Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #111927 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-04-03
• Format: NTSC
• Running time: 70 minutes

Customer Reviews

Butchered Print of a Great Film is a Disgrace!
This is a comment on the Synergy Entertainment release of Anthony Mann's "The Black Book" (AKA "Reign of Terror"). This splendid film just can't get any respect on DVD! The running time of this version is 75 minutes, making it 14 minutes shorter than the version on Alpha Video! Critical scenes are missing, with Synergy imposing its own fade outs on entire sections. Even the previous reviewer who called this version "passable," noted the gaps in continuity. Visually, the print is much softer than Alpha's, with many jumps and splices, with much more of the picture area cropped off, and it goes in and out of focus. I previously thought that the Alpha release was the worst transfer of a movie I had ever seen, but this travesty put out by Synergy is a total disgrace, and should be avoided at all costs!

Poor edition
This edition of an Anthony Mann film has been crudely transferred, and is actually worse than another release of the same movie still around.It requires muchvideo adjustment to get it to a comfortable image. It is a shame for it has many first class features:(1) A script, reasonably faithful to actual history, but obviously cut to come out as a basic thriller,(2) a splendid cast, with the exception of Cummings, who however does not spoil the drama,(3)Arlene Dahl, one of the great beauties, who did not havetoo much luck with her assignments.
Maybe some day some one will produce a restored
faithful print.

Bad Transfer
I didn't realize that there was a better, but still bad transfer of this, that also has more of the film. This version is very blurry. You can tell that it is a gorgeous film, so Mann fans should see even a poor version. The secondary actors are well cast. Arlene Dahl is beautiful, if not much else. Robert Cummings isn't all that good, but he doesn't overact dreadfully, as I've seen him do in other movies, so I sort of liked him in this. While not all that accurate, the film does deal with some of the factual happenings of the revolution and has a great air of menace.