6.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
At the end of the Civil War, Confederate soldier Jerry Brewster is jailed for a heist engineered by his buddy Ken Seagull, who escapes with the loot and builds quite a fortune for himself. Upon his release five years later, Brewster realizes he's been double-crossed...and vows revenge! He teams up with a stranger named Getz to brawl and shoot his way through Seagull's henchmen and finally settle the score with his old partner-in-crime.
Starring: Henry Silva, Dan Duryea, Thomas Hunter, Nicoletta Machiavelli, Nando GazzoloWestern | 100% |
Foreign | 72% |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 1.5 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Carlo Lizzani's "The Hills Run Red" (1966) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber. The supplemental features on the disc include remastered vintage trailer for the film and new audio commentary by filmmaker Alex Cox. In English, with optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature. Region-A "locked".
Man for hire
Presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, The Hills Run Red arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber.
I like the master that was used to produce this release quite a lot. I don't know when it was prepared, but it is definitely not from the early days of the DVD era because it has some very particular technical characteristics that are typically present on more recent masters. One of them is the consistency of the density levels, which could be better but are still very, very good. Also, the entire film is graded very nicely, though there a few minor nuances can be expanded and some highlights managed better. The rest looks either very good or excellent. Delineation and depth, in particular, are consistently pleasing, so if you have a large TV or projector you should enjoy the technical presentation a lot. A few white specks and a couple of blemishes remain, but there are no distracting large debris, cuts, damage marks, warped or torn frames. So, while there is some room for minor cosmetic improvements, the entire film has a very attractive organic appearance. My score is 4.25/5.00. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-A or Region-Free player in order to access its content).
There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided for the main feature.
It is immediately obvious that the original audio is actually a studio dub track, which means that practically every single character in the film was overdubbed. (Henry Silva appears to be uttering his own lines, but even they have some awkward unevenness, which likely means that some work was done on them as well). So, expect to hear sporadic 'thinning' and unevenness that are very common on these types of Italian genre films. Some extremely light background hiss tries to sneak in from time to time, but there is nothing particularly distracting that could affect your viewing experience. The lossless track is good.
There is a good story behind Carlo Lizzani's spaghetti western The Hills Run Red that needs to be told. Between the 1950s and late 1970s, Lizzani had a very particular style that produced interesting commentaries regardless of the subject matter of his films. It is how he established himself in Italy and then gradually overseas. The Hills Run Red has a very strange personality and does not have such a commentary, which is enough to make me speculate that it is not the film Lizzani wanted to direct. Why did the film turn out as it did? I don't know. Lizzani was a prolific writer as well, so perhaps he did not like the screenplay that was delivered to him and simply made the best he could with it. Or it could be that his film was badly edited by its producers and Lizzani did not have a final say on it. Again, I don't know what the real story is, but there is plenty of material in the film that does not sync well, and this is very atypical for a Lizzani project. Kino Lorber's release of The Hills Run Red is sourced from a very solid recent organic remaster. RECOMMENDED, but only to seasoned spaghetti western aficionados and hopeless completists.
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