Well, crap. I've just got the US DVD on to check out some stuff and it would seem that the mono track is pitch shifted upwards. As in, it's probably from a PAL master (quite possibly one of the ones for one of the European LaserDiscs, perhaps the German one I've bought) but when they slowed it to fit the NTSC video, they didn't resample to fix the pitch shift caused by speeding up to PAL previously. So it's too high. The same crap I've seen with NEAR DARK and a bunch of others.
How bloody frustrating!
Well, no matter, I'll grab the UK version of the same DVD and fix it. Better to start with PAL and resample (correcting pitch proportionately) than start with messed up 24 fps -> 25 fps -> 24/1.001 fps conversion and pitch correct.
Apart from that, the NTSC DVD looks great. So what I'll probably do is just slow down the PAL DVD and that'll become my viewing copy for now.
EDIT: Y'know what, screw it. Here's what I'll probably do.
If the main issues with the Blu-ray are that they messed up the colour grade by balancing blues to white, and the mono track has the wrong instrumental tune at the end, then it's probably fixable. Hypothetically, one could...
1. Regrade the Blu-ray to the DVD
2. Capture and sync the German LD audio, which is hopefully the original mono (even if it isn't the cleanest recording)
3. Accurately resample the PAL DVD mono audio and sync that to the Blu-ray as well
4. Replace the song at the end of the Blu-ray mono track with the song from one of the corrected PAL sources (LD or DVD)
5. Investigate this thing about the wrong colour on the flashback scene (I can't even think what scene that is or where in the film it lies, so do point me in the right direction and let me know what the reference is for knowing it's currently wrong @
NeonBible)
... would we have a semi-definitive version of this (until any potential new official attempt)?
Incidentally, I desperately want a copy of the UK LaserDisc but I believe it's exceedingly uncommon, so if anybody ever spots a copy and doesn't want it for themselves, please fire me a message (PM or even better, email, if I have that enabled on my profile).