See No Evil

From late 2021, to the end of 2024 when the project was completed, I crowdfunded over 70 16mm & 35mm movie print scans, and over 150 35mm trailers, and the same again in Snipes. This involved renting and buying prints from collectors, and getting them scanned. The Scanner uses professional equipment to scan each frame on each reel to a 4K/5K digital image, and each reels’ optical audio strip to a digital sound file. I grade and encode this transfer to give a 1080p 24fps digital recreation of each source print.

For more information, please see the full 35mm scans project page. You can see the full list of features which were restored/released below;

https://www.bookofthedead.ws/online_portfolio/35mm_scans/br_35mm_movie_scans_blu-ray_box-set.html
https://www.facebook.com/RobsNostalgiaProjects

A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Alien - Theatrical Cut (1979) 35mm Feature 4K Scan
Alien 3 - Theatrical Cut (1992) 35mm Feature 4K Scan
Aliens - Theatrical Cut (1986) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Army Of Darkness - US Theatrical Cut (1992) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Bad Taste (1987) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Blade Runner - Theatrical Cut (1982) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Dawn Of The Dead - Ext/Cannes Cut (1978) 16mm Feature 5K Scan
Dawn Of The Dead - Theatrical Cut (1978) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Day Of The Dead (1985) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Death Wish (1974) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Duel - TV Cut (1971) 16mm Feature 5K Scan
Escape From New York (1981) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Evil Dead II (1987) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Fight Club (1999) 35mm Feature 4K Scan
Halloween (1978) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers (1988) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Hellraiser (1987) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Maniac (1980) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Night Of The Living Dead (1968) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Predator (1987) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Psycho (1960) 35mm Feature 4K Scan
Psycho II (1986) 35mm Feature 4K Scan
Return Of The Living Dead (1985) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Rituals (1977) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Seven (1995) 35mm Feature 4K Scan
Shogun Assassin (1980) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Sorcerer/Wages Of Fear - US Version (1977) 16mm Feature 5K Scan
Straw Dogs (1972) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Suspiria (1977) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Taxi Driver (1976) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Terminator 2 - Theatrical Cut (1991) 35mm Feature 4K Scan
The Bunker (2001) 35mm Feature 4K Scan
The Crazies (1973) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
The Day Of The Jackal (1973) 16mm Feature 5K Scan
The Dead Zone (1983) 16mm Feature 5K Scan
The Evil Dead - 2011 Re-Master (1983) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
The Exorcist - Theatrical Cut (1973) 35mm Feature 4K Scan
The Exorcist III (1990) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
The Fly (1986) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
The Game (1997) 35mm Feature 4K Scan
The Running Man (1987) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
The Shining - US Cut (1980) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
The Silence Of The Lambs (1991) 35mm Feature 4K Scan
The Terminator (1984) 35mm Feature 4K Scan
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
The Thing (1982) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Videodrome (1983) 35mm Feature 4K Scan
Zombi: Dawn Of The Dead - Argento Cut (1978) 35mm Feature 5K Scan
Zombie (1979) 35mm Feature 5K Scan

I did give the standard crowdfunding model a good try for my first three 35mm print scans, on two forums and through my Facebook page. Back in November 2021, The Evil Dead (1983), was waiting for five months and only managed to raise 60% of the total $700 rental/scanning costs and I paid the rest myself. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) only raised 48% of the $582 in donations in August 2022, and in September 2021 Dawn Of The Dead (1978) raised 25% of $750. Crowdfunding is very tough going for anything other than the biggest & most popular titles.

Late in 2022, I decided to try a different crowdfunding model. I collected together interested people on to a mailing list, then every three months I asked everyone for a set donation, in return for a fixed set of 5-6 35mm ferature scans (plus cinema snipes & trailers) as proper playable Blu-Ray discs.

Up to the final round in October 2024, this project had a very good run. It’s funded fifty-eight 35mm & five 16mm feature scans which I’ve done myself, plus partially funding (usually 50%) another 14 scans done by other people, along with funding the scans of over 150 35mm trailers and the same again of bumpers/snipes too.

