Well...like a patchwork job really.
The quality varies drastically based on different source material, which was added to the original German cut of the film. Back in the 70's/80's a lot of exploitation movies lost scenes, which the distributors considered "boring"/"unneccesary" etc over there...and it didn't get better when the first flicks arrived on German VHS.
On the "plus side" (for German fans anyway
) , a lot of these releases got additional dialogue or sound effects/music in the German releases missing from any other world wide version.
For instance, George Eastman's cannibal in "Antropophagus" has a small "monologue" just before the flashback to his wife and son. my fave though is "The Beyond" with added spooky sound effects and slightly alternate use of music, not to mention the glorious opening in colour instead of sepia!
Back to "Absurd": The biggest minus for any non German speaking fan is the absence of an English/Italian audio track. It's only offered in German and the sound isn't much better than on the old VHS, same goes for the overall picture, which is still far from the worst early German DVD releases of "banned movies". The first "Antropophagus" DVDs looked like a nightmare compared to "Absurd", which is not really good, but watchable, considering the lack of alternate releases
The "Astro" DVD also contained a fairly interesting documentary on D'Amato, which basically only consists of shots/scenes from his films and an informative narration, sadly also only offered in German.
Sadly, they also changed the opening credits to suit their idea of marketing the DVD as "Antropophagus II", since the movie was already banned as "Absurd" and "Ausgeburt der Hölle" on a couple of earlier VHS releases. Naturally it didn't take the DVD too long to suffer the same fate.
Some might also find the change of language in the added scenes annoying, mostly sudden bursts of Italian, but there's also one additional scene in English. Most irritating though is the inclusion of a banal scene at the party with NO dialogue or suitable sound, for which the sound of the FOLLOWING scene with a prowling Eastman was used, probably because this sound mostly consists of the film's music (with Eastman's footsteps in the back).
It's a shame this movie has to linger in obscurity, "thanks" to it being owned by a major who probably couldn't care less...
The dub is pretty good though, but I doubt that would make the viewing for non German speakers any more pleasant.
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Topic: Absurd / Rosso sangue (Aristide Massaccesi as Peter Newton, 1981) (Read 28382 times)