The Evil Dead - 2011 Re-Master was scanned in 5K from an American uncut open-matte 35mm print. The print is in excellent condition, although it's identical to the tweaked 2010 Anchor Bay Blu-Ray restored release, not an original untouched print (I would hope to get a scan of an original 1980s print at some point in the future). There are a fair number of restoration tweaks listed below, along with a complete re-grading to make the feature more consistent. That aside, around 95% of the film itself is identical to the original version, and the colours are far better than would have been on an original 80s faded print. The 35mm source print is virtually complete, loosing only 16fr over 3 splices including each of the four reels' heads & tails, meaning there are no mid-reel splices at all.


My first restoration of this 35mm print scan was released with the original February '23 set (although it was scanned back in March 2022, and graded in June/July '22). This is the second revised version, completed over two years later in November '24. I decided to have another go as this for a number of reasons, but mainly it was my very first attempt at regrading, and even though the print is unfaded, it still didn't look as good as it might. I thought I could make a much better job second time round, and produce something I'd be happy to watch myself as a big fan of the feature.

This grade was done in Resolve, using Premiere only for a couple of final tweaks & encoding. The colour/saturation was very roughly the same as the Blu-Ray, although the 35mm print was brighter with higher contrast. The 35mm is more neutral towards blue, whereas the Blu-Ray really pushes the yellows, especially in the daylight/outside scenes. In addition, the Blu-ray is variously zoomed/cropped from shot to shot, to hide various elements like frame edges. This print is entirely uncropped presented at 1.37:1; standard for a film shot on 16mm. One extra surprise was that looking at this 35mm transfer's optical audio and comparing it with the 1985 Japanese Herald Videogram Laserdisc true mono track, and the 2010 Blu-Ray stereo track converted to mono, it appears that the audio on the print is the original mono audio mix printed as dual mono, and has not been remixed or tampered with, so I used it as-is. Looking at the waveforms, there is very little difference between the laserdisc and 35mm audio, but there are fair differences with the Blu-ray audio. There aren't really any replacements/alterations in the Blu-Ray re-mix, but certain sound effects and music start & endings have been blended/faded better in to the mix, while others have been beefed-up.

Three commentary tracks have been synced to this feature; the 2010 Anchor Bay US LE Blu-Ray commentary featuring Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell & Rob Tapert, along with the 1999 Elite Entertainment US SCE R1 DVD commentary; one featuring Bruce Campbell and a second with Sam Raimi & Rob Tapert This feature is presented as a pretend UK projection, with UK 2000's Odeon Cinemas 'Fanatical About Film' snipes, adverts, and 35mm trailer scans for House On Haunted Hill (1999), The Blair Witch Project (1999), Jeepers Creepers (2001), Wrong Turn (2003), House Of 1000 Corpses (2003), & Cabin In The Woods (2012), all in 4/5K.

This entry isn't part of the overall project, and was restored for inclusion on a revised Book Of The Dead Blu-Ray set, but has been added to this page for the sake of completeness.

The Evil Dead was scanned in 4K from a US 16mm print, which was somewhat faded towards blue and overly bright, but without any major scratches of note. There is no rating on the print, but it plays as the uncut version. Unlike a number of 16mm prints I've seen, this one is pretty decent, although a bit soft. You can see that best in the car/cabin frame top-right. In comparison to the retail Blu-Ray, the 35mm source print looses only 4s 02fr over the two reels heads & tails. That should be over three splices, although that's actually one reel change splice, and two joins between the source duplication reels. That's fantastic for an original print. Further, unlike the 35mm print scan I have, this is the original un-tweaked version.

As a general rule, I would always opt for a 35mm scan over the same in 16mm. There are three main reasons. 16mm film is just under one-quarter the size/resolution of 35mm; 16mm at (10mm x 7.5mm) vs 35mm at (22mm x 16mm), both at 1.37:1. That's very roughly analogous to DVD vs Blu-Ray resolution. Secondly given the smaller size, any defects such as scratches/dust, will be far more magnified in that smaller size. Lastly, 16mm was generally seen as a cheaper home-theatre-format. This meant that not only that much of the duplication was done on the cheap (and the quality would suffer as a result), but also less care tended to be taken over the life of the print, in comparison to more valuable 35mm theatrical prints. This is a 4K Cintel scan (as opposed to most of the others here which are 5K Scanstation scans) The quality is still very decent. You'll notice above that the raw scan looks very bright. Once the LUT is applied in Resolve, the levels are automatically adjusted to a more normal level, and you grade from there. As a Cintel scan, you can see tell-tail vertical noise/lines in the raw frame blacks, which are mostly hidden once the lower black level is set during grading. Surprisingly, the framing on this 16mm print is (for the most part) wider than the retail Blu-Ray, but more cropped than the 35mm print. Usually a 16mm print is more cropped in some form or another. The opening scenes and some shots up to the cabin are wider on the 35mm, but after that the 16mm has more image on every side. The bright & blue-faded print was quite tricky to grade with most of the red skin-tones faded away. I cut into 184 sections for individual grading/tweaking in Resolve, with more in Premiere. The levels on the retail Blu-Ray are generally darker with more vibrant colour. The 16mm looks more akin to the VHS & Laserdisc versions. While this is not a 100% faithful presentation of an original grade (I'd need an unfaded print scan for that), it's as close as I could get it. The audio here is mono presented as dual mono, taken from the 16mm optical strip.

If an original 35mm print becomes available to scan, I'd jump at the chance. Until then, people can choose between the higher quality 2011-tweaked print, and this original lower-quality 16mm print. This feature is presented as a pretend UK projection, with UK 80's Cannon Cinemas snipes, adverts, and 35mm trailer scans for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), The Amityville Horror (1977), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), The Shining (1980), The Evil Dead (1983), & Videodrome (1983), all in 4/5K.

Evil Dead II was scanned in 5K from a US uncut open-matte 35mm print. This new 5K scan entirely replaces the older 2022 4K German censored print scan & restoration, as this print is a fair upgrade in terms of both scan-resolution, colour, brightness and clarity in the darker portions of each frame, plus it's uncensored, with the original English optical audio. However, the print isn't in such good condition. The first reel has a thin green line over towards the left edge throughout, and the third reel has a very heavy squiggly line to the left side for the first 6m 35s 15f. On overall balance, it's still a better watch than the old print. In comparison to the retail Blu-Ray, the 35mm source print looses only 16s 10fr over 24 splices (with eight in the first 90secs) including each of the four reels' heads & tails. In comparison, the old German print was censored by 3mins. This grade was done in Resolve, using Premiere only for a couple of final tweaks & encoding. The restoration was a fair job as this feature is a real grading patchwork. In Resolve alone, the film was split in to 319 sections for individual adjustment, plus further tweaks in Premiere. The colour/saturation was very roughly the same as the Blu-Ray, although some scenes & shots look brighter and some darker in the Blu-Ray. The 35mm is more neutral towards blue, whereas the Blu-Ray really pushes the blues and greens in places. I did look at using the old German print to create a composite version and patching some damage in the US print, but given the drop in quality, I didn't think it was worth doing.