Releasing open-matte 35mm scans with the original grade & audio to fans is a worthwhile end in itself, but there’s also a handful of features which go beyond that. The Duel - TV Cut (1971) for instance doesn’t have an official Blu-Ray or 4K release as of writing, nor does Bad Taste (1987) or The Bunker (2001), plus my Rituals (1977) 35mm scan is one of the couple that are actually higher in quality than the current-best retail Blu-Ray.

35mm print scanning is an expensive & time consuming business. It costs a minimum of $600/£510, ranging past $1000+/£840+ per feature depending on length, and around $45/£38 per trailer, to rent & scan in 4K or 5K resolution, and even that is fans’ mates rates. The quality of the print, or popularity of the film doesn’t come in to it.

The most expensive title to release was The Exorcist (1973), costing $1244 in rental & scanning; which required the compositing of two prints to make an almost complete version. Next would be Bad Taste (1987) at $1122, which was a print I bought outright in order to scan.

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UPDATE 2 - 03/04/22

Here is a preview of the first 22min reel;

A little bit more on the project, it was scanned in 5K in Raw CinemaDNG format by a US scanner on his Scanstation. The turnaround was only 11 days between him picking up the print from the collector, to my having the 4TB HDD in my hands here in the UK, really quick & highly recommended! He also very kindly ordered the HDD from Amazon.com for me, saving the postage time from the UK to the US.

To the transfer itself; having a RAW CinemaDNG scan, gives a lot more latitude to tweak the various colour & exposure settings, than a scan with ‘baked in’ exposure which might be over or under ideal levels. I was hoping to have one RAW setting for the whole film, but this either gives overexposed opening daylight scenes, or underexposed dark cellar sections, so I’m having to break it down into sections & shots and tweak it more than I thought.

One unexpected issue is processing time. Each 5K frame is 5120x3840px @ 300dpi (28.1mb), with each of the four reels around 31,000 frames a piece (that’s 123,709 frames @ 3.31TB total). I’m running an i7-7700k @ 4.2gHz CPU with 16GB ram & GTX 1060 6GB GPU, and even then it takes around 26 hours encoding time per reel! Rather than working on the 5K file, I’m using mid-way RAW exposure settings, cropping the video down to the final frame size so you can still see the edges, and encoding that to uncompressed AVI 1080p. Then I’m working though tweaking the levels, exposure and colours on that 1080p footage with Red Giant Colourista, which is much faster. Then I can either encode the final file from those AVIs, or apply the same filters to the 5K footage and encode from that. The colours/saturation on this print are very roughly the same as the 2010 Anchor Bay Blu-Ray, but I’m generally pushing the white balance more to the blue, and brightening some darker shots up so you can see more detail.

There was also a little light leakage from the sprocket holes on the right of the frame, so any darker shots which are brightened up, have a second copy overlaid, with masking of 90% of the left hand side of the frame, and a gradient of 10% off to the right, with darker blacks to compensate and make the whole picture look even.

Looking at this 35mm transfer’s optical audio and comparing it with the 1985 Japanese Herald Videogram Laserdisc true mono track, and the 2010 Blu-Ray stereo track converted to mono, it appears that the audio on the print is the original mono audio mix printed as dual mono, and has not been remixed or tampered with. Looking at the waveforms, there is very little difference between the laserdisc and 35mm audio, but there are fair differences with the Blu-ray audio. There aren’t really any replacements/alterations but certain sound effects and music start & endings have been blended/faded better in to the mix.

It will probably take a few more weeks to complete as I’m in the middle of another project I need to get finished first, but the project is 90% there. It’s rented, scanned and I have the transfer. It’s just a matter of working through the footage and encoding the final version.

The Aluminum Falcon said:

I’d guess it’s 2010 or 2011 actually because it’s the same as the BD master. Would that make it more likely for it to be a film out?

The US blu-Ray was released on August 31, 2010, so it would have been at least some months before that.

