Monday 14 April 2014

Rabid Dogs Release Update



Unfortunately no suitable material for the new HD transfer of RABID DOGS has been uncovered. Lamberto Bava (assistant director) and Alfredo Leone’s (producer) re-cut of the film, KIDNAPPED has been transferred in High Definition. This version of the film has many differences not common to RABID DOGS so it cannot be simply re-edited to the RABID DOGS version. 



After communicating with Lamberto Bava we have discovered the original negative of RABID DOGS was used to edit KIDNAPPED and the off-cuts could not be located and are now presumed either lost or destroyed. Unfortunately the negative was not transferred to another source suitable for HD transfer, no 35mm exhibition prints are known to exist and no other pre-print sources such as an internegative or interpositive have been recovered or known to exist. The original transfer for the Standard Definition RABID DOGS Anchor Bay DVD was a Standard Definition transfer only and the source for that transfer is unknown as the original lab is no longer in operation and whatever material that may have been transferred may have gone with it. 

In light of this information from Mr Bava regarding the negative and the lack of suitable materials we have taken the decision to continue with our release of the films. Therefore RABID DOGS will be presented in a mixture of High Definition and Standard Definition in order for the film to be presented in the best quality possible. 

RABID DOGS will now be released later in the year so please do keep checking back for a confirmed date which will be announced soon. We thank you all for your understanding and patience with this release.

1 comment:

  1. Lamberto should be ashamed of himself. The hatchet job he and Leone did on Rabid Dogs is an insult to his father's work. Although Mario himself never got to finish the film, the version that was completed in the '90s according to his original plan is one of his best films, a remarkable display of directorial control. What Lamberto and Leone did was to trash that in an attempt to make the film conform to a more conventional poliziotteschi formula by "opening it up" and ruining the claustrophobic intensity of Bava's plan to shoot virtually the whole film inside the speeding car. Maybe there's a touch of Oedipal revenge on Lamberto's part given that nothing he has done as a director has come anywhere close to the quality of his father's work.

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