The worst ever was the original Highlander release.

Conan the Barbarian (standard edition)
The Road Warrior (deserves more than a single layer, grainy transfer)
Johnny Handsome (swear it was transferred from a VHS tape)
48 Hrs. (Eddie Murphy's best film deserves better than this single-layer disc)

Plus they charge an arm and a leg for them.


For major releases, in anamorphic widescreen, The Departed and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix are my most disappointing transfers.

I'll add Extreme Prejudice on that note. Also looks like a VHS transfer.

The Blu-ray of Road Warrior looks quite nice.

The worst one I can remember having actually watched was the old full-frame Twins release, which pretty much looked like a sharper VHS.

Let's not forget the grainy, pan and scan hackjob of Fright Night II, which now sells for big bucks on Amazon.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE 3RD KIND 1st release.

Anything by Fox Lorber, followed by the original releases of Scarface and Highlander.

What's wrong with The Departed? The HD DVD looked phenomenal and I assume that this was the same transfer.

Rob Roy
Predator

One that bothers me is Pale Rider. The low light scenes are virtually unwatchable

No love for the original Scarface DVD release?
Not only did they use an already horrible laserdisc transfer.
It was non anamorphic.
Included a multi-hour documentary, all on the same DVD9.

THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (Italian PAL DVD)

Salo Criterion first release.

I don't watch nearly the amount of DVDs that some here do, but the worst I've seen from a relatively new movie is probably "The Fountain."

That's WB plan. They gave shitty transfer to this and the 4th Potter movie and gorgeous transfers to the HD and Blu-Ray releases.

My HD copy is fantastic, but the standard has some bad pixelisation (not sure if that's the right word) especially early...and no, I'm not just confusing the look of the flashback scenes with a bad transfer. I thought I remembered there being controversy as to whether this was real or not, but I know it's bothersome on mine, but I have the HD now so it doesn't really matter.

My SD The Departed looks fine....

They have gotten a bit better recently (It's actually Koch Lorber) - La Chinoise and Le Gai savoir don't look too bad.

Unforgiven.

My copy is from the Clint Eastwood collection series, and it's probably the worst transfer of any film that I have. My own VHS-to-DVD transfers are comparable to this one.

Too bad, too, because it's a pretty good western.

Are all the Rob Roy transfers bad? I like that film and have not come across it yet.

Yeah, the whole film looks like it was shot in fog....

Of the films I own, that would probably get my vote, too.

Hello Again with Shelly Long. Not only is the transfer bad, in progressive scan there is static elements that make it look like you are watching it on a badly tuned analog tv station.

For me it's got to be Criterion's Scarlet Empress

Also, Fox's horrible remaster of Oklahoma! - both versions. The CinemaScope version is OK, but it has noise reduction that causes skies to look frozen.

The Todd-AO version has to be seen to believed. Somehow, they took a beautifully shot 65mm film and made it look like a bootleg VHS. Not hyperbole, either. Fox didn't even attempt to make a decent excuse on how anyone let that get to the pressing stage. They blamed the film elements on the poor quality. Much to my surprise, the non-anamorphic DVD is quite sharper and has slightly better color. In one scene, it's possible to see the shingles on a roof. On the "remastered" version, it's just solid brown.


So, Oklahoma! has to rival The Quiet Man for horrible transfers.