Product: Too Late for Tears (1949)
Rating: 1.0
Terrible quality from Image Entertainment
Buyer beware. Image Entertainment/Dark City has used the exact same print of this film as was used for the budget-line DVD from Alpha Video/Gotham Distribution. The picture quality is so bad, it's virtually unwatchable. Right from the start, the picture is jittery, as if it's running in a broken projector. Everything is out of focus -- this must be a fifth or sixth generation print, not even close to broadcast quality. The picture is littered with grain, specks, scratches, you name it. Several nighttime scenes are absolutely pitch-black -- you can't see anything at all on the screen. And there are so many missing frames that the movie keeps lurching forward like a bad japanese animation film.This is the first release in Image Entertainment's "Dark City" series. I hope it's also the last. Image Entertainment has done a huge disservice to film noir fans. Instead of hunting down a better source print (or at least a second print to provide the missing frames) and doing even a halfway decent restoration job, Image presents a DVD that is no better than the budget-priced Alpha release, even though the Image release costs much more. Fans of old movies who are accustomed to the superior restoration work that's been done on DVD's from companies like Warner and Columbia, will be sorely disappointed by the inferior quality of this release. "Too Late For Tears," while not a classic, is a better than average example of 40's film noir. It deserves better treatment than this -- and DVD buyers deserve more respect. I for one will never buy another DVD from Image Entertainment.