I had my mom rent it from a Mom and pop shop called maverick movies, along with killer nerd, as a kid. purely got it for the boobs, but it still holds a special place for me, I think it holds up all these years later. killer nerd too for that matter.
Evil Toons in HD should be awesome. I own both of the DVD editions, and judging by how good the previous Retromedia Blu-ray transfers have looked, this should be a knockout. I still have the animation cell used in the film that Fred autographed and sent to me years ago. I don't think I'd ever part with it..
When I received my copy of Evil Toons a few days ago, it was a shaker. I swear nothing get me more pissed off than that. Actually creeps me out when I hear/feel that awful sound coming from the unopened package. Luckily this is not a DVD, so no damage was to the disc.
Octaman /The Cremators Blu-ray is now up for sale on Amazon through Retromedia. This is one time where I actually did sell off my old DVD, and made a nice profit months back. Apparently The Ape/Black Raven Blu-ray was for sale recently on Amazon, but people were receiving Octaman instead due to a labeling sticker error. Edit: it looks like all copies have now sold out. There were 12 in stock when I posted this. I'm sure it'll be back in stock however.
Apparently Octaman has severe compression issues. The file size of the feature itself is small to make room for the second feature. "Swarming with Space Invaders," one Blu-ray.com member says of the image, and the photographic evidence is depressing.
Thanks for the warning. You saved me $20.00 & a whole bunch of frustration. Would have been much better off if Octaman was a single feature release.
But according to another member who also posted screenshots "off his phone" that that poster may have had their TV calibration settings boosted and while Octaman might not look amazing, it's still apparently HD and better than the DVD was. "Sheesh, before piling on this release and Retromedia (and Fred himself) it never occurred to anyone that this may have been a calibration / equipment problem on the part of the poster? I see no artifacts at all like that even on a screen with mostly black fill. The grain is a bit chunky with some minor artifacting in grain (though it is obvious the master used had thick grain to begin with) but nothing remotely like what the other poster put up in the black areas. The biggest PQ issue with this release is yellow push as you can see from my photo, not encoding. Detail is not perfect due to the so-so master, maybe 720p-ish, but grain is intact if not heavy and it has a grungy though also filmic look. This is not the first time this happened, either. Just recently in the Opera thread there was similar panic about "macroblocking" in the black areas that actually isn't visible when your display is properly calibrated (i.e. it is below black). Before that thread it was in the Funeral Parade of Roses thread - same issue, users complaining had gamma/brightness miscalibrated. When you saw the image and the amount of artifacting plus the report that the poster saw this throughout the film IMO this should have been a hint that this might in fact be a user calibration issue and not the release itself. Compression codecs are designed to hide artifacts where they are not visible; doing so is a sign of efficient compression and is not a bad thing. If your display is miscalibrated badly (i.e. way too bright), you might run into these artifacts. The solution is to at least roughly calibrate the display's gamma/brightness properly. This will also make your movies in general look more accurate."
Fair enough, but that first report still makes me want to wait for the reviews. In any event, I can't help but wonder if perhaps Octaman could have looked better if there wasn't a secondary feature taking up space on the disc.
The Octaman + The Cremators Blu-ray is rather disappointing. I sold off my old DVD months ago for way more than I paid for the Blu-ray though, so no loss. Octaman still looks better than that old DVD transfer, but The Cremators really has little to no improvement and looks basically the same. I wouldn't say Octaman is an upconvert, but due to the poor compression does look something more like a 720p presentation than anything. He should have just added The Cremators as SD (instead of upconverting it) to save disc space. The new Rick Baker interview, which runs 26 minutes is quite good though. It is in true 1080p and looks the best of anything on the disc.
