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Thursday, October 8, 2009

BD impressions: The New York Ripper

8:52 PM / BD Impressions / 11 Comments

There's something quite incredible about the mere existence of this film on the BD format. To be clear, I'm not one of those people that thinks only certain types of films should be "allowed" to be released on BD - broadly speaking, any film, regardless of age, budget or subjective quality, can benefit from the high definition treatment (unless the original material is sub-HD, of course), and while I can name several other gialli that I would have given priority to over this one, part of me is overjoyed that something this depraved and downright unrespectable is now available on my home video format of choice. It has, in effect, brought BD full circle: a format initially aimed at one niche (the AV enthusiast) that has gained enough of a consumer base to now be marketed towards a completely different niche (the so-called "trash" movie aficionado). I count myself as someone with a foot in either camp (even if I'm not entirely comfortable with the "trash" label), but I know I'm in the minority. Generally speaking, there's not a lot of cross-pollination between the two. Perhaps due to the very fact that most of these films were, until recently, only available in poor quality, fans of movies like The New York Ripper tend to have little interest in AV quality, and the feeling seems to be mutual in the opposite direction. In some ironic way, this disc's is proof that BD has well and truly penetrated the mainstream, even though Joe Sixpack probably wouldn't touch it with a bargepole.

Image quality: Very good indeed. As with previous Blue Underground BD releases, the grain on this title is very dense and pronounced, which produces a slightly odd effect as the image "behind" it is often somewhat soft-looking, while the grain is extremely defined - sharp, even. I wonder if this is perhaps a characteristic of the encoder they're using, as it has remained relatively consistent across their releases, despite the wide range of titles they have released from different periods (e.g. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage from 1970 and The Stendhal Syndrome from 1996). That's just speculation on my part, though, and it's fair to say that the effect is reasonably pleasing. It's unclear what the source for this transfer is, but it is not, I suspect, the negative, despite what is claimed on the cover: black hairs specks of print damage are visible on a number of occasions, indicating that a positive source must have been part of the chain at some point.

On the downside, all this grain proves to be a bit too much for the encoder to handle effectively. Unlike the other Blue Underground titles I've seen so far, this one comes on a single layer BD-25, and the dense grain particles do at times become a tad mangled, particularly in shadowy areas and washes of colour. It's generally more objectionable in still frame form than in motion, but I did notice the artefacts during playback in a handful of instances.

It's also worth pointing out that a couple of scenes appear to have been taken from an inferior source, one with reduced detail and some noticeable colour distortion. These are a scene in which Paolo Malco's character plays a trick on his secretary, and a later, briefer one involving Malco and Jack Hedley walking while talking about Fay Majors (see Example 18). While these scenes look less than ideal, I'm glad they were included rather than the alternative - an incomplete version of the film being put out. 8/10

The New York Ripper
studio: Blue Underground; country: USA; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 18.8 GB ; average bit rate (including audio): 28.95 Mbit/sec

PS. I'm happy to note that, in addition to the expected 7.1 remix, this disc also includes the original mono mix. From the bottom of my heart, thank you, Blue Underground.

11 Comments

 
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