Okay, so the print has been rented and I’ve got a short 5K test scanned section back.

it’s a mixed bag. I was hoping this would be an untouched print of the film, but it’s not. I’m not sure if people know, but the 2010 Anchor Bay Blu-Ray release, and any digital projection you will see anywhere in the world, is a tweaked version. There are a fair list of tweaks version including removal of gate-hairs, lens flairs, blending matte shots, blending jump cuts, etc… Anyway this 35mm print, is that tweaked version, not the original release.

I was hoping that even if this ‘early 2000s’ print was related to that Blu-Ray release, then it would be the original print which they would have scanned and digitized before adding the tweaks before outputting the final digital tweaked version. I wasn’t even aware that the tweaked version existed as a physical print. You can see in this screenshot, Rob Tapert has been digitally removed from the background. So they must have scanned an original print, tweaked it, and transferred that back to 35mm film for some reason. This is that revised version.

When I did my restoration edit for my 2021 Book Of The Dead fanmade Blu-Ray release, I used that 2010 Anchor Bay Blu-Ray as a base and there was 8m 17s of footage out of the 85m 33s I replaced using upscaled standard definition untampered versions, so that gives an idea of how much footage has been altered;

https://www.bookofthedead.ws/online_portfolio/br_book_of_the_dead_~_book_of_the_dead_2_blu-ray.html

Now I did say the scan was a mixed bag. The colours are really pretty decent (they should be as good as the retail Blu-Ray once tweaked). As you can also see from the above screenshot, the Blu-Ray frame is cropped down from the full 35mm frame. I’ve only checked a few shots which vary according to anything which might need cropping out, but in this 35mm scan there will be more frame visible on every side.

I was hoping for a completely untampered print, and this tampered version is not ideal, but around 90% of the film itself is identical to the theatrical version, and I have my 1080p Blu-Ray restoration ready to go, so all I would need to do is replace the Blu-Ray base I was using, with this 35mm scan, and I can very easily output the untampered theatrical version in 1080p. If in the future, another 35mm print was to be located, then that could fill in the tampered-gaps.

Hi all, I’m Rob from the Evil Dead fansite BookOfTheDead.ws. This is a project to fund a 35mm scan of a The Evil Dead (1983) print. See further down as to why it’s worth scanning & preserving over the Blu-Ray version.

Here are the donations people have sent in so far;

$26.06 - zxthehedgehog
$22.97 - TonyAniante
$26.06 - TR2N
$26.06 - morecoffeeman
$51.80 - evildeadfan198
$10.61 - Dek Rollins
$31.20 - Santic
$15.00 - Richard M
$75.00 - Jared K
$15.76 - exile81
$26.06 - SimonM99
$26.06 - The Aluminum Falcon
$15.76 - kubi
$26.44 - Carleton J
$10.61 - Ryan C
$11.00 - Venny

PAID Print Rental - $253.73 ($250 + $3.73 Paypal Fee)
PAID Scanning, 4TB Hard Drive & Postage - $448.76 ($445 + $3.76 Paypal Fee)
Total Actual Scanning Costs - $702.49

Total Donations So Far - $416.45
Less Paypal Donation Fees - $24.99 (6%)
Total Raised - $391.46

I’ve already paid all the costs beyond the donations received, although it would be nice to get enough people interested to reduce that and share the cost more equally. I’m still $311 short on covering my costs.

UPDATE 2 - 03/04/22

Here is a preview of the first 22min reel;

A little bit more on the project, it was scanned in 5K in Raw CinemaDNG format by a US scanner on his Scanstation. The turnaround was only 11 days between him picking up the print from the collector, to my having the 4TB HDD in my hands here in the UK, really quick & highly recommended! He also very kindly ordered the HDD from Amazon.com for me, saving the postage time from the UK to the US.

To the transfer itself; having a RAW CinemaDNG scan, gives a lot more latitude to tweak the various colour & exposure settings, than a scan with ‘baked in’ exposure which might be over or under ideal levels. I was hoping to have one RAW setting for the whole film, but this either gives overexposed opening daylight scenes, or underexposed dark cellar sections, so I’m having to break it down into sections & shots and tweak it more than I thought.