The print has an open-matte 1.18:1 aspect ratio, which shows more on every side of the frame over the retail Blu-Ray version. The Blu-Ray's cropping is virtually static throughout. In open-matte, a number of shots have post-production elements overlaid which don't cover the full height of the frame. The flying Deadite at the end is a good example; in the full open matte/frame shots, the animation is missing from the top & bottom. There are also a handful of shots were dolly tracks and boom mikes can be seen at the top & bottom too. Any white matte boxes visible around effects shots have been masked out to black. I decided to replace the 35mm print's English optical audio with the PCM mono track from the 1997 US Elite Entertainment SE Laserdisc. This was due to an issue with the alignment of the audio head on the scanner introducing a buzzing on the digital track back when it was originally scanned in Feb '24. Normally there would be a backup option; an experimental program called AEO-Light which can read the already-scanned optical audio from each frame, into a sound file, but very occasionally the results have a subtle echo. I've seen this happen before a couple of prints with a red optical sound strip, such as this feature. It's an irritating issue which I should have carefully checked & picked up on back when it was scanned and could be easily re-scanned, but there you go. Lesson learned. I also added a little static noise across the whole audio, as well as heavier static & 'pops' at reel changes to make the A/V a better match. One commentary track has been synced to this feature; the 2000 R1 US Anchor Bay DVD commentary featuring Bruce Campbell, Sam Raimi, Scott Spiegel & Greg Nicotero This feature is presented as a pretend UK projection, with UK 80's Odeon Cinemas 'First Choice' V2 snipes, adverts, and 35mm trailer scans for A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984), Re-Animator (1985), The Fly (1986), Evil Dead II (1987), Hellraiser (1987), & Braindead (1992), all in 4/5K.

Army Of Darkness was scanned in 5K from an American uncut open-matte 35mm print. The print was virtually unfaded and in excellent condition. In comparison to the retail Blu-Ray, the 35mm source print is virtually complete, loosing only 1 second over 6 splices, including each of the five reels' heads & tails. The source print was fully open matte, although some odd effects shots are hard matted here and there.

The framing here is quite a bit wider in comparison to the standard retail Blu-Ray, giving more picture on all sides, especially the top & bottom. The cropping is virtually identical across the Blu-Ray. The 35mm colour restoration was a huge amount of work. Being a lower budget production which combined location, on-set, special effects, composited, Introvision, matted footage, and later re-shoots, the original grading & colour-timing can cycle from shot to shot in places, requiring some shot-by-shot grading to achieve a constant grading. The retail Blu-Ray is quite a bit brighter than the 35mm scan, and the Blu-Ray sends towards greens, whereas the 35mm print tends towards blues. The audio here is stereo, taken from the 35mm optical strip.

Like the previous features, I did look at adding the 2000 R1 US Anchor Bay DVD commentary (featuring Bruce Campbell, Sam Raimi, & Ivan Raimi) to this release. Unfortunately it's synced to the Director's Cut, and re-syncing it to this version with a different edit and much shorter running time would be a huge challenge. This feature is presented as a pretend UK projection, with UK 80's CIC West End Theatres snipes, adverts, and 35mm trailer scans for Night Of The Living Dead (1990), The People Under The Stairs (1991), F13th Pt9 - Jason Goes To Hell (1993), Army Of Darkness (1992), Dusk Till Dawn (1996), & Event Horizon (1997), all in 4/5K.

The Evil Dead's prototype Within The Woods, has a special place in many Evil Dead fans' hearts. Every bootleg copy I know of, comes from the same ultimate source tape. The story goes that back in the late 1990's, Tom Sullivan lent his shorts compilation tape to Scott Spiegel. Scott was having a party and showed it to some friends, but his VCR chewed-up the tape. Tom's damaged tape had three break-ups; over the opening titles at the beginning, when Bruce is found dead in the woods, and when Ellen is searching for a weapon to attack possessed Bruce after coming out of the cellar. Every known bootleg version out there regardless of quality is from that ultimate source tape and has those three break-ups, including the version presented here. To date, there have been three Evil Dead fans & collectors I've come in to contact with, as owners of noteworthy VHS compilation tapes either in terms of high quality or rare inclusions. Of the total five source tapes they collectively own, three came directly from The Evil Dead cast/crewmembers, so are as high a generation bootleg as was possible to track down. Each tape has been loaned and transferred personally at least twice over the years, with the highest quality setup I had at the time. All five tapes were transferred together in February 2022 for the creation of my 2022 Evil Dead Shorts & Trailers Blu-Ray Set. Below you can see comparison screenshots showing the raw VHS capture, and the final processed & restored version you can watch on this Blu-Ray set. The transfer was done with my latest 2022 capture setup; JVC HR-S7900U NTSC VCR to DataVideo TBC-1000 Time Base Corrector to ATI TV Wonder 600 USB all via S-Video. The VCR was set to EDIT mode, which removes all smoothing filters applied by the VCR itself. That does give quite a grainy image, which then has noise reduction applied once captured, using the excellent ABSoft Neat Video filter in Adobe Premiere, along with the Digital Anarchy Samurai Sharpen filter just to sharpen up the details, along with colour & levels correction. That workflow combined with a top notch quality tape can give results approaching S-VHS or BetaCam transfers. While this tape wasn't exactly top notch quality, the result was still a real improvement, and certainly the best quality bootleg version currently out there.

This is 3h 25m 32s of The Evil Dead raw film footage, transferred in 2018 from a set of nine NTSC BetaCamSP tapes. This set of source tapes were created at some point in the late 90's. In April 2016, president of Elite Entertainment Vini Bancalari sold a number of Evil Dead items to UK Evil Dead collector Michael Witchy, which included these BetaCam SP tapes. In September 2018, I captured those tapes, and this footage was encoded directly from those unedited capture files; newly re-graded for this 2026 release. It plays here as one long video with chapter points. Each raw footage tape ranged from 15-27mins in length, probably containing the contents of one or two 16mm/35mm film reels each; accounting for the short length. While the majority of the footage is simply alternate and longer takes of footage used in the film itself which many will recognize, there are some interesting segments too, including; failed & additional gore effects shots, possessed Linda floating outside the cabin using the 'Ellie-vator' rig, additional meltdown-sequence shots, further cellar 'blood-flood' shots including a bleeding painting, slow motion film tests, and seemingly endless footage of Ellen trapped under that cellar door!

This primarily seems to be a random assembly of alternate and longer shots that specifically aren't in the film. To clarify, there are a number of shots where there is a gap/jump at a certain moment, such as the light bulb exploding in the cellar, the actual explosion is missing in one take, same for one of the takes chopping up Shelly's leg for example, because what was in that gap was cut into the in the film, leaving a blank space in this raw footage.

Six of the nine tapes have no audio. While much of the shooting was indeed done without sound, there are some shots where the clapper board is visible with a sound number, so sound would have been recorded at the time, it's just missing on these tapes. This set was never meant for the public to see in its entirety, so it probably never mattered to anyone involved. It was from these nine tapes (tapes one, two & three mostly) that the twenty-minute 'Behind The Scenes Footage & Outtakes' featurette on the 1999 US R1 Elite Entertainment Special Edition DVD was edited together. This is entirely different to the The Evil Dead: Treasures From The Cutting Room Floor raw footage featurette on the 2007 US R1 Anchor Bay Entertainment 3-disc Ultimate Edition DVD.

As mentioned in Bruce Campbell's book If Chins Could Kill, there exists a TV version of Evil Dead II with the subtitle; "Severely Edited For Television". While never screened in the US, it was shown on Mexican television throughout the 1990s, under the title El Despertar Del Diablo: Part 2. It was dubbed into Latin American Spanish, with many new shots and whole scenes replacing some of the more violent moments in the theatrical version. It was thought to be a myth until a copy turned up in sections on YouTube in 2009. Between various footage removed and alternate footage added in, there is 16m 10s of new material here. Among other footage; there's more of Ash & Linda embracing & dancing, Ash burning the book, Ash driving to the bridge, eating cereal & choking, Ash dreaming, and flipping out in the workshed having killed Linda, possessed Ash in the forest eating a squirrel, more shots of Ash in the cellar, and more images flash as Ash travels back in time. For a detailed write up on this version, see this page In August 2016, a friend in the US got in touch to say she was in contact with a fan in Mexico; Rogelio Matamoros, who had a VHS to DVD transfer of the TV version, recorded from Mexican TV during the 90's. She got a DVD-R copy from him passed a copy on to me. I used this along with the theatrical open-matte version from the 2000 R1 US Anchor Bay DVD to create a composite version, using the DVD for the main portion of the film, editing in the VHS version where needed, to create the longest possible composite version.

