Young Frankenstein [Blu-ray]

5-Stars to this movie. My very favorite Comedy. 5-Stars to Amazon.com's Customer Service. Their return policy is the best. Now to my problem with this Blu-Ray release. It will not play on my Panasonic BR player. It will get to the Main menu, but when I click Play, it will just set there and go no farther. I even tried going through Scene selection and it still will not go no farther after clicking on any scene selected. I returned it for a replacement and received another one. Same problem. I returned for refund and plan on buying it later after this batch of defective Blu-Rays are used up. I have my player updated with the lastest drivers and have not experienced this problem with any of the others in my extensive collection of Blu-Rays.

I just purchased Young Frankenstein on Blu-ray, and I have to say that the transfer is about as good as this film will ever look. Yes, it is grainy, but that is the way Mel Brooks intended the film to look. Be thankful you are getting a very nice anamorphic transfer after all these years. Fox got it right, as for the bonus material it really is what fans of the film have been waiting for except for the deleted scenes not being presented in anamorphic widescreen, but what are you going to do. The sound is good, but not great, and the new stuff is great.

If you're a fan of classic horror, this is a good one to have. In an apparent attempt to replicate the technique of the original Universal horrors, this film is INCREDIBLY grainy. I saw the film first run on a big screen and I don't remember it being THIS grainy. It's like the whole thing is infested by billions of swarming gnats. I'm all for the director's intent, but geez. Also, this being Mel Brooks, the humor is (of course) quite ham fisted.

As much as I love this movie, I'm going to have to give this Blu-ray edition only two stars, due to the absurdly excessive grain. Before you jump to the conclusion that I'm clueless on the issue, let me tell you I'm well acquainted with the fact that grain is a feature of the medium itself, and that Blu-ray will reveal more of this grain than what we're used to. But natural grain is not what I'm talking about here, nor am I talking about any intentional stylized black & white effects. On this disc, some error in the transfer exaggerated the grain, burying the image beneath a layer of teeming dots.

As fans of this movie who saw it in theaters might recall, there are a few scenes in which the graininess of the picture abruptly changes, in instances in which the camera zooms in for a freeze-frame close-up (e.g., when Frederick and Igor first meet). The reason the grain changed is because the zoom is an optical effect achieved in editing. An image was magnified by some process, and the film grain in the original print becomes more apparent as it, too, is magnified. But in this Blu-ray edition, the film is so suffused with grain, the effect of the shift in true grain is completely lost. What it means is, this inserted level of grain is eclipsing the original textures. The close-ups are passable, because the size of the overall image offsets the relative size of the squiggling flecks. However, scenes shot from further away are like monochrome impressions in pointillism. Black and gray particles wriggled in the lighter areas in such bold relief that it completely undermined the picture sharpness and contrast.

Do NOT believe what you might be reading elsewhere, in some reviews by critics laboring under the impression that this graininess was an intentional effect. While the cinematographer certainly set out to mimic the style of the Frankenstein classics, excessive coarse grain was never a feature of those old films. This grain is a flaw. In transferring the film to the Blu-ray format, a sharpen-image feature similar to that found in common photo software was applied. You can apply this option only so far, and when overused, the edges become hard. If you apply it to, say, a grainy photograph, the grain of which in the original is a natural feature, all of the details are hardened to the point that the grain itself becomes a bespeckled layer. It becomes too pronounced, sitting in front of the image instead of comprising it. This transfer was degraded by the overzealous application of an image-sharpening tool. And while this next accusation can't be supported with proof, I don't think the original negative was used for this transfer. Nowhere on the packaging is it stated that it was digitally remastered. Instead, the studio upconverted the same digital material used in the previous SD edition. That's what the squiggling grain looks like to me, poor upconversion. The sharpening made it look different, and your BDP and HDTV will further account for a difference, but it won't be the difference resulting from a faithful transfer.

For some fans, the special features will be worth the price, but for me, the extras aren't enough to overlook this travesty. Nothing I've written here is an exaggeration. Take note that among the reviews here, mine is the first one written after having actually seen THIS edition. Let's see what others after me will have to say.

This baby comes with ALL of the older special features that came with the laserdisc and DVD versions as well as several brand new 1080i documentaries that bring us up to date. An isolated score track, a commentary track as well as the original soundtrack and a new hopped-up DTS Master HD track. The picture and the sound are PERFECT! This is as good as this baby will ever look. Buy with confidence! Yes, I did make a yummy sound!