Yesterday evening, I pop in my Christal Film copy of 'Z' (Costa-Gavras) in the DVD player and after pressing 'FILM' from the menu, the first thing that shows up, in large red letters, is:

AVERTISSEMENT

"Comme vous le constaterez, la qualité du son et des images peut s'être détériorée avec le temps. Nous espérons que vous n'en aurez pas moins de plaisir à regarder ce classique du cinéma."

Translation:

WARNING

"As you will notice, the sound and image quality might have deteriorated with time. Nevertheless, we hope that watching this movie classic will still be a pleasurable experience."

I went wtf?

Actually the anamorphic transfer wasn't too bad. A bit grainy with occasional dirt and scratches and two instances of severe macro blocking, but overall watchable. Anyway, i'd never seen such a warning on any disc before.

Not exactly the same, but on the Mallrats extended version, Smith warns us beforehand that there are some "jumps" where some frames were lost from the original negative.

A similar warning is issued in a video intro preceding the director's cut of The Chronicles Of Riddick.

I've seen this before in economical compilations such as my "Classic Heist Movies: Where Crime Does Pay"

The Canadian version of the HBO show the Hitchhiker began with the same sort of disclaimer -- and believe me, it was richly deserved. Terrible quality.

Anchor Bay has recently done the same thing on their release of George A Romero's "Season Of the Witch/There's Always Vanilla". A warning comes up about the poor quality of the print they had.

Which, I'm ok with.


The fact that the DVD case and specs list it as "16x9 Enhanced for Widescreen TVs" when in fact it is NOT an anamorphic transfer - THAT I'm pissed about.

Before Three Kings: "The makers of 'Three Kings' used visual distortion and unusual colors in some scenes of this film. They intentionally used these unconventional techniques to enhance the emotional intensity of the story line."

Blue Underground also has a warning before Django. It's the only release where they've gone back to the original camera negative, but it has still deteriorated so much that a simple restoration job wouldn't do. Still watchable though.

This is the one that came to mind. The best transfer available---but at times, the worst!

Unleashed also has that warning if you choose the extended cut. I chose to watch the unedited cut instead so I can't comment on the video quality of the replaced scenes.

All of this is just more reason to cherish the loverly LOTR EE's.

There should often be warnings that the viewer is about to watch a crappy movie as well.

"L'Aveu" which I just watched, had the same warning. Again, watchable but not great. Oh well, at least these were darn good films.

Watchable yes, but still distracting at times. I hope that a more thorough restoration of the film is financially feasible someday.

The copy of Metropolis I have says how they have put all the extra stuff back in but there is still a lot missing.

There's a pretty similar disclaimer at the beginning of The Lathe of Heaven that explains in pretty good detail why the quality will be compromised. Actually, I thought it looked pretty good, considering.

I've seen this quite a few other times too -- but I also watch a lot of older/silent films.

That was because they put footage back into the movie after it was cut for the theatrical release so it doesn't have the same fluidity.

Not a movie, but a DVD - Fractured Flickers had an audio warning for the first episode.

There's no warning at the beginning of The Quiet Man... but there should be (transfer, not movie).

:: "Warning, you are about to watch a crappy transfer."

They should say just this and nothing else, lol!

Say, so I just bought Saving Private Ryan, and there's these white streaks in the movie. Did I get a defective copy?

I hope all of these warnings show up on the disk boxes so that we are warned before we buy them, not just before we watch!

True, I own it but forgot it also has a disclaimer.

I'm sure there is a disclaimer from HVE as well for one of the features in their Hanzo Razor Boxset about damage to the original negative and therefore a missed frame or two etc?

Although, barring this the transfers are superb.