Product: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Original Uncut) [Region 2] (1974)
Rating: 5.0
You Can Toss Your Pioneer DVD(s) Now
When Pioneer released their first DVD of 1974's "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" on October 6, 1998, it did not include the Tobe Hooper/Don May approved transfer that was used on Elite Entertainment's 1996 LaserDisc. Somehow, Pioneer got their hands on a backup copy, a workprint, that didn't have all of the digital restoration that the LD transfer had. Because of this, Pioneer's transfer suffers from being too dark, bad encoding resulting in still images appearing to move, color bleeding, and black and white lines occassionally popping up during the picture. Pioneer screwed up, bad. What's worse, five years later in 2003, Pioneer announced it was rereleasing The Texas Chain Saw Massacre on DVD as a 30th Anniversary Special Edition (even though the 30th Anniversary wasn't until 2004), but this was really just an attempt to cash in on the remake. Shamefully, Pioneer released the same disc from 1998 with the same flawed transfer and tried to pass it off as something new. The cover art was new, and very much inferior to the 1998 art, but everything else was exactly the same. Pioneer knew this was a flawed transfer. They didn't care. They wanted to profit over doing as little work as possible. Thankfully, Chainsaw fans are finished with Pioneer and their lousy DVDs. On September 26th 2006, Dark Sky Films (a division of MPI Home Video) will release a 2-Disc Ultimate Edition DVD of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Finally, we will be getting a brand new, totally remastered, 16x9 enhanced transfer. Don May supervised this transfer in 2003 for the VOOM HD Satellite Service and has made a few more tweaks since then. This will be the transfer we should have had years ago; the way Chainsaw should look. No more of that botched non-anamorphic junk that Pioneer gave us. All of the extras on Pioneer's DVD(s) - commentary track with Tobe Hooper/Daniel Pearl/Gunnar Hansen, deleted scenes and alternate footage, blooper reel, props and set footage, photo galleries, TV spots and trailers - will be carried over to this Dark Sky release. New additions will include a commentary track with Marilyn Burns/Paul Partain/Allen Danziger/Bob Burns/David Gregory, the 80 minute "Shocking Truth" documentary from 2000, a 74 minute "Flesh Wounds" documentary, a tour of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre house with Gunnar Hansen, "The Shocking Truth" outtakes, and radio spots. Toss your Pioneer DVDs in the garbage and get ready for the Ultimate Chainsaw experience.