Comments (0) Added info and screenshots for the Surf Video release of Per il gusto di uccidere / For the Taste of Killing (1966). Comparison reveals the Wild East disc to be much worse in image quality (screenshot from Wild East and Surf Video ) but the Italian disc suffers from more cuts and perhaps incorrect colors at some points. As usual the Wild East disc comes with only English audio track while the Surf Video has only Italian.
Italian company Medusa Home Entertainment has recently released Matalo! on DVD and the result looks very good. I was actually very surprised at the quality as I thought this kind of release might not be a possibility. I remember reading, although I’m not sure if it’s true at all, that Koch Media was going to release Matalo! at some point but they had to cancel it because good enough print wasn’t found.
I compared the Medusa disc to the older Wild East disc and have to say that the Italian disc is clearly superior in multiple ways. The only reason, and I admit it is an important one, there’s still room for the WE release is that as usual the Italian disc includes only Italian audio/subtitles. But fans might want to pick up this new disc anyways even if they can’t understand Italian (and already own another release).
Here’s one higher (1024x…) resolution image comparison which really shows what kind of difference there is. I have removed the black bars from the non-anamorphic image of the WE disc.
http://www.sundances.net/spaghetti/screenshots/wematalo.png
http://www.sundances.net/spaghetti/screenshots/medusamatalo.png
And click on the following links for
Medusa Home Entertainment & Wild East disc specs / and the rest of the screenshots
Wild East’s website has A Long Ride From Hell up as their next release. No release date is given as usual.
Theatrical version in its original aspect ratio: 1:85. English language
Interview with Mimmo Palmero aka Dick Palmer
It also seems their Kill Them All And Come Back Alone disc is finally available.
Order directly from Wild East or (pre)order from Amazon.com
It’ll probably be a while before I get my hands on it, so whenever someone manages to get the disc, I’d really appreciate some comments about the disc please. 
I uploaded screenshots and specs for the Wild East and Global Video releases of the Unholy Four (Ciakmull – L’uomo della vendetta).
Some of you probably aren’t aware of it, but when Global Video released this one with three other releases (Dead Men Don’t Make Shadows, Arizona Colt Returns and was the third one Bastard, Go and Kill?) they obviously made some sort of mistake. I do not know what exactly is the reason, but the discs are unwatchable on my player (but seem to work better with PowerDVD 7, perhaps because the differences between computer monitor and tv…). Yet apparently for some the discs work ok.
It looks ok if there’s not much movement going on, but as soon as something starts moving the image starts flickering or ghosting or whatever… If I advance frame by frame it seems like every 5th and 6th frame are almost exactly the same (the difference is barely noticeable).
The transfer of Global Video looks like a poor PAL to NTSC conversion with interlacing and some very bad looking frames with blending of several frames/fields into one, and the same can be said for the Wild East disc. Both seem to run in PAL speed yet have the framerate and resolution of NTSC. But Wild East basically works and looks fine (it’s like all their other releases… it could have been done better, but works like it is) while the Global Video doesn’t.
Continue reading 'The Unholy Four, Wild East and Global Video'»
