Dellamorte Dellamore (1994)

Widely regarded as a masterpiece by director Michele Soavi, Dellamorte Dellamore is certainly very, very, good. I first saw this movie on TV in 1999 (back when it seemed that almost nobody knew about it) while channel hopping on Halloween to check out that year's crop of horror movies. Soon I stopped hopping and watched this to its conclusion. I knew I'd seen something special and couldn't wait to see the entire movie.

I call this my favourite horror movie but it's more than horror. I interpret it as an examination of life, death, love, and some of the possible combinations, or parallels, thereof. If you want to watch a horror movie that exercises your intelligence then this one is for you.

DVD comparison

Clicking on the thumbnails below will show you all four frames at full-size NTSC or PAL, scaled to adjust for anamorphic presentation, and JPEG compressed at a quality level that doesn't hurt the image but keeps it small.

Aspect ratio is widely touted to those that are only interested in the numbers, so let's see how these releases measure up by looking at the numbers and then past the numbers at what's actually on screen.

Measuring the image dimensions of a sample frame from each release shows that both the Laser Paradise and the Anchor Bay discs have an aspect ratio of 1.62, the Medusa release is 1.73, and the Vellavision is 1.80. But be careful! By themselves those numbers are too simplistic; as with any specification one has to look at what they're measuring. The Anchor Bay and Medusa releases are both anamorphic, the Laser Paradise and Vellavision discs are letterboxed. The Anchor Bay release uses less of the width of the negative than the Medusa disc. In fact, the Anchor Bay transfer looks like it may have been taken from a 1.85 source and then cropped to make the numbers look closer to the 1.66 European standard. This hasn't hurt the storytelling though.

Medusa (Italy) 2.0 Italian 2.0 English Laser Paradise (Germany) 2.0 German 2.0 English Anchor Bay (US) 5.1 English 2.0 English Vellavision (Spain) 2.0 Spanish 2.0 English One hears complaints about the silly English language title Cemetery Man — and they're correct — but it at least has a somewhat mysterious quality (just what is a cemetery man?) unlike the Spanish title. Mi Novia es un Zombie, has nothing interesting going for it, it just sounds camp. Neither title is philosophical nor conveys the tone of the movie like Dellamorte Dellamore does. Check the edge of the skull in the Vellovision disc. An edge enhancement halo is clearly visible. This is an interesting image for colour timing comparison; only the Italian and the German discs are consistent. The colour of the Medusa and Laser Paradise look natural, if slightly dark (but then it's a dark location inside the cemetery gate). The Anchor Bay transfer brightens it up but that blows out the background with direct sunlight. The Vellavision disc is both too bright and has the orange colour cast that much of the disc suffers from. Here's a wild set of differences. Just look at the sky and clouds! Interestingly, this scene on the Vellavision disc isn't overly bright, unlike the Anchor Bay transfer. The Anchor Bay transfer is brighter, which brings out shadow detail, but overexposes bright objects such as the sky and parts of bright scenes (such as Valentina's shoulder). Some mid-to-bright scenes have an edge-enhanced look to them but I didn't see any halos around extremely high-contrast areas. The colour timing of the Anchor Bay release is different and looks too yellow in many places; dark scenes tend to be bluish and bright scenes tend to be much too yellow. In the meeting with Scanarotti in the square (above) the man to Dellamorte's left is wearing a white shirt, at least it's white in the Laser Paradise and Medusa releases but it's measurably yellow in the Anchor Bay release. Same situation with Dellamorte's Volkswagen, it's no longer the white I'm used to! I didn't believe my eyes about the yellowness so I used an image editor to pick out pixel colour values and, sure enough, objects that one expects to be white (like that shirt) are close enough to being white in the R2 release but are definitely yellow in the R1 release.

You can also check out DVDBeaver's R2 Medusa and R2 Laser Paradise comparison.

Credits

The Medusa frame captures from Dellamorte Dellamore are copyright 1993 Tilde Corsi, and are from the DVD released by Medusa Video SRL.

The Laser Paradise frame captures from Dellamorte Dellamore are copyright 1993 Audifilm - Urania Film, Bibo TV & Film Productions, and are from the DVD released by Laser Paradise.

The Anchor Bay frame captures from Cemetery Man are copyright 1993 Audifilm - Urania Film, and are from the DVD released by Anchor Bay Entertainment.

The Vellavision frame captures from Mi Novia es un Zombie are copyright 1993 Audifilm - Urania Film, and are from the DVD released by Vellavision S. L.