MILL CREEK THE GORGON BLU RAY YOU REVIEW FRANK TURTURICI

THE GORGON MILL CREEK BLU RAY: A DECENT REPLACEMENT

FOR YOUR AGING DVD COPY!

Mill Creek Entertainment's Hammer Films Double Feature: The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll and The Gorgon : Theatrical Release: 1964 : Blu Ray Release Date: 09/06/16 Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen Duration: 84 Minutes Featuring: Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee Directed By: Terence Fisher

Mill Creek has released The Gorgon in similar fashion to The Revenge of Frankenstein, paired with another movie on a single layer 25GB Blu Ray. While a 50GB disc would have been preferable (and is the norm in 2016), I don't believe it affects the picture quality for The Gorgon as much as it did The Revenge of Frankenstein.

I noticed a difference with The Gorgon immediately. The film is obviously in better shape than Revenge. Maybe the 6 year difference between the two films meant working with better film stock. Whatever the case may be, The Gorgon looks pretty decent on Blu Ray. Detail is good and colors are very nice throughout. Skin tones are very normal to the time period without any kind of red or yellow push. Detail can get a little lost in some of the darker scenes, but it is still an overall improvement to the old DVD.

As for audio, it doesn't have much room to stretch. Music can sound pretty compressed but dialogue is always clear and intelligible. 

For a bargain basement Blu Ray of $8, The Gorgon offers a decent replacement for the aging DVD, even if Mill Creek misspelled the title on the spine as "The Gorgan." I'm interested to see what kind of improvements, if any, the upcoming Australian Blu Ray release will show.

The YOU REVIEW feature: All YOU REVIEW features are complete and unedited  written reviews  independently submitted by followers of the Peter Cushing Appreciation Society , it's website and Facebook Fan Page. The opinions here in, are solely the authors and are shared here with the purpose and intent of providing a guide to dvd's and blu rays recently released featuring the work of Peter Cushing.  All viewing equipment used for the reviews is domestic and typical of the range of players and tv monitors used in a domestic viewing environment.

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YOU REVIEW : FRANK TURTURICI TAKES A LOOK AT MILL CREEKS REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN BLU RAY

The YOU REVIEW feature: All YOU REVIEW features are complete and unedited  written reviews  independently submitted by followers of the Peter Cushing Appreciation Society , it's website and Facebook Fan Page. The opinions here in, are solely the authors and are shared here with the purpose and intent of providing a guide to dvd's and blu rays recently released featuring the work of Peter Cushing.  All viewing equipment used for the reviews is domestic and typical of the range of players and tv monitors used in a domestic viewing environment.

THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN: Part of a TWO Hammer film package, with The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, released on blu ray by Mill Creek Entertainment September 2016. Mill Creek's double feature is currently the only way to own these films on BLU RAY:  They can be purchased  HERE 

THE REVIEW:
First. The technical to get it out of the way. First expectations. In my opinion, these are bargain basement blu-rays. Make no mistake that they have not been restored or remastered in any way whatsoever. The Revenge of Frankenstein uses an older HD encode carried over from the DVD release (I believe) of 2002. Both Revenge and Curse of the Mummy's Tomb are crammed onto a single 25GB blu-ray. Since there's no special features, or even subtitles or audio options), and since both movies are relatively short, this would've been okay had Mill Creek used a 50GB blu-ray disc. Instead, a large amount of compression exists in order to fit both movies onto the smaller sized disc. What does this mean for picture quality? Nothing good, I have to say.

THE DISC:

I'll preface that my tv is probably 10 years old. It's a 46" 1080p LED Samsung tv 240Hz. The picture still holds up as crisp and lifelike with newer movies where action is fluid (and where proper care has been taken to provide an adequate transfer). I also sit probably 10 feet away, so I'm not on top of the tv looking for blemishes or distractions. In the case of The Revenge of Frankenstein, I noticed that in some scenes when people are walking across the screen, such as when Frankenstein is holding the knife to Hans, there's a fair amount of compression artifacts right behind him as the image struggles to keep up with the actor's fluid motions. It's distracting and shouldn't be happening in 2016, 10 years into this HD format.

Colors are mostly good, but nothing really *pops*. The famous Hammer red blood isn't any more rich now as it was on the DVD years ago. Flesh tones are ok but some scenes lean a little more to the red side while other scenes show actors a little paler. I did notice that some of the outside night scenes were a little more difficult to see than I was used to. What was perhaps most distracting is the sheer amount of scratches, blemishes, dust, and vertical lines throughout the movie. This is a movie that is dying for a remastering effort, although not as heavily as The Curse of Frankenstein, which has its own problems.

As for the sound, it's rather tinny I'm afraid. Bass isn't booming, voices and high ranges sound thin, as does the music. I had forgotten how much music is in this particular Frankenstein film, probably more than any other Hammer Frankenstein. It's used to great effect to show how Karl is a rather sympathetic 'monster' and his infatuation with Miss. Conrad. There was no hissing or audio blips that I could hear, but it could definitely use some oomph.

AND FINALLY:

To sum up, I paid about $8 for this combo, so about $4 for The Revenge of Frankenstein. Sadly, that's probably all they're worth. To top it off, Mill Creek misspelled The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb on the spine as "The Curese..." I have yet to watch that movie. For the other double pack release with the Gorgon, they misspelled it as "The Gorgan." That gives you an idea of how much thought and care went into these movies.

The Revenge of Frankenstein: Codec: DISC: MPEG-4 AVC Resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1, 1.66:1 Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1, 2.35:1 AUDIO: English: Dolby Digital 2.0 (448 kbps) PACKAGE: Blu-ray Disc Single disc (1 BD-25) ADVERTISED REGION: Region A

OVERALL SCORE: 2.0 from a possible 5.0 

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