Tuesday, July 15, 2014

An Elusive Bilitis

Well, the good news is the upcoming German Bilitis blu-ray from Alive, due out in October, is definitely a full restoration of the film. Just look at these screenshots and compare them to the screenshots I've posted of the past DVD editions.




Wow. And we now know they're not just including the German dub, but also the original French audio. The 'Making Of' featurette seems to have been nixed, but in the presence of a beautiful restoration job of a film that so badly needed it, who cares?

The bad news, unfortunately, is that there are no English language options, leaving us out in the cold just like that La Pelle blu.  This is hard news because I contacted Alive directly, and they responded, "Thank you for your interest in BILITIS. unfortunately we can not publish the English sound or English subtitles on our DVD or Blu-ray."

The silver lining is that now that the restoration has been done, there's a good chance DVD companies in other regions will license it and distribute it with English language options. The fact that Alive said they couldn't include the English option suggests there may already be a deal in place with another company (possibly Pathfinder?) that split the costs of the restoration for exclusive distribution rights. Fingers crossed anyway.