Hercules and the Captive Women (1961, Vittorio Cottafavi) is a classic peplum from the golden age of Italian sword and sandal films of the late 50s to early 60s. Focusing on the more fantastique elements of the genre (that fight with Proteus!), the film received a second life and renewed longevity when it was riffed on a season four episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, joining the ranks of other pepla such as Hercules Unchained (1959, Pietro Francisci), Hercules Against the Moon Men (1964, Giacomo Gentilomo) who were also honoured on the series.
Aside from its appearance on MST3K, Hercules and the Captive Women has another unique facet to it: its availability in physical releases that sports a print/cut of the film in a decent condition. The peplum cycle contains a few hundred entries, but a vast majority of them have not seen re-released in an accessible fashion, and those that have are often released on subpar editions derived from generations of VHS recordings, cropped, stretched, degraded, blurry, and so on, but released by budget labels such as Brentwood and Alpha Video. These are epic movies, but the viewing experience for many of them is anything but. So, when a classic peplum title gets a release that has a quality image to it, that is a big deal!
Back in 2021 The Film Detective released a Blu-ray of Hercules and the Captive Women. This release was jam packed, not just with an HD version of the film, but also the MST3K version, a commentary, documentary, essay, and other supplemental features. The sleeve states the movie is a “4K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative”. This sounds like a great thing!
The website PeplumTV did a review of The Film Detective Blu-ray of the film (which can be read here) and found the release to be disappointing regarding its image quality (especially with colours). The website did a vast number of comparisons between the Retromedia DVD, an Italian TV broadcast version, and the Blu-ray edition of the film, and visually, well, there are some huge differences.
Technical specification of a film is not my forte since I am more into the textual aspect of a movie, so I cannot really comment if The Film Detective version is inferior or superior, only that it is different (at least colour-wise). Since this edition purports to come from the original negative, I have to assume it captures Cottafavi’s original vision of the film as close as possible, which could mean the colours are actually correct (note: I have not dived into all the supplemental material on this release, so this matter may be overtly addressed). Or it could mean it is a botched restoration.
DVDBeaver, whose specialty is comparisons of physical releases of a film, doing not just frame comparisons but dive into hard technical subjects like bitrates, codecs, etc., also has a write up about The Film Detective release of Hercules and the Captive Women (which can be read here). Surprisingly, their write up does not do a frame comparison to other physical releases (but that is like their thing!) like the PeplumTV review does. They do provide lots of screenshots, praise the supplemental material, but do state that the film looks
“..abnormally faded. The source density appears compromised in the beginning but eventually holds up reasonably well. The overall 1080P is modest, mostly flat without an abundance of grain but some colors have depth (more in the second half – plenty of burnt orange) and it has instances of showing a pleasing image.”
This statement, coupled with PeplumTV’s write up, paints the picture that, though HD, this is a lackluster edition of the film.
Cut to five years later. Film Masters, who specializes in restored editions of classic films, though go the route of bare bones on supplements, release their edition of Hercules and the Captive Women. The cover simply states “restored in HD.” In my February news roundup at my website (link here), I briefly talk about picking up this new copy of Hercules and the Captive Women and thought about doing a comparison between it and The Film Detective version for fun. So, let’s do it! Let’s see what I can add to the dialogue about this film and its HD editions.
Firstly, I lack the technical prowess that DVDBeaver has, and like I mentioned before, film specs are not my forte. I want to make sure I make that overt as I put this write up here.
My methodology for this:
- I used a Pioneer BDR-XD08S Blu-ray player to read these discs.
- I used MakeMKV (I’m at vesion 1.18.1) to import the movies onto my Mac.
- Watched the movies using VLC (version 3.0.20).
- Skimmed through the movies looking for scenes with different colours or lots of objects in the mise-en-scene. Used the snapshot function to take a picture of the frame.
- I noted the time stamp, put the other movie in, fast forward to that time stamp as close as possible and used snapshot (so it is possible I may be a few milliseconds off between the frames).
- Because my webhost has limits on image size, I opened up each image, resized each one so the longest side was 1000 px (note: I do this with all images I upload to my website). These snaps were not altered in any other way (such as using a cropping tool).
Of quick note:
The Film Detective Blu-ray had four files on it (three being the supplemental material) with the movie coming in at 19.18 gb.
The Film Masters version had only one file (the movie) which came in at 21.51 gb. The difference in file size could be attributed to compression?
On the title card, the Film Masters edition looks slightly redder.
Film Masters looks darker, but only by a little bit.
Again, not much of a difference save Film Masters appears darker, most noticeable in the hair.
Both versions have a very thin, vertical “scratch” near the top right of the frame. It looks equally pronounced in both. Though my timing skills are lackluster at capturing the exact frame, (side by side Hercules moves a bit), looking at the rock background and all the nooks and crannies, everything lines up. This tells me that both versions are at least cropped the very same and show the exact same information in each frame.
Again, only a subtle difference in the Film Masters being a tad bit darker, mostly noticeable in the background stone roof.
Unlike the title screen in which the red was “redder”, that is not the case here. Both frames looks equally orange-red, with Film Masters, again, being darker.
Last set of images, again, Film Masters looks darker, more apparent in this already dimly lit scene.
Overall, both The Film Detective and Film Masters version of Hercules and the Captive Women look comparable to each other. There is not a huge, glaring difference in colour between these two Blu-ray releases, unlike the PeplumTV article which shows radical differences between the editions it examines. The biggest difference of these two release is the Film Masters iteration looks darker. I am not sure why, perhaps The Film Detective version has contrast boosting? However, the title screen of the Film Masters edition has more pronounced reds, which overall, is a colour that has been orange-ified in both Blu-rays. With that in mind, that means the Film Masters version is probably closer to being the version with the most ideal presentation of the film between these two specific releases. In my opinion, both are fairly interchangeable with each other, and both convey the movie in a nice resolution. Aside from The Film Detective having more supplemental materials, either version of the film will do for a pleasing viewing experience.