Even though the DVD is lower quality than various newer Blu-Ray transfers, I went with this as it's the only open-matte version released on either DVD or Blu-Ray to date, and edits together perfectly in terms of framing/frame-size with the 4:3 TV version (rather than switching back & fourth between full-frame and widescreen, or cropping the TV version into widescreen). I also used the theatrical mono audio track from the 1997 US Elite Entertainment SE Laserdisc (EE3845REG). The mono track phased in and out of sync with the DVD transfer, so fairly extensive audio editing was required to achieve A/V sync.

The untouched TV version ran at 1h 30m 39s, and the 2000 R1 US Anchor Bay DVD ran at 1h 24m 18s. As some of the footage from the theatrical version was duplicated using alternate takes in the TV version, 2m 11s of footage was edited out of the theatrical version, and every last frame of of alternate takes & additional footage running at 16m 10s from the TV version was edited in. That gave a final composite running time of 1h 37m 18s, which is 13m 01s longer than the standard theatrical version, with 16m 10s of new footage. Some little new sections do play in Spanish language (where there was no English audio available), but the vast majority of the composite version plays in its original English. This is virtually the same composite edit used in my 2016 Book Of The Dead II DVD, although UK fan Garrett Gilchrist did a fantastic restoring the somewhat noisy and partially jumpy VHS transfer to greatly improve the overall picture quality. You can see a full list of all the TV version footage added into the standard theatrical version, to create the composite version. Just to explain the below terms; a 'repeated shot' is one which seems to have been borrowed from elsewhere to use as a cutaway from something violent or to pad out the running time. 'further shots' are new shots building on an existing sequence, and 'extended shots' are extended versions of shots already in the Theatrical version. An 'alternate sequence' uses alternate shots from the Theatrical version but showing the same action, and a 'new sequence' is an entirely new sequence. The timecode listed references the composite version's running time.

00:01:05:07 to 00:02:23:09 - Replaced opening credits
00:03:33:14 to 00:03:33:14 - New sequence; Ash & Linda embracing & dancing
00:07:30:15 to 00:07:33:10 - Repeated shot; trees outside
00:07:39:07 to 00:07:44:00 - Repeated shot; trees outside
00:08:42:23 to 00:10:28:01 - New sequence; Ash returns to cabin, burns book, and cries for Linda
00:11:04:10 to 00:11:14:17 - Further shots of Ash flying through the trees
00:14:43:25 to 00:15:19:29 - New sequence; Ash driving to the bridge, eating cereal & choking
00:18:13:21 to 00:18:16:21 - Repeated shot; wall clock
00:19:44:14 to 00:20:13:05 - New sequence; force POV, Ash dreaming and shots looking round the cabin
00:21:42:10 to 00:21:47:03 - Further shot of piano playing itself
00:21:51:12 to 00:22:00:02 - Further shots of Ash's reaction, and steam coming out of piano
00:24:01:24 to 00:24:02:20 - Repeated shot; Ash's POV through the window
00:26:01:16 to 00:26:07:07 - Repeated shot; force POV shot
00:26:55:01 to 00:26:56:29 - Further shot of possessed Linda's head
00:27:28:22 to 00:27:30:28 - Further shot of workshed interior
00:27:34:11 to 00:28:20:06 - New sequence; Ash flips out in the workshed having killed Linda
00:28:45:17 to 00:30:21:09 - Alternate sequence; Ash re-enters cabin, looks round, gets gun and goes to chair
00:30:25:05 to 00:30:28:09 - Alternate Ash reaction shot
00:30:44:25 to 00:30:53:27 - Alternate Ash reaction shot, and rocking chair
00:37:36:01 to 00:37:41:12 - Repeated shot; cabin from hillside
00:39:18:23 to 00:39:20:25 - Repeated shot; mounted deer head on wall
00:42:09:01 to 00:42:22:21 - Further shots of items laughing in the cabin & Ash's reactions
00:42:47:11 to 00:42:50:15 - Further shot of items laughing in the cabin
00:42:52:18 to 00:43:12:05 - Further shots of items laughing in the cabin & Ash's reactions
00:50:10:03 to 00:50:31:20 - Further shot of Henrietta's attack aftermath
00:53:14:24 to 00:53:20:25 - Further shot of Jake's reaction to Evil Ed
00:54:36:24 to 00:54:39:18 - Repeated shot; dark sky with moon
00:54:43:14 to 00:54:46:21 - Repeated shot; trees outside
00:57:57:27 to 00:58:46:12 - Alternate & further shots, Ash & Annie look round side room
01:01:07:16 to 01:01:07:16 - Further shots of Bobby Jo running through forest
01:02:22:19 to 01:02:35:00 - Further shot of Bobby Jo being dragged through forest
01:04:52:04 to 01:05:00:02 - Further shots of Ash, Annie & Jake's conversation
01:07:59:26 to 01:08:04:21 - Further shot of Jake hitting the tree
01:09:35:10 to 01:10:22:25 - New sequence; Annie looks round cabin rear, then outside seeing Ash
01:10:37:29 to 01:10:38:18 - Further quick shot of Annie stabbing Jake
01:11:28:20 to 01:11:36:26 - Further shots of Ash pounding on door while Annie screams
01:12:29:09 to 01:12:33:14 - New shot; possessed Ash in the forest eating a squirrel
01:13:57:12 to 01:14:07:10 - Further shot of Annie screaming with Jake's blood on hands
01:14:54:03 to 01:15:24:26 - New sequence; possessed Ash remembers dancing with Linda
01:19:17:01 to 01:20:34:13 - Further shots looking round the first cellar room
01:29:25:07 to 01:29:28:07 - Further shot of Ash fighting Rotten Apple Head
01:30:59:14 to 01:31:13:26 - New sequence; images flash as Ash travels back in time
01:31:22:09 to 01:31:54:13 - New sequence; more images flash as Ash travels back in time
01:33:32:10 to 01:34:01:11 - Extended shot, pullback on Ash freezes with title

While this is presented here in standard definition, and the Mexican sections are in VHS quality, it's unlikely that this will ever see a better release, unless someone from Mexico happens to have a higher quality VHS transfer. That aside, this is still a rare curio from Evil Dead II's history.

This is all 8h 32m 44s of Greg Nicotero's 1986 Evil Dead II effects & behind the scenes VHS camcorder footage on one disc. Greg's captured much of the production, but only a small amount of this has ever been publicly released. The footage begins with the prep work in California, moulding the various cast members and prototyping many of the later make-up & effects, then runs through the main shoot & re-shoots, along with skits and hi-jinx shot by the make-up effects and wider crew. Highlights include Henrietta in her rocking chair becoming possessed, Linda's snake tongue, Ash's face reverting from deadite to normal, and Chop-top Ed, along with many unseen behind the scenes moments. On October 12, 2016, president of Elite Entertainment Vini Bancalari offered a few items for sale on the 'Evil Dead Collector's Initiative' Facebook group, which included six Fuji 90min BetaCamSP tapes, labelled as 'Elite, Evil Dead II, Behind The Scenes Bump UPS, 08/21/97'. On the possibility that these set of six tapes may be unedited transfers of Greg's footage used in the creation of the Behind The Screams featurette on the 1997 Evil Dead II Elite laserdisc (catalogue number: EE3845REG), a French fan bought the set.

