poita said:

The film scan is really, really magenta, so would take a lot of work to become useable ...

From some time ago, I noticed that certain shot(s) of THX 1138 looked devoid of color. Of course, a big deal was made over that artist design. But the color in this film was always saturated and distinctive. Back on page 53 is a screenshot-conglomeration of sources of one shot in particular ..
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/THX-1138-preservations-Italian-Cut-available-see-1st-post/post/626065/#TopicPost626065

I was thinking about restoration back then, but it is interesting to note that even the New And Improved releases of this shot actually looked like less color. I never did get to see SilverWook's 16mm scan of that particular shot to check it's color there.

Anyway, I made some R-G-B breakdowns, looking for clues about that shot ..

THX 1138 LD

THX 1138 DVD

THX 1138 Blu-ray

I'm beginning to wonder ... was this shot ever in color? Was this originally some kind of B&W test that they though was too good not to use and "toned" it (RGB-contrast manipulation) to give it some color? Those elevator door-way shadows are not natural -- they are in the same luminance range of the child's skin and so are the same color! Other robo-hallway shots do not look like that (skin-tones on the environment) ..

(I couldn't find a proper LD screenshot for comparison because of that plague of frogs "of Biblical proportions" from "missing images" - the result of Imageshack's website reorganization; here's an approximation comparison shot from the few surviving pictures in our thread .. )