Death Machine has been released on Blu Ray in Germany, featuring the 122 minute extended cut. There also exists a much shorter US R Rated release and a 116 minute version that was only released on DVD in the UK.
According to IMDB (obviously anyone can post on there) Director Stephen Norrington considers the 116 minute version to be his Director’s Cut and he hates the 122 minute version.
What is interesting is the only differences between the two occur during the first 15 minutes. Given that 15 minutes is the approximate length of a reel, our theory is that when the UK DVD was made it was scanned from a set of reels. And then when the German DVD/Blu Ray was scanned something happened to reel one. Instead of using reel one from the Director approved version, they somehow got hold of a reel from a workprint or master.
Obviously there is no way to prove any of this, but it’s the only theory we could any up with that addressed the fact that the only differences are during that first 15 minutes.
So this project is a recreation of the UK DVD 116 version, using the footage from the German Blu ray. Aside from one line of opening credits and a 16 frame shot, everything was present in the Blu Ray. One moving shot had to be cut so it transitioned to a different shot - see below. Considering there are only differences in the first 15 minutes, there are a hell of a lot of differences! Shots are shorter, rearranged, cut together with other shots etc.
Once the video had been recut I addressed the colour. The German Blu Ray is rather dull and teal looking. The UK DVD is really blue in parts, which the Blu Ray is lacking, but the DVD also looks awful at times, often going really dark. There is a German DVD of the extended version which also had a lot of blue, however the highlights are completely blown. Therefore neither of those options could be used for a full blown DrDre style regrade. So I used both of those as a partial reference and regraded it myself in Premiere using lumetri colour and RGB curves.
The audio from the DVD was converted to wav and retimed to 23.976. It’s a 2.0 Dolby Surround track, the AC3 on the DVD was only 192 khz but it doesn’t sound too bad.
The subtitles were taken from the Blu Ray, they also had to be recut with the video and then proof checked to ensure they still play correctly.
Finally the small amount of extras were ported over from the Blu Ray.
Huge thanks to my colleague/collaborator @Pineapples101 who came up with the idea for this project and helped me at various stages.
- BD25 with a menu, background video, pop up menu and resume function
- 1080P taken from the Blu Ray with Colour Grading
- English 2.0 WAV
- English SDH Subtitles
- Featurette
- Trailer
PM me for the links, contributing/long term members only please. Contributing means active members of the forum who post and/or make their own projects.
High Resolution cover and disc art available from @Pineapples101 Here.
Here is the shot I had to cut so it transitioned correctly (the edge on the second shot isn't that jagged in the final version):
Here are some before and after colour correction shots (before/after):
Menu Shots:
Just to clarify this is a project that I have made for myself which I am choosing to share. If you don't like the project, if you think it should have been done differently then feel free to keep that to yourself and consider doing your own project.