They were transferred in October 2016, and did indeed turn out to be Greg's camcorder footage. Upon viewing, it becomes obvious why it would be impossible for any DVD producer to release anything but a carefully edited 'highlights' package. Over the running time, the amount of people seen on screen (from the cast & crew, to family members, visitors and passers-by) is huge. Identifying, tracking down and obtaining clearance for an official release from every one of them, would be impossible. Plus you have all the copyrighted workshop radio background music, off-the-cuff remarks, swearing, impressions, in-jokes and other assorted unsavory material which some may not be keen on having out there all these years later.

This disc was encoded directly from the unedited capture files, and plays here as one long video with chapter points. Tape one runs at 1h 32m 15s, two 1h 24m 05s, three 1h 30m 06s, four 1h 33m 53s, five 1h 31m 33s and Tape six 1h 02m 33s, giving a total of 8h 35m 12s of footage. Tape one is entirely workshop & prep footage in California, as is the first 38m of tape two, and the first 25m of tape three. The remainder of the running time in tapes two, three, four, five & six is footage shot entirely in North Carolina. While on the whole, the majority of the footage seems to play in chronological order, some sections do chop and change, while other short sections are repeated, mainly the California prep footage on tape one. It's entirely possible that Greg shot the footage across a fair few tapes, and swapped between them during the shoot, so some of the footage plays out of sequence when each tape is watched start-to-finish, and while they were being dubbed from the camcorder onto VHS at the time, some little sections were accidentally repeated.

I had held back from releasing this; hoping to use it as a super-special rare item I could use to obtain equally rare Evil Dead items in trade. It's been ten years since it was transferred, so it makes sense just to get it out there.

