The unreleased German letterboxed print Mitch provided looks FANTASTIC!
It's so much better than any other print of Highlander 2 that I've ever seen in any format. This blows ALL DVD versions of this movie away!
Well the English audio track from that poor quality Pan & Scan VHS from Japan has now been overdubbed onto of the unreleased German letterbox version. The Laserdisc I got last week was the bad American version of the film, so it was of little help in this project. Good news is that I was able to improve the sound of the VHS soundtrack allot. But again, bad news. The two versions did not match up in some spots, so much more work for me to do. The VHS version had a longer running time with some shots not on the German print. The two running times did not synch up at all, and I had to split up the film into lots of bits and adjust the video time to synch with the audio tracks then put it all back together and render.
Another problem was with some bad digital video and audio glitches on each of the two audio and video masters provided me. To fix these problems, I am using the Renegade Version DVD. I'll have to adjust the video quality of the RV to match the German print. So far the project is looking good. What we will have as an end result is a unique version of Highlander 2 (in English) that is different from any other released version of the film. This "NEW" version most closely resembles the original British theatrical edit (not available on any video format in letterbox), but has an ending more like the American theatrical version.
Another thing I am doing to this print of H2, is enhancing it for 16:9 televisions. As an extra, I took the alternate (fairytale) ending from the Pan & Scan VHS, and cropped out the subtitles and made it look like it's now in letterbox. This ending was only on the original British theatrical print, and is not contained on any known video release. This is the completed version of that ending. A very raw version of some elements of this scene can be found in the extras section of the 2004 Lions Gate DVD. This "Fairytale" ending can be used as a little DVD bonus, or we can reconstruct the entire original British version as a second DVD project.
MORE TO COME!
FF