4K Ultra HD – Edition FR – The Smoker Cat – 92 min – 1 April 2021
Video format
• Intermediate Master: 4K
• Standard HDR: CSD
• Ratio: 1.85
Soundtrack
• Italian DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono
• French DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono
Subtitles
• French
It is brought to the attention of our dear readers as well as the viewing equipment specified and used by each tester of the MaG team, the rendering may differ from one installation to another, whether or not it is calibrated, as well as personal preferences and expectations may influence the rating.
WORK – No, but say, is it good or not?
Boris Karloff himself comes to play the master of ceremonies to present us the three stories that will follow. First of all, The Phone, in which a young woman is harassed on the phone by a stranger who threatens to kill her. Then, The Wurdalaks, a dark story of vampires wandering through the moorland where a family of peasants lives, in 19th century Russia. Finally, Water drop, where a nurse at the bedside of an old dying woman will regret having stolen her ring. Terror and supernatural, spirits of the dead and creatures of the night are therefore on the menu of these macabre tales that embody The Three Faces of Fear !
Unique sketch film directed by Mario Bava, The Three Faces of Fear adapts the respective news of Ivan Chekhov, Tolstoy and F.G. Snyder. In this strange anthology of macabre tales bathed in an intoxicating gothic fragrance, each story is interested in a form of terror (and death), in this case giallo, horror and terror. Never rushed and populated by characters (a limited number) guided by their impulses, these stories rise in power to the final tetanising segment (a small masterpiece). Still as surprising and successful, these three gothic-horrific short films with fantastic plastic beauty form one of the major pieces of the « Maestro of the Macabre » Hey!
IMAGE – Everyone's beautiful, are you sure?
Restored in 2019 by the film company Lyre from the original negatives worked in 4K at the laboratory L For expressive lighting, which is not without reminiscent of the theatre, in primary colors, which splash the screen, the inimitable style of its master work (Mario Bava was an op-perfect conductor) appears as never before... Even if the encoding does not benefit from the HDR!
The copy is clean, the compression controlled, the silver grain returned well, the definition everything except hesitant, the contrasts transcribed with taste and colorimetry (a 35 mm copy of French exploitation served as reference for calibration), pushed regularly to the maximum, perfectly saturated.
For a 1963 film, it is impossible to deny that the rendering of this UHD SDR transfer really looks proud.
SON – He who has ears to hear, hear!
Expressive because of its design (cf. the magnification of water drops in the last story), the mono 2.0 soundtrack offers a certain listening comfort even though of course incomparable with today's mixes.
Very correct, the two sound tracks are clean and of great clarity, even if the Italian version is better mixed than its French counterpart (where the voices are recorded at a slightly high level). And not so much in the acutes (compared to the previous DVD), they have the merit of having evolved (in good) over time.
CONCLUSION – Every good thing has an end...
On the occasion of his (unseen) passage on 4K Ultra HD support, The Three Faces of Fear Supports its classic status of transalpine horror cinema. Sublimated beyond words, it imposes itself all the more as a must for all fans of the genre.
Artistic note
8
Video quality
9
Audio quality
8.5
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