This set contains just about everything from my previous Evil Dead related DVD/Blu-Ray sets; The Evil Dead - The Treasures Collection DVD (2008), Book Of The Dead DVD (2012), Book Of The Dead II DVD (2016) (except Attack Of The Helping Hand & Torro, Torro, Torro, available officially through Super8Shorts.com), Book Of The Dead Raw Footage DVD (2018), Evil Dead - The Rare Collection Blu-Ray Box-Set (2018) (except any unrelated Super-8 Shorts), and the Within The Woods Film Can DVD (2019). Below you can read detailed write-ups of all the additional/extras inclusions across the set, which are not covered in the above sections. Another The Evil Dead Review (1983 - 1m 01s)
This is a short unidentified US TV movie review, which was personally transferred in 2022, from VHS tapes borrowed from US fan Cliff/Demonovation. It starts and ends abruptly, as it did on the original source tape. Belgium News Interview with Sam, Ted, & Tom (1982 - 4m 17s)
This is an unbroadcast short TV interview with Sam Raimi, Ted Raimi & Tom Sullivan, recorded on September 2, 1982 for the Le Carrousel aux Images program broadcast by RTBF; the state broadcaster of the French-speaking part of Belgium, during the production team's visit to France to promote The Evil Dead. It's presented here AI upscaled from the INA online archive. Book Of The Dead Trailer (1980 - 3m 36s)
This is a four minute trailer narrated by John Cameron created late in 1980, from the rough cut of the then titled Book Of The Dead. It was produced in order to raise more funding mid-production. As it was edited from a 97 minute rough cut, rather than the final 85 minute theatrical version, some shots run longer, and there are snippets of footage you'll not see in the final movie. This version was personally transferred in 2022, from VHS tapes borrowed from US fan Kevin/DeusExMcachina. While the quality is quite poor, this is still the best quality bootleg version currently available. The Evil Dead - Book Of The Dead Revisions Comparison (1985 - 1m 24s)
The Evil Dead, was originally titled Book Of The Dead. This version isn't generally available, save some rare exceptions. There were four releases; the 1984 Greek 1st issue 'Diamond' label PAL VHS, then the later 1985 Greek 'Video Standard' label PAL VHS, and also the 1982 Mexican 1st issue 'Videomax' label NTSC VHS and then the 1995 Mexican re-release (all English language with local subtitles). The movie itself plays identically to the theatrical version, with four minor differences; the movie title, an alternate sunrise shot at the end just before Ash walks out of the cabin, Ash's scream resonates for a few seconds with a black screen before the end credits roll, and the text on the last page of the end credits. This sequence transferred from the 1985 Greek VHS, shows these 4 differences, in comparison to the US theatrical version. At the Movies with Siskel and Ebert (1983 - 2m 32s)
This was a US movie review show hosted by Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert, broadcast circa April 1983. It was personally transferred in 2022, from VHS tapes borrowed from US fan Cliff/Demonovation. Movie Mania (1983 - 22m 56s)
Movie Mania was a New York/Manhattan Cable Public Access TV show hosted by film historian Ed Hulse. This first episode of the third season was shown around April 22, of 1983, the week following The Evil Dead's New York release. It features an interview with Sam and Bruce talking about the production. This is an AI up-scale from a long-deleted YouTube video. PM Magazine Detroit (1981 - 7m 29s)
PM/Evening Magazine was a US television series in a news & entertainment format. It was syndicated to stations throughout the United States. In most areas it was broadcast from the late 1970s into the late 1980s. In Detroit this was carried by WJBK as PM Magazine Detroit & PM Detroit. Circa mid-1982, the production filmed a piece on the local up and coming 'Renaissance Pictures' team; Sam, Rob & Bruce, shot shortly after their return from Cannes, but while they were still looking for a US distributor. It also includes footage from the October 1981 Book Of The Dead premiere. Although widely available in a truncated version on various bootleg VHS & DVDs, this is the full 7 minute & 28 second segment transferred in 2022, from VHS tapes borrowed from US fan Cliff/Demonovation. The Fast Track (1983 - 26m 36s)
This was a local Detroit show called 'The Fast Track' presented by Cynthia Pancalla. This episode was shown around May 6, 1983; three weeks after The Evil Dead had opened in the New York area, and around the same time as the movie's Detroit Metro area release. It features interviews with Bruce & Rob talking about the production. This is an AI up-scale from an existing YouTube video. Tom Sullivan Interview (1983 - 5m 52s)
Creature Features was the generic title for a genre of horror TV format shows broadcast on local US television stations throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, sandwiched with comment & interviews. In the San Francisco Bay Area, this ran on KTVU Channel 2 from 1971 to 1984, hosted first by Bob Wilkins, and later by John Stanley, who took over in 1979. Around the same time as the US theatrical release of The Evil Dead, Tom Sullivan moved to San Francisco for a time. Circa 1983, he was interviewed by John Stanley, discussing the film and showing a number of his props over two segments totalling six minutes. Here, you can see both sections transferred personally in 2022, from VHS tapes borrowed from US fan Cliff/Demonovation. Bruce Campbell & ED1 Live (2021 - 106m 13s)
This was a worldwide virtual viewing event, broadcast live online on January 23, 2021, in which Bruce gives a live on-screen commentary to The Evil Dead. He shares memories, stories, and anecdotes from the film, as well as answering questions from viewers. Being a live event, Bruce's voice gets drowned out a little in loud sections, but this is how it was broadcast. The copy presented here was captured and shared on a private BitTorrent site shortly after broadcast. It's Murder! Super-8 Short (1978 - 70m 09s)
This is a broad comedy with an intricate plot and lots of characters. Scotty Spiegel plays a detective, investigating the death of a father, and the whereabouts of his will. Both Jane Bradley (Cheryl Guttridge), and Uncle Jasper (Sam Raimi), try to kill the detective at every opportunity to stop the will being found, so they can inherit their father's estate, while Milton (Richard Smith), the son and rightful air, assists the detective. A grand car chase ensues, and good finally triumphs, more or less. Made in 1978, this 68 minute Super-8 feature is a broad Hitchcock-esque slapstick comedy directed by Sam, with a large cast, death defying stunts, even a car chase! While a commercial failure, one scare moment always played well, and gave the group their first glimpse of the power of the horror genre. You can see the seeds of The Evil Dead in some of the gags & set-pieces. The version presented here, has been up-scaled from an MPEG-1 25P PAL (352 x 288) VCD, picked up by US fan Sean King at a New York comic fair around 2006. Clockwork Super-8 Short (1979 - 7m 14s)
The strong reaction from the audience to the scares in It's Murder! prompted Sam to write a short film called Clockwork in early 1979, which was made as part of his MSU film course. It's a short, effective suspense piece about a woman (Cheryl Guttridge) who suspects that she's not alone in her home. Outside in the snow, a figure (Scotty Spiegel) watches. As she goes to bed, he enters the house waking her up. After playing for suspense, he attacks her in a bleak ending. Made in 1978, this 7 minute short was Sam Raimi's first foray into all out horror film making. It was made only a few months before Within The Woods, but this was a far smaller production than It's Murder!. While primarily preceded by slapstick comedy films, it served to illustrate that horror was commercially viable option. It's also worth mentioning that Tom Sullivan created the opening titles. Clockwork is very rare in terms of offline/physical trading between fans. The version presented here has been up-scaled from the best quality source available; an MPEG-1 25P PAL (352 x 288) VCD, picked up by US fan Sean King a New York comic fair around 2006. The Evil Dead & Evil Dead II: A Location Odyssey' (2012 - 51m 05s)
This is personally shot 2012 locations camcorder footage, presented here in its edited form, running at 51 minutes. it's basically what's shown on BookOfTheDead.ws with a few extra minutes. The locations covered include The Evil Dead's Cabin site, Bluff Road Bridge, Clinch River Road/Riverside Road, & Old Highway 25E all around Morristown Tennessee, and Evil Dead II's Cabin, Production House, Bonsal Ballast Pits, J. R. Faison Junior High School, & Anson County Airport in North Carolina. Evil Dead II Talent Show Camcorder Footage (1986 - 65m 53s)
This is 1h 5m 53s of camcorder footage covering the Evil Dead II wrap talent show & dinner afterwards. Among other entrants; Sam & Bruce sang the Baby Moses and the Thrillers greatest hit; Eight Mile Line, with Greg Nicotero on guitar. This seems to have been shot by Vern Hyde and his effects crew. It was bought as a DVD-R, on eBay from a US seller in Georgia, in 2011. That disc also contained 43m 20s of on-set footage from Darkman. The seller said he got it from the "effects coordinator on the films"; which was presumably Vern or one of his crew. Vern Hyde's Evil Dead II Behind The Scenes Camcorder Footage (1986 - 72m 00s)
Not to be confused with Greg' Nicotero's footage, this seems to be transferred from tapes shot by Vern Hyde and his effects crew, which leans towards more general on set footage, rather than special effects. It was originally copied from a Behind The Scenes Collection DVD running at 72m 00s, obtained from The Asylum Of Oblivion bootleg DVD website in 2008. There is also a second shorter section obtained from a collector online. Evil Dead II Partial Workprint (1987 - 34m 17s)
This is an incomplete workprint of Evil Dead II, consisting of the first twenty and last ten minutes of the film. It features temp music, original production audio (pre-ADR) and a small selection of short deleted scenes. This is a composite of two transfers; one longer but lower quality, and a second higher quality but truncated transfer. The quality is generally quite poor, although it's not as bad as some other transfers out there. It's mostly made up of a 1:1 copy from a workprint DVD obtained from The Asylum Of Oblivion bootleg website in 2008. This Is Horror, Sam Raimi Excerpt (1990 - 10m 02s)
This interview with Sam was filmed for the syndicated TV series Stephen King's 'This Is Horror (aka World Of Horror or Shadow Theatre). It's taken from the Nordic DVD; the only DVD release anywhere in the world, and features burnt-in Dutch subtitles. It was traded via UK fan James/DJSmokingJam in 2008. Bruce Campbell & ED2 Live (2021 - 125m 00s)
This was a US-only virtual viewing event, broadcast live online on April 24, 2021, in which Bruce gives a live on-screen commentary to Evil Dead II. He shares memories, stories, and anecdotes from the film, as well as answering questions from viewers. Being a live event, Bruce's voice gets drowned out a little in loud sections, but this is how it was broadcast. The copy presented here was captured and shared on a private BitTorrent site shortly after broadcast. The Incredibly Strange Film Show - Series 1, Episode 5 (1988 - 39m 47s)
This was a programme profiling offbeat directors hosted by Jonathan Ross, which ran for two series over 1988 to 1989 on UK TV Channel 4. Episode 5 of Series 1 was first broadcast on the 2nd of September 1988, and featured Sam, Rob, Bruce, & Scotty Spiegel. It covered their early Super-8 days, to Within The Woods, The Evil Dead, Crimewave and Evil Dead II, and up to Night Crew. Anchor Bay included this specific episode on the bonus disc of their 2003 UK Evil Dead Trilogy Box-set R2 DVD, but likely at Sam's request, all the Super-8 short clips, along with the footage from Crimewave was omitted, while some of the missing sections were replaced with alternate material (38m 38s as broadcast, edited down to 34m 09s for DVD). This is a VHS transfer of the original uncut 1988 TV airing, transferred in 2024 by myself. Channel 4's Censored Weekend Evil Dead II Intro (1999 - 2m 26s)
Evil Dead II was shown uncut on UK TV Channel 4 on February 20th, 1999 as part of their Censored Weekend. Presented here is Mark Kermode's introduction, giving a brief history of the movie's UK censorship problems. This was added from a torrent uploaded to private tracker Cinemageddon.net in 2011 by user Siccoyote. Evil Dead II Palace UK TV Spot - Longer & Shorter Versions (1987 - 0m 41s)
Featured on the 2003 UK Anchor Bay Evil Dead Trilogy 4-Disc R2 DVD Box Set, these Evil Dead II UK national TV spots were edited from the Dead Good Marketing featurette on disc 4, into a standalone video. There are two slightly different edits shown; longer and shorter versions. They were both shot in an old cinema on Wardour Street while Sam was in the UK promoting Evil Dead II. In Review, Sam Raimi (1986 - 24m 29s)
This interview by Gregg Goldstein with Sam Raimi, was broadcast on the New York cable TV programme In Review in early 1987 during the promotion of Evil Dead II. It's a 1:1 copy from an Evil Dead II workprint DVD obtained from Stumpy Discs bootleg website in 2007. The ending is truncated here, as it was on the original source disc. In the Spotlight - Scene 2 (1989 - 49m 24s)
This was a local Ohio show broadcast on the student-run volunteer television WHBS in 1989. Here, two high school students'; Kyle Pierson & John Horton, interview Tom Sullivan about his work on The Evil Dead & Evil Dead II, showcasing many of the props he created. This is an AI up-scale from an existing YouTube video. Nightmare Theater (1987 - 29m 53s)
This was a US show hosted by Mike Stanley broadcast mid 1987, following the March theatrical release of Evil Dead II. It features an extensive interview with Denise Bixler (Linda), as well as covering her earlier career. This is an AI up-scale from a long-deleted YouTube video. Army Of Darkness - Behind The Scenes Hi-8 Camcorder Footage (1991 - 25m 30s)
This was footage kindly provided by Flash Film Works in March 2018, labeled as "Footage from the production". Flash Film Works was founded in 1993 by William Mesa; the Visual FX Director for Army Of Darkness in 1991 while at Introvision International. It includes video shot on location outside the Medieval castle, crew working on a number of the film's scale models, and film shot during the Introvision process (this section has no sound). Army Of Darkness - Close-Up UK Documentary (1991 - 28m 53s)
This was a short documentary shown on the UK TV channel Sky Movies circa 1995, with a SkyOne Hercules TV show preview following. This was transferred in 2022, from a VHS tape kindly loaned by UK fan John Shelton.

