Fernando Di Leo: The Italian Crime Collection (1972 - 1976/Caliber 9/Italian
Connection/The Boss/Rulers Of The City/Raro
Video Blu-rays)/Fistful Of Bullets:
Spaghetti Western Collection (Mill Creek DVDs)
Picture:
B (Boss: B-)/C- Sound: B-/C- Extras: B/D Films: B- (Caliber: C+)/C-
Here are
two new collections of Italian genre films, but they could not be more
different.
The Fernando Di Leo: The Italian Crime
Collection finally arrived on Blu-ray from Raro Video after a noteworthy
DVD box set release, which we covered at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10851/Capone+(1975/Fox/Shout!+Factory
Extras
are the same down to the booklet included as the DVD set, but the packaging is
smaller and the picture and sound are superior to that DVD set, enough to
recommend this version over the pervious DVD set. All sound has been upgraded to DTS-HD MA
(Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless soundtracks in either Italian or English (the
back of the case also says there are DTS-MA 5.1 option(s), but that is a
misprint) which really helps out the older soundtracks and the 1080p 1.85 X 1
digital High Definition image on all the discs best their DVD counterparts easily
with more color range, more solid images and better depth.
Caliber 9 is my least favorite of the
films, but I even enjoyed that one more in this upgraded copy. The Italian
Connection and The Boss were
better films and are much more fun to see here in High Definition than their
DVD counterparts could deliver; though Boss
has the most print issues like minor damage and fading. Rulers
Of The City was only letterboxed on its DVD and shows as much improvement
as anything in this set. All are much
more involving overall and with the use of reds in particular; the DVDs cannot
match the Red, Black or White on all the Blu-rays here. Raro has shown so far that they do their best
with DVD, but when they do Blu-rays, differences are more notable than many other
companies. A real pleasure overall, I
wish more films from this period from any country were presented this well this
often on Blu-ray.
Mill
Creek’s new Fistful Of Bullets:
Spaghetti Western Collection is a set of 16 features with poor prints
squeezed onto four DVDs and featuring films we mostly have not seen before
including Apache Blood (1975 w/Ray
Danton), Between God, The Devil & A
Winchester (1968), Beyond The Law
(1968 w/Lee Van Cleef), Death Rides A
Horse (1968 w/Lee Van Cleef), Fighting
Fists Of Shanghai (1972), Find A
Place To Die (1968 w/Jeffrey Hunter), Fistful
Of Lead (1970), God’s Gun (1975 w/Lee
Van Cleef), Grand Duel (1974 w/Lee
Van Cleef), Gunpoint At Red Sands
(1964), It Can Be Done Amigo (1973
w/Jack Palance), Johnny Yuma (1966),
Sundance & The Kid (1969 and not
the hit film), This Man Can’t Die
(1967), Trinity & Sartana (1972)
and Twice A Judas (1969 w/Klaus
Kinski). I see we did not miss much.
Most of
these are from awful prints, none are anamorphically enhanced and hardly any
are the proper aspect ratio. The Dolby
Digital 2.0 Mono on all the films range from noisy to awful. There are no extras either. Maybe Raro can get better prints and do these
right, but this is poor at any price.
- Nicholas Sheffo