One unexpected issue is processing time. Each 5K frame is 5120x3840px @ 300dpi (28.1mb), with each of the four reels around 31,000 frames a piece (that’s 123,709 frames @ 3.31TB total). I’m running an i7-7700k @ 4.2gHz CPU with 16GB ram & GTX 1060 6GB GPU, and even then it takes around 26 hours encoding time per reel! Rather than working on the 5K file, I’m using mid-way RAW exposure settings, cropping the video down to the final frame size so you can still see the edges, and encoding that to uncompressed AVI 1080p. Then I’m working though tweaking the levels, exposure and colours on that 1080p footage with Red Giant Colourista, which is much faster. Then I can either encode the final file from those AVIs, or apply the same filters to the 5K footage and encode from that. The colours/saturation on this print are very roughly the same as the 2010 Anchor Bay Blu-Ray, but I’m generally pushing the white balance more to the blue, and brightening some darker shots up so you can see more detail.

There was also a little light leakage from the sprocket holes on the right of the frame, so any darker shots which are brightened up, have a second copy overlaid, with masking of 90% of the left hand side of the frame, and a gradient of 10% off to the right, with darker blacks to compensate and make the whole picture look even.

Looking at this 35mm transfer’s optical audio and comparing it with the 1985 Japanese Herald Videogram Laserdisc true mono track, and the 2010 Blu-Ray stereo track converted to mono, it appears that the audio on the print is the original mono audio mix printed as dual mono, and has not been remixed or tampered with. Looking at the waveforms, there is very little difference between the laserdisc and 35mm audio, but there are fair differences with the Blu-ray audio. There aren’t really any replacements/alterations but certain sound effects and music start & endings have been blended/faded better in to the mix.

It will probably take a few more weeks to complete as I’m in the middle of another project I need to get finished first, but the project is 90% there. It’s rented, scanned and I have the transfer. It’s just a matter of working through the footage and encoding the final version.

UPDATE 1 - 20/03/22

Okay, so the print has been rented and I’ve got a short 5K test scanned section back.

it’s a mixed bag. I was hoping this would be an untouched print of the film, but it’s not. I’m not sure if people know, but the 2010 Anchor Bay Blu-Ray release, and any digital projection you will see anywhere in the world, is a tweaked version. There are a fair list of tweaks version including removal of gate-hairs, lens flairs, blending matte shots, blending jump cuts, etc… Anyway this 35mm print, is that tweaked version, not the original release.

I was hoping that even if this ‘early 2000s’ print was related to that Blu-Ray release, then it would be the original print which they would have scanned and digitized before adding the tweaks before outputting the final digital tweaked version. I wasn’t even aware that the tweaked version existed as a physical print. You can see in this screenshot, Rob Tapert has been digitally removed from the background. So they must have scanned an original print, tweaked it, and transferred that back to 35mm film for some reason. This is that revised version.

When I did my restoration edit for my 2021 Book Of The Dead fanmade Blu-Ray release, I used that 2010 Anchor Bay Blu-Ray as a base and there was 8m 17s of footage out of the 85m 33s I replaced using upscaled standard definition untampered versions, so that gives an idea of how much footage has been altered;

https://www.bookofthedead.ws/online_portfolio/br_book_of_the_dead_~_book_of_the_dead_2_blu-ray.html

Now I did say the scan was a mixed bag. The colours are really pretty decent (they should be as good as the retail Blu-Ray once tweaked). As you can also see from the above screenshot, the Blu-Ray frame is cropped down from the full 35mm frame. I’ve only checked a few shots which vary according to anything which might need cropping out, but in this 35mm scan there will be more frame visible on every side.

I was hoping for a completely untampered print, and this tampered version is not ideal, but around 90% of the film itself is identical to the theatrical version, and I have my 1080p Blu-Ray restoration ready to go, so all I would need to do is replace the Blu-Ray base I was using, with this 35mm scan, and I can very easily output the untampered theatrical version in 1080p. If in the future, another 35mm print was to be located, then that could fill in the tampered-gaps.