The artwork & menus for this release drew from a few of my previous DVD projects. The double-sided/reversible cover was duplex laser-printed. The obvious source on which to draw, were the various artworks by Graham Humphreys. The Evil Dead's side was adapted from Graham's base artwork for the 1990 Palace Pictures UK VHS re-release, much like my 2012 Book Of The Dead DVD. For the Evil Dead II side, I toyed with his UK quad poster artwork to see what might be possible, but felt it had been used on so many official & unofficial releases, I decided to take things in a completely different direction. I always liked the photocopied hand-drawn artwork & layout of 90s UK horror fanzine; Killing Moon (created by Alex J. Low), so borrowing from issue 2's front cover (drawn by Ross Collins), I produced a black & white poor-quality-photocopy effect cover. This involved creating an initial 'clean' version of the artwork, and overlaying a number of textures & effects to make it look like a really bad photocopy. The same basic cover artwork was used in my 2016 Book Of The Dead II DVD. Replicating the menus used on my 2012 Book Of The Dead DVD, wasn't really an option here. While the previous menus looked great, they were very restrictive in terms of changing items and adding new content. They were created for the specific content which was on those discs and didn't lend themselves to chopping & changing easily. I used the VHS-effect menus from my 2016 Book Of The Dead II DVD as a basic design template for all the discs; redesigning them in HD. The Evil Dead's disc menus used a Palace Pictures background graphic with overlaid text, and the Evil Dead II menus somewhat recycled the photocopy style cover artwork. These were then overlaid with various effects in Adobe Premiere to make them look like they'd been transferred from old VHS tapes. There was a fine line in degrading the quality to replicate the VHS 'look'. I did try properly transferring test menus to & back from real VHS tape, but the results were a little too soft making the smaller text unreadable. For the original project release, it took nearly two months from June 4, 2021 to August 8, 2021, to get to the stage of compiling each disc in Adobe Encore, watching each one, correcting any mistakes until I had the final master versions of each disc. Additions to this second revised & updated version were spread over the following months in bits & pieces up to August 2022.

Yes, each feature is presented like a real cinema showing, with 35mm/16mm theatrical trailer scans, plus cinema snipe & advert scans, playing before the main feature. The trailers will either be for other films available or upcoming, or related films I like.

These are not at all intended to be authentic replicas of each films' original cinema showing. Why? Well even if I was able to source each entry on each original showing (which would be virtually impossible), it's far more entertaining to pair up trailers of similar films, along with the most entertaining snipes & adverts. Invariably, original showings would contain trailers for terrible unrelated films, as well as irritating adverts, so this method bypasses that while still presenting a complete 35mm cinema presentation. The volume of trailers available is always far more extensive than the features, and there are a great number of films where the trailer is better than the full movie, so there's a wide range I can choose from. You can see a full list of all the trailer scans I have graded to date below; 282 so far. Around 200 of these are trailers I have rented/bought and have had scanned myself, and the remainder are scans done along-with and by others, included here with their permission. All are either US or UK trailers. Click each entry to view screenshots, and use your left & right keys to scroll through them. I have also sourced a huge collection of 35mm 'Snipes' scans; little bumpers you'd see in cinemas added before, in-between & after trailers such as "previews of coming attractions" & "our feature presentation". Alongside those, I've also collected a fair number of cinema adverts. These might be identical to TV versions of the day, while others might be cinema only, especially 'Concessions' ads; advertising items available to buy in the foyer. There were a number of different styles over the years both in the UK and US, but I've always really liked the US 'Astro Daters' 70's versions you might have seen in Grindhouse (2007), although I have an assortment of styles to replicate a (pretend) US or UK theatrical showing. You can see a full list of all the snipe & advert scans I currently have to draw from, below. Click each entry to view screenshots, and use your left & right keys to scroll through them. Every entry above, has been encoded in an open-matte, and cropped 16-9 versions; for use in scope showings. A number of the above have multiple copies (labelled Transfer Tr01, Tr02, etc..).

It costs somewhere between $700/£590 to $1100/£920 per title depending on length, and around $45/£38 per trailer, and even that is fans' mates rates. That includes the rental, scanning, and hard drive/postage or FTP upload (if available). The quality of the print, or popularity of the film doesn't come in to it. It costs the same to scan a big Hollywood film as it does an obscure title which few would be interested in, and the same to scan a pristine print as an unwatchable degraded one.

The most expensive title to release was The Exorcist (1973), costing $1244/£1032 in rental & scanning; which required the compositing of two prints to make an almost complete version. Next would be Bad Taste (1987) at $1122/£931, which was a print I bought outright in order to scan. Then going on down the list The Man Who Would Be King (1975) $883/£732, The Great Train Robbery (1978) $873/£724, The Shining (1980) $826/£685, Dawn Of The Dead - Ext Cut, 16mm (1978) $810/£672, and Fight Club (1999) $806/£668, which are all either prints I bought, or long films which cost more to scan. Certainly a far cry from taking for five months to only raise 60% of my first scan; The Evil Dead, and contemplating giving up! Time-wise; from paying the owner for rental (or buying the print), going to the scanner, then the the raw scans either arriving in the mail, or being available for download from the scanner's server, might be anything from 1-12 months depending on how busy people are. As it's all mates-rates, they tend to be slotted in when people have the spare time to do it. Restoration work on each print & assembling the final discs, might be another few weeks each, depending on how much work the scans need. Restoration only involves colour & levels correction. Many prints will have some fade which shifts the whites towards red. Older prints can look very red indeed (the below screenshots give varying examples), but even an immaculate print will need at least some work. I do not remove scratches, dust, splices, minor print damage, odd missing frames and such, as my aim is to give a true 35mm theatrical experience. You can see from the above timeline screenshots, that each print may be chopped in to tens or hundreds of sections, with each bit individually corrected to give an even viewing experience.

The biggest draw for me is the overall experience of seeing a warts & all 35mm print, over a impeccably perfect and overly sanitised restored digital version. In addition, there is sometimes a wider un-cropped picture, no modern colour correction, and the original mono or stereo audio mixes. Seeing a 35mm print projected today is fairly unusual. Even at the UK/London art-house Prince Charles Cinema, you might just as easily be watching a polished-perfect digital projection over a genuine 35mm print.

The majority of 1:85:1 movies actually use the full nearly-square 1.18:1 35mm film frame, but chop off the top & bottom of the picture to give that tighter aspect ratio. This removes around 45% of the original image on a cropped Blu-Ray release. A full frame print is referred to as an 'Open-Matte' or 'Flat' print.

Scope is different; it's generally shorthand for an anamorphic print, which usually denotes a 2.35:1 movie. While a Scope picture still takes up the whole 35mm frame, the picture is stretched and needs anamorphically squashed at 2:1 to give the correct aspect ratio. Here, you'll normally get far less additional image over a retail Blu-Ray version as it's virtually in its correct aspect ratio to begin with.

