The Man from Earth Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		2.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

The Man from Earth Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 21, 2017

Lovers of kitsch television fare may remember a short lived series called The Immortal which ran for a solitary season beginning in 1970, after having been culled from a 1969 Movie of the Week which drew respectable enough ratings to spark interest in a series. The Immortal featured Christopher George as a guy named Ben Richards who is either blessed or cursed (depending on how you look at things) with a near absolute immunity to disease and aging, something that makes his blood a thing of interest for various elderly villainous types. In a way, The Immortal played like the flip side to Run for Your Life, a somewhat longer lasting series that featured Ben Gazzara as a guy named Paul Bryan who has a terminal disease, with both series detailing the “on the road” exploits of their respective heroes, with Bryan trying to outrun fate and Richards trying to outrun whatever nefarious bad guy was chasing him to get a transfusion. The Man from Earth might be thought of as The Immortal: The Later Years, since its high concept conceit concerns a guy named John Oldman (David Lee Smith) who has in fact been around since the Cro Magnon era. Interestingly, though, The Man from Earth eschews the whole expected “immortal in danger” plot approach by having nearly the entire film play out in the confines of one room, where Oldman is saying goodbye to a coterie of university professor types after having adopted the guise of a teacher himself for the past decade or so. Oldman has learned to move on after ten years (more or less), since people start to notice he doesn’t age, and The Man from Earth unfolds as a kind of dialectical set of interchanges between Oldman and his colleagues, all of whom are scientists in one field or another, and who are naturally skeptical of what Oldman seems to be insinuating about his “real” age. As is detailed in the interesting making of featurette included on this Blu-ray as a supplement, The Man from Earth was the last piece of writing by noted scribe Jerome Bixby, a man whose name might not be overly familiar but whose work ended up being adapted memorably for shows like The Twilight Zone ("It's a Good Life") and movies like Fantastic Voyage, and who also famously penned several episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series. According to his son Emerson, Jerome intentionally wanted to shy away from having "CIA types" chasing Oldman, a la The Immortal, a plot device that Emerson states at least one potential producer wanted to add to the tale, something that in return resulted in a considerable delay to the ultimate production of the film since Emerson wanted to abide by his father's wishes for the project and keep it intentionally smaller scaled. Therefore, The Man from Earth is a kind of interesting science fiction-esque film with nary a special effects shot on display, and with absolutely none of the hyperbolic production design or other filmmaking wizardry that are regularly seen in this genre.

The Man from Earth received a previous Blu-ray release many years ago by Starz / Anchor Bay, and rather than rehashing the film's plot, I refer you to my colleague Martin Liebman's The Man from Earth Blu-ray review which contains a very thorough plot summary.

The Man from Earth Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Man from Earth is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of MVD Visual with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. A note from the producers regarding the special edition restoration is included on the back cover of this release and states the following:

Jerome Bixby's The Man from Earth was originally shot on MiniDV (digital video) in January 2006 before the proliferation of high definition filmmaking. This Special Edition contains a high definition, newly remastered version of the film approved by the filmmakers which was completed using an u-conversion process from the original 172,800 pixels per frame MiniDV camera tapes to 2,073,600 pixels per frame of Full HD. The original DV 30 Mbps 29.97 fps media was converted to a new ProRes 422 HQ 200 Mbps source at 24 fps for more cinematic motion and for more control and manipulation of the picture during an all new color correction process, with each shot meticulously noise reduced, sharpened, and detail enhanced.

Those last three attributes may cause some folks to worry, but the fact is with a digital video source like this, there are simply inherent limitation which no amount of tweaking, whether for good or bad (so to speak), can really affect all that much. I never owned the DVD or the previous Blu-ray release of this film, but the restoration demo included on the Blu-ray clearly shows an increase (if marginal) in detail levels from the DVD, with a much more noticeable uptick in brightness and palette saturation. There are still a number of pretty noticeable anomalies in this presentation, including some odd splotchiness that resembles macroblocking that occasionally shows up on things like Oldman's upper lip. There are also some fairly rough looking snippets that seem to result from the combination of the SD video source coupled with the ultimate 35mm film presentation, where some pretty bad degradation results (see screenshot 19 for one of the worst examples). While not overly problematic, there are clear signs of "stair stepping" that accrue on the edges of objects, something that's probably most noticeable in the brightly lit outdoor scenes. All of this said, judging by the restoration demo and a comparison to the screenshots that Marty provided in his review, there is an upgrade here, though it may be somewhat less substantial than some fans may have hoped.

The Man from Earth Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Man from Earth features both LPCM 2.0 and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks, but aside from appealing wash of the interesting score (by Mark Hinton Stewart) and some ambient environmental sounds when the film ventures outdoors, there really isn't a huge difference between the two options. Fidelity is fine across the board on both tracks, but this is a pretty relentlessly talky film, one whose "immersive" capabilities are somewhat limited.

The Man from Earth Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Director Richard Schenkman and Actor John Billingsley


• Commentary with Executive Producer Emerson Bixby and Author Gary Westfahl


• The Man from Earth: Legacy (1080p; 1:25:52) is a really well done in depth piece that contains some excellent interviews with many of the principal cast, along with director Richard Schenkman and Executive Producer Emerson Bixby, who shares some touching reminscences about his late father.


• From Script to Screen (480i; 2:10) is a brief archival piece featuring Richard Schenkman.


• Star Trek: Jerome Bixby's Sci Fi Legacy (480i; 3:50) is another archival video honoring Bixby.


• On the Set (480i; 4:00) has some fun behind the scenes footage.


• The Story of the Story (480i; 2:10) is another archival piece featuring several brief interviews with members of the cast and crew.


• Original 2007 Trailer (480i; 1:27)


• The Man from Earth: Holocene Teaser Trailer (1080p; 1:24)


• The Man from Earth: Holocene Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1:30)


• "Contagion" - A Micro Short Film (1080p; 00:30) is a pretty disturbing little snippet featuring William Katt. The menu listing for this has an unfortunate typo.


• Photo Gallery (1080i; 2:38)


• Restoration Demo (1080p; 4:54)

The Man from Earth Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Man from Earth is continually thought provoking, but it may simply be too "small" and perceived to be too "slow" for some science fiction fans who want visual spectacle and nonstop action and adventure. This new release offers a restoration which can't completely overcome some fairly noticeable source limitations, but the plus side is MVD Visual has provided some really excellent supplements. With an understanding that the video of this release can only do so much, The Man from Earth comes Recommended.