6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
The spirit of a deceased knight returns every 100 years to clean a house by graphicly murdering the women who are making the life of his descendants unbearable...
Starring: Paul Naschy, Julia Saly, Lola Gaos, Silvia Miró, Frances OndivielaHorror | 100% |
Foreign | 67% |
Period | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Spanish: LPCM 2.0
English
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 3.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Paul Naschy's "Panic Beats" (1983) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Mondo Macabro. The supplemental features on the disc include two archival interviews with the director and exclusive new audio commentary by critics Rod Barnet and Troy Guinn. In Spanish, with optional English subtitles for the main feature. Region-Free.
Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Panic Beats arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Mondo Macabro.
There are some good and bad news. I am going to separate them so that it is perfectly clear what the release gets right and what it does not.
The good: The 4K master that was prepared for this film is lovely. The visuals have very strong organic qualities and excluding a few very small blemishes and tiny flecks the entire film looks very healthy. I like the grading job as well. There are strong and stable primaries that appear convincingly balanced. The supporting nuances are healthy and just as nicely balanced. Image stability is very good. I did not see any traces of problematic digital corrections.
The bad: The encoding job is very, very disappointing. There are so many compression artifacts that in some areas it almost looks like the visuals are upscaled. You can see an example from one such area in screencapture #16, but screencapture #10 is just as bad. Needless to say, grain exposure is unconvincing, which is the reason why depth, delineation, clarity, and fluidity suffer tremendously as well. The darker footage can hide some of these problems, but there is still plenty of smearing that becomes quite distracting. All of this is very frustrating because with a proper encode this film could have looked terrific in high-definition. (Note: This is a Region-Free Blu-ray release. Therefore, you will be able to play it on your player regardless of your geographical location).
There is only one standard audio track on this Spanish: LPCM 2.0. Optional English subtitles are provided for the main feature.
The dialog is clear and stable. There are a few areas where it can sound a bit lifeless, but this is almost certainly an inherited limitation. (As I mentioned in our review, the film's biggest and most obvious weakness is the overall quality of the production). However, I also noticed some small but noticeable pops that could have been removed with digital tools. They are not distracting, but I have to mention their presence.
I could tell right away where Panic Beats was heading and found it incredibly funny. It is like a Claude Chabrol film gone totally mad, really. This is probably the reason why so many people that expected it to be a conventional horror thriller ended up disliking it. It is a small film, but I think that it works really well and enjoyed it quite a lot. Mondo Macabro's release of Panic Beats is quite frustrating. It is sourced from a lovely 4K master that should have made the film shine in high-definition, but, sadly, it is poorly encoded. If you want to have it in your collection, find a way to rent and test it first, and then consider a purchase.
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