Disappointed in Samurai Assassin...
 

Picked up Samurai Assassin a few weeks back and finally got around to watching it. I'd say this is borderline horrible. I am shooting an email over to Animeigo to find out what happened. They tout this as "...the best Samurai film ever made!", and this is how it is treated.

I read a review that states there is a fair amount of EE and that the transfer is smeared and blurry on their widescreen set. On my 27 inch non-widescreen basic set, it is indeed blurry. It looks like a video tape transfer from a Pal source that makes it look blurry and have some ghosting. It is in anamorphic widescreen though, so I'm thinking it is possibly a copy of the Warrior release from the UK.

This is very disappointing after the excellent job they did on the Zatoichi, Lone Wolf And Cub, and Lady Snowblood films. There is no mention of starting from scratch on a new 35 MM print, so maybe that is the problem. Hopefully they don't screw up Red Lion, Samurai Banners, Demon Spies, or the 2 Shadow Hunters movies. I haven't gotten around to watching Incident At Blood Pass, so I can't comment on that one.

Anyone else pick this up and watch it yet?

Yeah...I bought this one too. Considering Animeigo's reputation of remastering LW&C, Zatoichi & Lady Snowblood, I was very disappointed with the video.

I also got Animeigo's Incident at Blood Pass, and the print was certainly way better than Samurai Assassin. Maybe because this one wasn't as old or maybe it was filmed in color, I don't know. But nevertheless, I never got the desire to finish watching Samurai Assassin due to the video quality...this coming from a chambara/jidai-geki fanatic.

I'll be posting the DVD Talk reviews for <i>Samurai Assassin</i> and (hopefully) <i>Incident at Blood Pass</i> tomorrow evening, but I agree about the former's poor video quality. <i>Incident</i> looks pretty good, though.

Thanks for the warning. I never picked up the UK disc of the film because I heard it was terrible looking, and now it seems that AnimEigo's isn't much better. (very surprising because they usually do a great job) I guess I'll be hanging on to my VHS of the film for a while longer.

Randy, you may want to include in your review for Samurai Assassin that it was indeed mastered from Betacam. Heard back from Robert at Animeigo and he said that for reasons beyond their control, they couldn't get a print. He did say that they use a new print, master in HD, and then down convert whenever possible. I am waiting to hear if it was the same deal with IABP. He wasn't sure. Does IABP look film like? I am also waiting to hear if he knows anything about the elements for the 5 upcoming films.

Thanks for the info, Steve. I posted both reviews already, but I'll add that bit about the Betacam transfer. As far as "Incident" goes, it's quite a bit better than "Assassin", but it's possible it's also taken from a video souce. Anyway, it's not so much as the video quality itself for either of these...I just don't see why they charged $30 for discs that should be closer to the $10-$15 range.

Robert still didn't know anout IABP, so I am geussing Betacam as well. About the 5 upcoming titles, he said new prints. "Samurai Assassin taught us that if we can't get a print, don't license it." That doesn't really make sense for Red Lion and Samurai Banners as they were already licensed, but hopefully they will be from new prints as well. You would think that a company that has been around 10 years would know better than that anyway. Would be nice if somebody did a comparison with the old LD.

And I agree with the price. Their justification for charging 30.00 retail for the Zato, LW&C, and Lady discs was that they are a small company and the cost of licensing and remastering is more for them. I actually think the money was worth it for those titles as they are beautiful. But these latest 2 got no remastering, so why the same price?

Actually thought of getting Samurai Assissin but after all this hoo ha guess I'll
just skip it and save meself some dough.