[In progress] Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) [Project: Celluloid]

[LucasGodzilla]

Now here's a little surprise for you Hellraiser fans. While I've been awaiting some feedback on the grading work done for my Hellraiser re-grade, TomArrow brought up the topic of Hellraiser II. Now, all evidence suggests for me that it suffers the same issues as the first movie's remaster by Arrow. So naturally, since I still have the LUTs for ready use and the disc handy, I converted the movie for Da Vinci Resolve and regraded that as well. It didn't take me nearly as long as the first one since I just worked off of the elements I had from the aforementioned preceding regrade. Unfortunately, I have no scans or anything to really base off of for this movie except for the lighting scheme used in the previous film, so I will admit that this is likely inaccurate and serves more as an alternate way of seeing the movie.

Original Arrow Master

Continues on the next post due to image limit...

[LucasGodzilla]

Project: Celluloid Regrade (V1)

I will likely release this sometime either this or next weekend since I am currently awaiting a rip of the Turbien Medien master (which appears to show some far better grain and encoding) to overlay the Arrow master similarly to before. From there, I suppose I can release a screener version of the regrade for feedback and then move onto to releasing a final release version.

[bronan]

I think this might be one of the few sequels I like more than the original haha. The first is probably the better made movie, but to me this one is a little more fun. In regards to the grading, definitely more atmospheric but too much in my opinion. Looking at old trailers on Youtube, Arrow's grading doesn't seem too far off the mark. Maybe it would be better to lose the overbearing blue and just stick with a standard 35mm grade with higher contrast and more intense colors. Arrows does come across pretty weak.

[LucasGodzilla]

I think this might be one of the few sequels I like more than the original haha. The first is probably the better made movie, but to me this one is a little more fun. In regards to the grading, definitely more atmospheric but too much in my opinion. Looking at old trailers on Youtube, Arrow's grading doesn't seem too far off the mark. Maybe it would be better to lose the overbearing blue and just stick with a standard 35mm grade with higher contrast and more intense colors. Arrows does come across pretty weak.

Personally, I much prefer the first one since it just feels far more solid overall whilst this one feels really off the mark at times for me (not to mention its sheer ambition with a budget that doesn't reflect that). I do agree that there are a bit too much blues in some spots but I wouldn't say that from the trailers since I, quite frankly, do not trust them for the most part. There's only one trailer I saw that I'd say is close but not close enough (when compared to 35mm frames of the first movie that it showcased briefly) to actually copy off of was a German trailer I saw on YouTube.

As for the statement that Arrow's grading isn't too far off the mark, I really have to disagree for large chunks. For the first movie, their color treatment was a huge disservice removing nearly any traces of blue, and looking at this movie, there are a lot of pitfalls that carried over. The biggest offender has to be the labyrinth corridors where all of the intended blues seem to have just vanished. The only parts I can safely say I should take the blues down a notch are in some of the over-world areas outside. The rest is up for debate honestly since I simply do not know what to trust as a source of color.

It really makes me wish Hellraiser 1 & 2 have 35mm telecines floating around like how Jurassic Park does.

[bronan]

[LucasGodzilla]

So by random chance, I stumbled onto an extended video of a 35mm Spanish projection of the movie on YouTube. Of course though, there are innumerable problems that make it practically unreliable in just about every way (such as the fact that it's a rather crappy recording of the projection as well as the film reels themselves appearing rather crappy as well) and unfortunately makes it useless in the grand scheme of things since it's quite faded (as well as devoid of blues in areas that's confirmed to be blue such as the Hospital-Cenobite recap), but I still find it a fascinating video to find nonetheless.

[LucasGodzilla]

So I got my hands on a VHS rip of Hellbound and it presents some interesting color differences. The biggest thing that should be stated though is that I know it certainly isn't a proper color reference since it still heavily screws up the Cenobite-Hospital scene in the flashback to the first movie.

But with that said, it certainly already puts the Arrow master to shame in numerous segments since it didn't white-balance it to death.

Please note, these screenshots are in no particular order.

As you can see, there are far more elements of blue in comparison. Now I want to get this out of the way and say that I think in no way my thing is accurate since that was just more experimentation and guesswork with proven-to-be-outdated-color-match-LUTs, however these VHS caps do definitely lean towards the idea that the movie bolstered blue lighting that was missing for much of the Arrow transfer.

Not much to say though: Just thought I'd post about this is all.