I just a copy of the World Artists release (which, I heard, is supposed to be the legal distributor of the film) from my employer (I work at a small video store) for free since he figured he couldn't sell it and he didn't like it a bit when we watched brief clips from it on the telly.

I decided to poke around and found out that it's supposed to be valuable, but there apparently are a whole lotta bootlegs around too. Does anyone know a surefire way to tell whether it's a legit print or not?

I don't know what a bootleg of this one may look like, but the authentic release had a 16-page booklet and the disc artwork is in B/W with 'Begotten' and 'World Artists' in red.

A big tell is if you have the booklet. Most if not all bootleggers are not going to try to make a good quality copy of it. The fact that is 16 pages is the main reason why.

Well my copy looks exactly like the legit one, but I heard some bootleg DID replicate all of those feats, so I was hoping for some clues to the inner ring of the disc which usually is the best way to find out.

Mine has 'Non playable side dummy' written on the label side of the ring...

Yes, the authentic disc has that written on the label side of ring. Also, inner ring is slightly 'frosted'.

Yeah, I know what you mean. The photo from amazon didn't have it so it got me on my toes, but I guess their photo is from a bootleg then.