Ghidrah/Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster German Blu-ray

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Great Hierophant
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Ghidrah/Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster German Blu-ray

Post by Great Hierophant »

Very recently, GtTHM was released on Blu-ray in Germany. It has been released under the title "Frankensteins Monster im Kampf gegen Ghidorah". Many of the Godzilla films released theatrically in West Germany during the 60's and 70's had Dr. Frankenstein inserted into the title of the film and into the dubbing. GtTHM was one of only two Showa Godzilla films not to have a theatrical release during those two decades (Godzilla's Revenge/All Monster's Attack being the other). I assume the distributor was trying to evoke the German nostalgia for the old titles.

This particular Blu-ray makes for a very tempting purchase, it is region free, is not exorbitantly priced, has the original Japanese audio and has significantly improved picture quality over the Classic Media DVD. Slightly downscaled screenshots can be found here : http://bluscreens.blogspot.com/2013/10/ ... nster.html. An English language review of this Blu-ray can be found here : http://eastwoodblurayreviews.blogspot.c ... -1964.html On the negative side, it only has German dubbing and subtitles and the special features use PAL-like (50i) video qualities that many U.S. Blu-ray players don't like.

So, at what point does one hunt down any Blu-rays that one can find, or hold out for something more English-friendly? A related question is when to double dip if one has the DVD. Obviously the special features of the Classic Media DVD would keep its GtTHM disc on my shelf whether I purchased this Blu-ray or not. (It would look weird if I had such a hole in my complete good Region 1 DVD collection). Even with this release, seven years after the Blu-ray format's introduction I can still count the number of releases of Toho Godzilla films outside Japan (as in reasonably priced) on Blu-ray on the fingers of one hand. Other upgrades were more imperative, as the Criterion Godzilla Blu-ray offered far superior picture and sound quality on both versions of the film compared to the Classic Media releases. Even moreso the Media Blaster's release of Destroy All Monsters compared to the barebones non-anamorphic ADV releases, and Godzilla vs. Biollante's last authorized release was on a letterboxed VHS tape. With the new Godzilla film scheduled to be released in 2014, one expects there to be a boom of merchandise available just as there was back in 1998. However, really good quality DVD Region 1 Godzilla releases really didn't start making their appearance until 2004-2005.

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Re: Ghidrah/Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster German Blu-ray

Post by tymon »

Thanks for posting this...I was going to guess that they used Toho's HD transfer, but looking at these screenshots, that may not be the case. The colors look a lot better than Toho's typical output:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YgCiZDvE_2o/U ... m32s75.png
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Re: Ghidrah/Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster German Blu-ray

Post by G-Matt »

Wow, that video quality actually looks quite excellent! I'm gonna have to get this the next time I visit Germany.
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Re: Ghidrah/Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster German Blu-ray

Post by MustafaDaisenso »

I watched a video on youtube taken from a TV airing in Japan of GTTHM in HD, and it looks to be the same print. Granted it was only a 30 second clip from the final battle, but I could see that one of the screencaps looked identical to the TV clip.
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Re: Ghidrah/Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster German Blu-ray

Post by Space Hunter M »

Yeah, this is the new HD master telecined in 2008. It's probably the biggest upgrade from the 2000s DVD releases in terms video quality. The old DVD master used an ugly source several generations away from the negative.

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Re: Ghidrah/Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster German Blu-ray

Post by junkerde »

MustafaDaisenso wrote:I watched a video on youtube taken from a TV airing in Japan of GTTHM in HD, and it looks to be the same print. Granted it was only a 30 second clip from the final battle, but I could see that one of the screencaps looked identical to the TV clip.
lemme guess, gojirasons channel

also i looked at the screens, better colors, still looks very soft though

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G-MAN
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Re: Ghidrah/Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster German Blu-ray

Post by G-MAN »

anyone know if they included the brief behind the scenes video they shot during the making of the movie thats on the japanese release

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Re: Ghidrah/Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster German Blu-ray

Post by G-Matt »

G-MAN wrote:anyone know if they included the brief behind the scenes video they shot during the making of the movie thats on the japanese release
In case you didn't read the review that was linked in the first post, no, it's not on this release.
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Re: Ghidrah/Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster German Blu-ray

Post by G-MAN »

no I read but on the amazon.de has behinds the scene footage so I wanted to see if that was true

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Re: Ghidrah/Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster German Blu-ray

Post by G-Matt »

G-MAN wrote:no I read but on the amazon.de has behinds the scene footage so I wanted to see if that was true
Oh yeah, that's true. Well, I could be wrong. I'll have to get the disc to see for myself.
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Re: Ghidrah/Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster German Blu-ray

Post by Gooberzilla »

Ordered!
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Re: Ghidrah/Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster German Blu-ray

Post by MaxDefiant »

Gooberzilla wrote:Ordered!
Did you get the BD yet? Can you give us your own review?

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Re: Ghidrah/Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster German Blu-ray

Post by gojimatt »

For those that are interested this Blu-ray does contain the behind the scenes footage contained on the Japanese edition.
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Re: Ghidrah/Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster German Blu-ray

Post by G-Matt »

G2000 wrote:Rebuild of Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0: You Did (Not) Expect Godzilla, Did You

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Emperor5353
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Re: Ghidrah/Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster German Blu-ray

Post by Emperor5353 »

Received my copy today..here are some screen shots from it....better than any copy I own..still not "great" quality

Image

Image


Image

Image

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Re: Ghidrah/Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster German Blu-ray

Post by smagal »

It's awesome! I have to buy most of the german releases!

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Emperor5353
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Re: Ghidrah/Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster German Blu-ray

Post by Emperor5353 »

One thing of note regarding the German blu rays...they are Region B/PAL

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Re: Ghidrah/Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster German Blu-ray

Post by smagal »

it's not a problem - I'm from Poland ;)
the only problem is... there's no english subtitles... but I can add polish subs on my pc ;)

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Re: Ghidrah/Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster German Blu-ray

Post by Emperor5353 »

I am attempting a reauthor of this with English dub/subs..gonna be a project :)

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