TheArchive: Reviewing the Rare, Retro, and Restored

“THE THRILLING STORY OF A PSYCHOPATHIC KILLER” True crime fanatics rejoice! Ian Merrick’s The Black Panther is remastered, re-released and ready for crime aficionados to revel in.  The Black Panther  is based on a series of true events revolving around Donald Neilson’s string of petty burglaries in Northern England – those of which led to consequential murders, and an eventual kidnapping of a teenage heiress (Lesley Whittle). Between 1972 and 1975, ex-military man Donald Neilson commits a series of senseless violent crimes that terrifies locals and baffles law enforcement. Despite his irrationally meticulous prior planning, Neilson's reckless armed robbery spree doesn't ever reap him a satisfactory sum, so he intensifies the mindless brutality of his crimes and allows the barbarity to bleed into his home life, treating his own wife and daughter like subordinates. With most of his recent robberies having been botched by obvious oversights, Neilson at...

Grizzly. Enough said.  Just watch now.  Streaming for free.  In 4K.  Free 4K. But if you need more persuasion, just have a look at the esteemed list of  Academy Award winners and nominees involved in this film ( started from the bottom ): Film Editing by  Bub Asman (two wins, six nominations) Location Sound by  John Asman (one Oscar, four Emmy wins and 14 nominations!) Cinematography by William Asman  ( how many Asman's are on this thing?  no Oscars but his brother Bub won two and his brother John won one) Sound Effects Editor Fred Brown (one nomination for Rambo II) Re-recording Mixer Jay Harding (two nominations) Orchestrator Jack Hayes (two nominations) Re-recording Mixer Don MacDougall (two wins, five nominations - did Star Wars and Close Encounters of Third Kind) Re-recording Mixer John Reitz (one win for The Matrix and six nominations) Make Up Artist Gene Witham (was on the Oscar nomin...

Film restoration is a tedious process that produces wondrous digital remasters of cult classic films. Films are fully restored to present an updated version of the movie once enjoyed by many audiences, years and years ago. The restoration involves many parts and working with film scanning technicians and editors - from color correction to sound cleanup - giving the film a fresh face and new life – elevating it to Ultra HD. The process starts with scanning the film. Before scanning, our film technician inspects the film, and if necessary, physically cleans off dirt and smudges – any ‘interferences’ that may disrupt the quality of the film to be scanned. Then, by scanning each frame of the reel individually, the film is converted into pixels as a raw digital file, and therefore a "digital replica," so that the digital remastering process can begin. This is where the coloring, sound and overall editing can begin to restore the flick. Here, things can get labori...