Below you can see a gallery of 35mm stills, in comparison to the framing/cropping & colour grading of the retail Blu-Ray release transfers. As you can see, the 1.85:1 transfers gain quite a bit top & bottom. the Scope 2.35:1 transfers gain far less. As the retail Blu-Rays are usually created from scans of the original 35mm/16mm camera negative (or equivalent), some of the Blu-Rays can be slightly wider than my 35mm/16mm frame. There are some drawbacks to 35mm scans, however. As mentioned above; most retail Blu-Ray releases will use a scan of a 35mm/16mm camera negative (or equivalent), rather than a scan of a theatrical 35mm print which is a generation-down copy. This means the black/darker areas have a little more fidelity on a Blu-Ray than on 35mm, and the negative will usually be in much better condition to scan from, as it's not a working projection print. Further, movies shot in 16mm and blown-up to 35mm for theatrical projection, may have a sharper picture on Blu-Ray over 35mm. That said, if you want a perfect viewing experience then you're better off with the retail Blu-Ray.

There are two reasons I didn't do 4K releases. Firstly it's a reasonable assumption that given 4K has four times the resolution of 1080p, you'd be getting a great deal more picture detail. This really isn't the case, the difference between 4K and 1080p in terms of this sort of source material is minimal. It's worth saying up front not to get me wrong, the picture quality is certainly on a par with retail Blu-Rays.

While the majority of these prints were scanned in 5K resolution on a top of the line $150K ScanStation (and most of the remainder on a 4K Cintel), once you add in factors such as the source being a vintage working 35mm print, along with grain, weave, warping, print degradation & fading, and the tiny size of each frame (a 35mm frame is 22x16mm, and 16mm is 10x8mm), there are increasingly diminishing returns as you make the picture bigger than 1080p, regardless of the bitrate. If you take these examples, you can see an actual size section of a frame from a 4K encodes at 80mb/s, alongside the same from a 1080p encode at 20mb/s (zoomed here for comparison). The difference between the two is slight at best. The 4K grain is sharper and more defined, but as far as the detail, there is little difference. Certainly not four times the resolution. Making 4K releases would also have required considerable investment in my setup; I'd need to have replaced all my Blu-Ray drives to be able write UHD discs. The BD-XL 100GB printable discs themselves would be in the region of 20x the price of 25GB BD-R discs, they would take longer to duplicate, fewer people would be able to play these over standard Blu-Ray discs, and more people would likely have playback issues.

Depending on the resolution of the equipment each scanner has; A 5K raw open-matte 4:3 35mm scan once cropped would still be larger than a 4K UHD resolution (3840 x 2160), but a 4K scan would end up slightly smaller when cropped, which would require a little upscaling and isn't ideal. Further, a Scope 2.35:1 scan in 4k would end up around 70% smaller than UHD.

5K open-matte 1.18:1 raw scan is 5120 x 3840, and would be cropped to around 3800 x 3200
5K Scope 2.35:1 raw scan is 5120 x 3840, and would be squashed/cropped to around 3800 x 1600
4K open-matte 1.18:1 raw scan is 3208 x 2200, and would be cropped to around 2400 x 2050
4K Scope 2.35:1 raw scan is 3208 x 2200, and would be squashed/cropped to around 2400 x 1025

Once you combine the above; the slight quality difference, a more limited audience, and the practical & financial issues of making 4K releases, it really wasn't worth making 4K sets for the sake of them being 4K, with little actual benefit to the viewer.

Yes, the below are a list of completed print scans, which will remain unreleased for various reasons These exist only in their raw-scanned-state and haven't yet been worked on. The raw-scan galleries you can click each entry to view, are just roughly graded & encoded from the compressed scan-preview files to give an idea how any release would look. Just to expand on the various reasons, a number were obtained as possible space fillers on one set or another and were always at the bottom of the queue, but some scans have specific issues. Jaws for instance has 289 splices with a fair bit of missing footage, plus it's in Spanish and can't really be released as-is, but could in theory be composited with another incomplete print to make a complete version. Fright Night & Re-Animator were scans done by others, which I paid 50/50 costs on so I would have the option to release if I needed to fill a space. they're not a huge favourites of mine though.

The Godfather was scanned from a faded 16mm print and even then looks very soft, so that's not a great source when a sharper 35mm print was scanned & released after I got this. To a lesser extent, the same is true of The Evil Dead 16mm scan. The Man Who Would Be King was a 35mm print I bought very cheaply simply because it was available with another print I did want, plus its a little rough & faded. Lastly, The Exorcist - 2000 Re-Release was only scanned from a Spanish print to repair the original-incomplete 1973 Exorcist scan, and I never intended to give it its own release as I much prefer the original version.

All that aside, anything listed above could in theory be worked on and released. It's just a matter of putting the few weeks work in to undertake the restoration.

While the main 35mm project has drawn to a close, if a top-want feature print becomes available to scan in the future, I'd certainly be interested. Which scans I get, was always primarily dictated by the prints available to me, and if I like a film or not. Not every film ever released, is available to be scanned. It depends on finding amenable 35mm collectors around the world and which prints they own. The below titles were always on my wants list, red titles would be priority scans; Sometimes a movie might be available to be scanned, but the quality of that print may be very poor. The Amityville Horror is a good example. A print was available to me, but it's scuffed throughout, with splices, lines and some little bits missing. The same is true of Creepshow & The Hills Have Eyes. It costs the same to rent and scan an immaculate print, as it does a trashed one, so there isn't much benefit in paying full price to scan something which might turn out to be nearly unwatchable, when you could just choose something else. You pay the money and get the scan you get, no refunds!

Why not scan the Director's cut as opposed to the Theatrical cut of a particular film?
The 'Extended/Director's cuts' of most features only usually exist on home-media, unless they have been given a proper 35mm cinema re-release in the last 30-ish years; Blade Runner: Final Cut, The Exorcist: Director's Cut & Apocalypse Now Redux are a few high profile 35mm re-release examples. Whereas the Aliens Extended cut, and Robocop unrated/uncut only ever existed on home-media. Production houses releasing official media can access original film elements for scanning. I only have access to standard 35mm theatrical release prints.


Showing a feature in open-matte, surely that would not be what the director intended?
Yes, that's entirely correct. If you want to watch a feature with the directors exact vision; the levels, grading, aspect ratio and such, then buy the Blu-Ray/4K. my scans are intended more for entertainment. Chances are if you're reading this, you already know the films inside out. You have the Blu-Ray on a shelf nearby, the 4K is in your bookmarks to buy, your DVD is in storage somewhere, and have long thrown away the old VHS, but kept the Laserdisc as you liked the cover!


What does Open-Matte, Matted, Flat and Scope mean?
All 35mm film frame cells are the same size, with a 1.18:1 aspect ratio. What is inside that cell can be full, cropped or stretched, depending if the print is Flat or Scope.

Flat means the film is projected as-is and usually denotes a film projected at a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, although this can vary with older films. A Flat print can be fully open matte so you can see picture in the full 1.18:1 frame, or have the top can bottom of the frame matted/blacked off all the way down to 1.85:1, plus some features can have varying aspect ratios combining on-set footage with special effects shots and such. How much picture you see can be down to various things such as the shooting film stock, how a feature was shot, and how the film was processed. A retail Blu-Ray will usually have the 1.18:1 frame cropped down to the original projected aspect ratio (probably 1.85:1), chopping off the top and bottom.

A Scope print needs to be squashed anamorphically via a special lens at a 2:1 ratio to display correctly and pretty much always denotes a feature in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The display area of a Scope 35mm print and a retail Blu-Ray of the same, will usually be fairly close.


