TServo2049 said:

(There were several trailers before it, which all had a similar yellow-green cast, though still a broader color spectrum).

I would guess that the projector was projecting with a yellow-green cast, and this was the primary reason the film looked as it did. But while it might not have had a yellow-green cast, the fact that it had a reduced color spectrum compared to the trailers may indicate the it looked different in theaters then on home media.

TServo2049 said:

This one really intrigues me - Evil Dead II. I just saw a screening of an original 35mm print 

Castro, right? That's where I learned that AOD should look as blue as the Director's Cut BD. That being said, I don't think there's anything wrong with their set-up. What you see was probably quite accurate.

Is that yellow-green-cyan-blue palette how ED2 originally looked?

Maybe.

The 25th Anniversary just looks like a mess to me color-wise despite the all right amount of detail. Flesh tones are far too red, which makes me wonder if it really is just some old transfer (as many of them used to have that issue). No prior release made the characters look like that.

I'm not sure any release has been perfectly accurate though.

I made a fairly thorough ED II color-timing comparison of all the releases from TV cut (likely a very old 1980's analog telecine) to the 25th anniversary BD for See No Evil's site. Link below:

https://picasaweb.google.com/110542745565217940611/EVILDEADIICOLORTIMINGCOMPARISON

Hope it's useful.

Maybe if we find the right one, a project ala Andrea's The Thing could be done.

Yeah, it was the Castro. I believe the LPPs of The Blues Brothers and Close Encounters (20th anniversary) I saw at the Paramount looked kind of yellow-greenish in the whites. I believe that there was also a yellow-green bias to the trailers I saw before Rear Window at the New Beverly in L.A. I also seem to recall a tinge like that to the 70MM LPP of Ghostbusters I saw at the Egyptian. They all had different color timing but whites were always a yellow-green off-white.

So maybe in this age of neutral-temperature digital projection, we've all forgotten how projected LPP looks.

I like the Divimax color and brightness, they sure did change ir for the blu.

What about Traffic? It seems every home video release is ever so slightly different. They each have the tints for each story but no two release look identical. Even the "directors approved" criterion Bluray looks different from their original DVD colour timing.