that this material had finally been located.
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And the net result is unless you saw it in Japan, you know, almost 70 years ago, you have not seen this.
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There is more footage than was found in that beat up 16mm print.
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And uh the folks at Silver Salt did just a magnificent job under Mark's direction.
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So the film looks amazing.
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It sounds amazing.
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Hammer has created both 5-1 audio for the film as well as the original mono theatrical, both of which have gone through careful restoration.
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So the film itself will, I think it's gonna blow people's minds.
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I think that many people have seen the trailers that Hammer has done a wonderful job in making available and teasing this big event.
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So people know it's gonna be gorgeous.
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Well, it's gonna look gorgeous, it's gonna sound gorgeous.
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And I think people kind of assume that we would do Horror of Dracula along with Hammer, but they assumed, and and for a while, so did I, that we would only be able to do a scale-down edition.
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And I wanted our consumers to be able to order it here.
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And so Warner Archive will be releasing the same two editions that Hammer is releasing in the UK.
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It's very much been a joint effort, and it's a wonderful partnership for such a beloved film.
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This film is kind of the gold standard of Hammer horror films, and certainly horror films from that period, and very, very talented people involved, not to mention the amazing casting of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, who set the bar very high.
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A bar I don't know if it's ever been achieved by anybody else since then.
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They were so unique.
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Yeah.
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I'd like to think that the original creators of this film would be uh very proud of what has been done here, particularly the dedication of the team at Hammer and our team here to work together.
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Because we also had Warner Brothers Archival Mastering, which is our sound department that works on the library simultaneously and in step and in tandem to give fans a very nice Halloween present.
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Yeah.
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And I think it's a first.
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That's why we're talking about it, because it's not only such an important film, but this partnership, which you and I, we talked with uh the gentleman from Hammer last year about the Curse of Frankenstein.
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And you could see already the relationship and the and the new ownership, what they're wanting to do with that library and what they're wanting to do in partnership with Warner Brothers and Warner Archive.
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It's just a wonderful partnership that has existed for basically close to 70 years.
00:27:29.840 --> 00:27:54.640
And I personally just revere anyone who works within a group of films that are owned by their company that dedicates such passion and a demand for excellence for the end result of what can be restored and brought to the consumer.
00:27:54.640 --> 00:27:59.279
There are very few people who have that kind of dedication.
00:27:59.279 --> 00:28:02.640
The people at Hammer most certainly do.
00:28:02.640 --> 00:28:05.840
And that's why it's such a pleasure to partner with them.
00:28:06.079 --> 00:28:06.480
Yeah.
00:28:06.480 --> 00:28:17.360
And just to reiterate this part here, if you're a consumer in the US, you can order from the US retailers.
00:28:17.360 --> 00:28:22.319
You won't have to pay any import uh tariff taxes, things like that.
00:28:22.319 --> 00:28:35.840
It's just a normal Warner archive order, but now you have the chance to get that same exact limited edition box set that Hammer is uh uh releasing in the UK.
00:28:35.840 --> 00:28:41.680
So this is a a big, big announcement of a first-time uh deal like that.
00:28:41.680 --> 00:28:43.279
And it's it's big news.
00:28:43.279 --> 00:28:51.519
And of course, you always could get the regular two-disc release that uh you guys were going to be releasing anyway, but now you have the two options.
00:28:51.519 --> 00:28:55.759
So that's the big news here, on top of just the actual release.
00:28:56.079 --> 00:29:06.160
Well, yes, and there are multiple discs because of the two 4Ks and the two Blu-rays of the feature and the supplementary material.
00:29:06.319 --> 00:29:06.559
Yeah.
00:29:06.720 --> 00:29:06.880
Yeah.
00:29:06.880 --> 00:29:18.160
But to have you know these beautiful books and booklets and the reproductions, everything has been done with such care.
00:29:18.400 --> 00:29:18.720
Yeah.
00:29:18.960 --> 00:29:22.240
Um it's something to be very proud of.
00:29:22.240 --> 00:29:40.640
The heavy lifting of perfection clearly lies with our friends at Hammer because if you look at everything that they've done, not just in the horror genre, but with everything that they've been putting out, it's just astounding.
00:29:40.640 --> 00:29:43.920
The uniform excellence.
00:29:43.920 --> 00:29:50.240
They've been kind enough to send me several of their recent releases from the last year.
00:29:50.240 --> 00:29:59.360
And I've just been astounded because I think, well, gee, I would love to have a hundred-page book all about films.
00:29:59.360 --> 00:30:03.759
You know, not going to mention any names, but you know what I mean.
00:30:03.759 --> 00:30:21.200
So we're very proud to be part of the partnership and to be able to have people on both sides of the pond have access to something so very, very special in the history of horror films and in the history of cinema itself.
00:30:21.200 --> 00:30:27.360
This is a landmark important film, and it looks and sounds amazing.
