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Any fans of Alex Winter’s Freaked here? Some fans might not know this, but in Europe, we got a slightly longer cut of the film released here (it was a direct-to-VHS release in 1995 in the UK, not even theatrical). It includes two scenes not seen on the US theatrical cut: the Freekz playing Wheel Of Fortune, and Ricky saying farewell to all the Freekz before he is forced to murder them by Skuggs. The latter in my opinion has some of the funniest lines in the entire film “Frogman…Perhaps death is the best thing for you now”, so it’s such a shame these scenes were cut out as they do have some good character work in them too fleshing out the relationship between the Freekz and Ricky’s arc in the story. These were included on the out of print Anchor Bay special edition DVD as extras but the quality is pretty mid.
However, here in the UK, Pathe (who inherited the distribution rights when they dissolved Guild Home Video) released Freaked on a bare bones 4:3 DVD. But don’t be fooled by the seemingly lacklustre release, not only is it an open matte print of the film, it is the longer European cut with those two scenes intact. The print looks surprisingly good for a DVD, and dare I say, the colours look more vibrant and superior to the oddly muted grading on the later Anchor Bay blu-ray. So I had an idea.
Thanks to Owen Davies, a wonderful Youtuber who creates AI upscales of TV shows and sometimes films that even I’m impressed by (his work on the Russell T Davies era of Doctor Who wipes the floor with what the BBC have attempted themselves with their upscaling), he upscaled the two scenes taken from my copy of the UK Pathe DVD to 4K and upscaled the theatrical cut taken from the US Anchor Bay blu-ray to 4K as well (with some minor additional colour correction by myself to have the blu-ray master match the superior colours of the UK DVD print). Then inserting the additional scenes back into the film (and cropping them in the original theatrical aspect ratio).
This reconstruction has been uploaded on YouTube for everyone’s enjoyment. Would love to hear your thoughts!
[Link Removed: See Rule 4.]