What causes red-fade or red flaring?
35mm prints can fade for a number of reasons, but usually longer term storage issues involving a combination of age, heat and sunlight are the most common. All colours usually fade towards the red end of the spectrum, although this can vary. Some 35mm film stock such as AFGA can fade to purple for instance. The original colours can be graded back, but it's easy to loose the fine subtleties in the colours which are supposed to be variously red, so you might have to choose between grading the reds to a face, or something red in the background, meaning one can look askew; usually either under or over saturated, or pushed slightly towards yellow or purple. As mis-graded faces tend to stand a mile over everything else, that's what I tend to try and grade accurately in each shot/scene, and work from there.

Flaring fade, where the fade appears and disappears though a reel, implies improper storage. That can be leaving the film cans against an heat source like a heating pipe or in direct sunlight, which would heat and fade the reels unevenly and give flaring red-fade. Given its random appearance, it's hard to do much about it, unless doing individual masking on a frame-by-frame restoration, which is very time consuming, and hard to get anything that looks decent.


What are splices?
A Splice is when the 35mm film snaps while under tension during projection, and the two ends are taped/glued back together. Sometimes the two halves can be joined back up resulting in no loss of footage, but more often the jagged edges will be chopped straight before re-joining, resulting in the loss of a couple of frames at least depending on the damage, along with a skip in the motion, and a pop in the audio. A joined section can be weaker causing it to snap during subsequent projections, making the damage (and the missing footage) worse over time.


What causes scratches through a film?
This is normally down to projectors or the film reels not being kept clean. As the film is run through each projector, any dust or dirt can end up being trapped between internal parts and the film as it's pulled through, dragging scratches through the reel of film. These often appear to be either black if they are light, or bright green/blue if you have a deep scratch. Once they are there, there isn't much that can be done about it without expensive professional restoration software and a lot of work.


Why does the 35mm print look darker than the retail Blu-Ray?
A 35mm print is projected in a dark cinema, so dark scenes can be easily seen. A Blu-Ray could be watched in a bright daytime home on a smaller screen, which would make some of the 35mm's night scenes a little hard to follow, thus the Blu-Rays are often brightened to counteract that.


What's the difference between 35mm & 16mm film prints?
As a general rule, I would always opt for a 35mm scan over the same in 16mm. There are three main reasons. 16mm film is just under one-quarter the size/resolution of 35mm; 16mm at (10mm x 7.5mm) vs 35mm at (22mm x 16mm). That's very roughly analogous to DVD vs Blu-Ray resolution. Secondly given the smaller size, any defects such as scratches/dust, will be far more magnified in that smaller size. Lastly, 16mm was generally seen as a cheaper home-theatre-format. This meant that not only that much of the duplication was done on the cheap (and the quality would suffer as a result), but also less care tended to be taken over the life of the print, in comparison to more valuable 35mm theatrical prints.

While working on this project back in March 2023, I learned a very hard lesson about backing up! It's worth saying up front, that this didn't ultimately effect any of the 35mm releases. As of writing, the lost material has since been replaced with re-scans of the same 35mm prints.

Due to the massive file-sizes of raw 35mm scans (in the region of 3-5TB per film, with 5K ProRes files), backing up didn't seem financially viable early on. A 16TB Ironwolf drive cost me around £265/$310 as of March 2023, and that might only fit four features. Double that if I wanted to have a second/backup copy, so I only had one copy of each feature 35mm scan. Even then, this still filled hard drives a quite a rate, which meant opening my PC every so often and swapping out full drives for new ones, which isn't an ideal long term solution. I decided to buy a Sabrent 4-Bay USB HDD Docking Station, which I installed on March 10, 2023.

I took the three 35mm scans HDDs out of my PC and put them in the dock; two 16TB and one 20TB holding twelve scans in total, and started using it. Once I knew it was working okay, I shut everything down and re-arranged my workspace, which meant dismantling the dock. I put it back together and put the drives back (although not in the same order). With a swappable dock, it never occurred to me that the order would matter?

It did. The unit corrupted all three drives & unreadable instantly when I turned everything back on. It may have been due to the drives being in a different order, or something else I did, but whatever it was, it happened very easily within less than 24 hours of installing it under what I would consider normal use. Somewhat luckily, these were only the raw scans, not any of the project files and such, which were on a different drive.

I was left scrabbling round trying to fix what I could. Of the twelve, three scans were still downloadable on an FTP share from the scanner. Another two I had on a portable drive, and a further two I got from others I'd shared copies with. So, Straw Dogs, The Return Of The Living Dead, Maniac, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Evil Dead were completely gone. After around ten panicked days, and even with many of my 35mm scans restored, I was still back to where I started from with the same storage issues. On advice from a few others, I switched over to LTO tapes as a backup solution, which is something I've had no prior experience of. It was also a really expensive up-front cost. Around £1045/$1215 for a used HP LTO-6 Ultrium 6250 External Tape Drive (they were £2552/$2964 on Amazon new), plus another £35/$41 for a used SAS PCI card & new cable, and £225/$260 for a batch of 20 used LTO-6 2.5TB tapes (these were £37/$43 on Amazon new). The drive alone nearly cost more than my car at that time! Getting the right parts working together & getting it up and running was a bit of a game, as it's far far more finicky than a plug & play Blu-Ray drive. You need the right model card with the right type of cable to connect to a specific drive, plus you need the right drivers to go with it. Buying everything second-hand, means you have to get it all separately which is a real hassle.

Now this is all up and running, I'm only paying for additional tapes going forward. It takes the cost of backup storage from £16.56/$19.23 per TB for a 16TB HDD, down to around £4.50/$£5.23 per TB for used LTO-6 tapes. That's nearly 75% less. In addition the tapes once written & verified, should be good for 30 years. That's far longer than the expected life of a HDD, and even then you have to use a HDD every so often to keep it working, you can't just store them long term.

Each tape is billed as having 6.25TB of compressed, & 2.5TB of uncompressed storage. As Pro-Res files don't really compress, that's just 2.5TB per tape. Once you convert Kilobits/Kilobytes, that's more like 2.27TB of actual writing space per LTO-6 tape, which is good for somewhere between three-quarters-of-one up to three 35mm raw movie scans depending on resolution/size. You can get newer generation drives with more capacity, but the cost is much higher. Current generation LTO-9 drives are around the £5000-6000 mark new, with an 18TB/45TB tape around £120 each. The drives tend to hold their value when sold used, which doesn't help. Even the more expensive & larger tapes are still cheaper than using HDDs though. Now, I can backup each new scan as I get it, and once my HDDs start getting full, I can just delete the oldest project and restore it from the backup tape if needed again. It does make the backups very much of a versatility cul-de-sac, as I would need to have a working LTO-6 or LTO-7 drive to restore from LTO-6 tapes, unlike a HDD which is self-contained and can be plugged in to any PC. In addition, each backup program has its own proprietary format, so you'd need the same backup program to restore a tape, as had been used to back it up. That finicky-ness aside, it seems like a reasonable enough backup system. So far. I've written around 140 tapes, and copied back around half of those. I've yet to have any issues so far, save a couple of dodgy tapes that failed to write/verify (and were thrown away), and two tapes send from someone else who's PC had issues. Even then I was able to copy most of the material off those.

It's been a very expensive lesson, but I would certainly not have made the hugely expensive step to LTO tapes, without this event, so I guess it's not 100% bad. Everything completely lost was ultimately replaced, so it was more expensive & irritating, rather than anything catastrophic, and now and this shouldn't happen again.