00:30:27.360 --> 00:30:30.079
They've done such wonderful work.
00:30:30.319 --> 00:30:44.480
And I think I think, George, you Warner Archive and Hammer just basically took the headlines for uh for this Halloween season this October with this release and making it available uh worldwide like this.
00:30:44.480 --> 00:30:47.519
I I can't imagine anybody is gonna top this for horror.
00:30:48.000 --> 00:30:56.079
And there are going to be theatrical screenings, both here in the US and of course in the UK, right?
00:30:56.079 --> 00:30:59.039
Uh, and probably other parts of the globe as well.
00:30:59.039 --> 00:31:09.519
But the ability to see this new 4K restoration in a theater with a lot of people screaming, uh that was the original intent.
00:31:09.519 --> 00:31:11.759
And so that'll be happening too.
00:31:11.759 --> 00:31:12.240
Right.
00:31:12.240 --> 00:31:19.759
And uh I'm just thinking that this is going to be a very joyous Halloween.
00:31:19.759 --> 00:31:26.720
And we need some joy right now because these are difficult, tough times for everybody in the world.
00:31:26.720 --> 00:31:32.000
There's a lot of negativity and a lot of sadness, a lot of bad things going on.
00:31:32.000 --> 00:31:49.840
And when you have something wonderful that means something to so many people, the loyal fans of these films, there are countless fans, and it's passed on from generation to generation.
00:31:49.840 --> 00:32:00.880
Whether you saw these films when you were a kid in the theater, and now you've got grandchildren that you want to expose to them, if they're of a certain age.
00:32:00.880 --> 00:32:03.519
You obviously don't want to show it to a four-year-old.
00:32:03.519 --> 00:32:18.799
But my point is that for decades, these particular films, Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula, Horror Dracula, and The Mummy, those three were really like Tedpoles.
00:32:19.200 --> 00:32:19.519
Yeah.
00:32:19.759 --> 00:32:27.680
I remember, like when I was a kid, that people would go to see these in revival theaters.
00:32:27.680 --> 00:32:34.079
And uh it was very, very exciting, and then exciting when they came out on home video and you could own them.
00:32:34.079 --> 00:32:34.720
Right.
00:32:34.720 --> 00:32:42.480
And now you're gonna be able to own them with the best possible quality, and that footage that the British Board of Film Censors took out.
00:32:42.720 --> 00:32:43.360
Yeah.
00:32:43.360 --> 00:32:44.559
Amazing.
00:32:44.559 --> 00:32:46.240
Well, this has been a fun one.
00:32:46.240 --> 00:32:52.799
Uh, we don't always dedicate just a podcast episode just to one title, but this is not just one title.
00:32:52.799 --> 00:33:03.759
This is a uh seven-disc limited edition plus the normal uh two-disc release for one of the iconic horror films ever made.
00:33:03.759 --> 00:33:05.519
So uh this has been a lot of fun.
00:33:05.519 --> 00:33:10.480
And I think the other thing we want to let people know is that you can pre-order today.
00:33:10.480 --> 00:33:23.600
Pre-orders are available, so get your pre-order in, whichever uh version of these you want, whether you're obviously in the UK, you can order directly from Hammer, or if you're in the US or the rest of the world, you can now order this set.
00:33:23.600 --> 00:33:27.279
So we'll have links to all that in the description.
00:33:27.279 --> 00:33:32.640
And uh hopefully people will step up and get this and take this opportunity, George.
00:33:32.640 --> 00:33:33.920
I think they will.
00:33:34.480 --> 00:33:37.759
Well, especially because this is a limited edition.
00:33:37.759 --> 00:33:38.319
Right.
00:33:38.319 --> 00:33:41.680
And it's not going to be around that long.
00:33:41.680 --> 00:33:47.600
You want to pick yours up right away and know it's on your shelf, and no one can take it away from you.
00:33:47.600 --> 00:33:49.759
Exactly, exactly.
00:33:50.559 --> 00:33:52.079
Well, I'm over the moon about this.
00:33:52.079 --> 00:33:54.559
This is a very exciting announcement.
00:33:54.559 --> 00:34:05.680
I do have purchase links uh in the show notes here, and we do have other information and details located here, also on our social media site, so you can look for that.
00:34:05.680 --> 00:34:10.000
Sometimes it's start to cover everything in a podcast and all the details.
00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:11.519
So very exciting stuff.
00:34:11.519 --> 00:34:13.760
Great to have George on to talk about it.
00:34:13.760 --> 00:34:18.240
We will, of course, do a full review uh later in October when it comes out.
00:34:18.240 --> 00:34:20.640
Well, until next time, you've been listening to Timelard.
00:34:20.640 --> 00:34:22.000
Thanks for listening.
00:34:22.000 --> 00:34:25.039
It's a test about hammer or