ORIGINAL POST - 06/12/21

A few years back, I undertook a project to scan all three Evil Dead trilogy 35mm trailers out of my own pocket, which you can ready more on here;

https://bookofthedead.ws/website/features_evil_dead_trilogy_35mm_trailers.html

From that, I can (roughly) compare the full 35mm frame, to the cropping of the current best releases. You can see the results here;

2015 2K 35mm trailer transfer (Blue) -Vs- 1999 US R1 Elite SE DVD trailer (Green) -Vs- 2010 US AB LE Open Matte movie (Red)

I also own a few strips of out-take 16mm film from the shoot. This strip & overlaid frame are part of the same shot. It was scanned using a negative scanner so the quality isn’t amazing, but it gives an idea of how much picture was cropped on the Blu-Ray from the original framing

Original 16mm film (Blue) -Vs- 2010 US AB LE Open Matte movie (Red)

Asides the frame cropping, there are also a long list of Blu-Ray/UltraHD tweaks to ‘fix’ the rough low-budget edges of the movie, including crew-members, lens flares & hairs digitally removed, handheld shots steadied, smoothing jump cuts & matte shots, recolouring various elements such as the sky, and more. If you see a digital projection of this anywhere, you’re more than likely watching this ‘restored’ version. If you want to read up on that, it’s all covered here;

https://www.bookofthedead.ws/online_portfolio/br_book_of_the_dead_~_book_of_the_dead_2_blu-ray.html

Even if the quality of the 35mm print is poor, at least it’s a start, and could serve as a repair print for a second future scan. I know the ED1 35mm trailer I had scanned was red from start to finish, but I managed to get something half decent out of it, which took around a week or so of work. Conversely the ED2 scan needed very little work, and that was printed only four years later. I guess it also comes down to stock & storage too. This is a photo from the ED1 trailer reel I was scanning/working from;

The raw 2k scan;

And this is the final 1080p colour corrected scan;

If anyone is interested in adding it, I have the following I got from a DVD trading site around 15 years ago;

Day Of The Dead - Tom Savini’s Behind The Scenes Camcorder Footage (3-DVDs - 4h 42m)

I’ve already contributed to this, but just to say this is all looking fantastic, top work and really appreciated!

$25 for me!

I’m sure it’s not needed, but I have trailer for Female Trouble, transferred from the UK Palace Pictures 1982 VHS of The Evil Dead. I got it when I transferred the whole tape. PM me if you do want a copy?

Just checked and the extended TV cut is on Spleen

I first posted this project back in 2012 and it didn’t really get going until this year when I made a real effort to find people on the Pre-Cert.co.uk forums and a couple of Pre-Cert groups on Facebook, with original VHS recordings of the Forbidden Weekend.

The 4-disc blu-ray preservation, also includes much of Channel 4’s 1999 Censored Weekend, and BBC2’s 1997 series’ Clive Barker’s A-Z Of Horror. You can read up on that project here;

http://www.bookofthedead.ws/online_portfolio/br_bbc2_may_1995_forbidden_weekend.html

Thanks, I’ve actually since put together this project; a 4-disc blu-ray preservation of the BBC2 1995 Forbidden Weekend, which also includes much of Channel 4’s 1999 Censored Weekend (which features Last Days Of The Board), and BBC2’s 1997 series’ Clive Barker’s A-Z Of Horror. You can read up on that project here;

http://www.bookofthedead.ws/online_portfolio/br_bbc2_may_1995_forbidden_weekend.html

You can read a full up-to-date write-up here;

http://www.bookofthedead.ws/online_portfolio/dvd_the_mary_whitehouse_experience.html

You can contact me though that site too.

Here are LD ripped mono audio tracks for both ED1 & ED2;

the_evil_dead_herald_videogram_mono_audio_track.zip

evil_dead_ii_se_blood_red_laserdisc_pcm_mono_audio_track.zip