Movies that are too dark to see what is going on **

That's interesting I have the complete set from 2004 the first one was really dark.
Now that recall. I guess the element of the scare went a little to far.

 

I think I read somewhere that Scoresese had to mute the colors during the big shootout to keep the film from getting an X rating. Not sure if it's actually true though.

 

I have positively done that in movies before: deliberately "dulled" the blood in a scene to the point where it's almost black in order to get the rating down. Famously, Quentin Tarantino did an entire 10-minute bloody fight scene in Kill Bill that was shot in color but finished in B&W, partly to avoid an NC-17 and partly because they thought it was interesting artistically to change the look.

 

Which movies ????

 

God, far too many. Let me see... The Hills Have Eyes (the original), Last House on the Left (ditto), Exorcist II, Bug, Amityville Horror (original), Black Sunday (a very good looking transfer), and Basket Case. The director of the latter told us that the 1990s transfer we did was the best the film ever looked, far better than it ever looked in the theater.

I did one very recently, but cannot say. Not even out yet.

 

I was at a friends house a couple weeks ago and he was watching Godzilla 2014 on blu-ray and I thought it looked darker than it did in the theater.

 

The opening scene in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover was so dark someone called out from the audience to fix it.
One dvd version has the brightness and contrast reduced, which doesn't look so great. The original, which I've read, is the way Peter Greenaway wanted it. It's an awful scene, so no need to see it better. But a great film.

 

I'm not sure if it was due to the photography of the film itself or just an overly dark DVD transfer, but I seem to recall the ending of Bruno Mattei's The Other Hell being so murky that you couldn't even tell what happens in the final shot.

 

Many Clint Eastwood-directed movies.

I recall one film critic complaining that it looked like he had forgot to pay the electric bill.

 

I used to take my girlfriend to the drive-in and we were usually done making out by the time the end of the movie came around.

 

I always wondered that about Bug. A lot of that picture (especially around the climactic stabbing) seemed to have the colors in a strange state for no clear narrative reason (black blood, etc.).

Taxi Driver is kind of the opposite: they made the blood "unreal" by making it more vivid, almost pink as I recall. Although the final shootout is, indeed, very dark. There's also some weird stuff going on with undercranking in that scene; the shooting of the one guy in the face seems to be sped up.

 

I remember "Lincoln" being darkly lit.

 

The Keep was the first one I thought of. Haven't seen it in years.

Is there any chance this ever sees a new release? I know some of the stories about how much MM has done to prevent this from happening, but I would like to see it again, poor FX or not. The feelings/emotions that the combination of the music and scenery was very memorable.

 

Mimic the first movie and two made for video sequels
all way too dark. The first one did have budget and effects were good.
I don't know what Del Toro was thinking.?

 

I just watched the movie and the making of stuff on the Blu this weekend. He combined black and white and colour footage to reduce the impact of the red blood in order to shut up the censors. I think he said it was 75% b&w and 25% colour. Scorceses goes into a lot of detail about it on the directors commentary.

 

Lynch put out Eraserhead himself in the 90's on DVD and it was repeatedly delayed because he was unhappy with the transfer. I agree the Criterion looks terrific.

 

Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid. Parts are dark...too dark to see.

 

Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond uses a process called, I think, 'pre-fogging' the film, sort of partially exposing it beforehand for that effect. I think it's beautiful dream of movie. But I recall seeing it in several times in different theaters, and it had to be projected with proper bulb strength, or a lot would be lost. Not so much obscured by darkness, but the kind of mystical feel of the movie.

 

My recollection of it is that the digital effects were already pretty ugly in 1997 when it came out.

 

John Carpenters The Fog.
Gothika I realize it's suppose that way but some it was way too dark.

 

I agree with this. The new 4K transfer looks even better imo.

 

Gorky Park was hard to watch, though I wonder if the theater really was calibrated properly. That can be a problem! We attended a local Edwards and the picture was OUT OF FOCUS. I thought it was maybe my eyes feeling tired or something, until slightly fuzzy credits rolled and I asked my companion and others all around and we agreed.

The cinema manager listened to us carefully, stated the system was supposed to auto-calibrate, but that he would look into because things in life were never 100% foolproof. He also gave us 2 free tickets!

I've also had to go out to find the manager and say the sound was WAY "over reference level"-using that phrase on purpose. Each time, it was after a matinee, where apparently they had cranked it up due to lots of noisy kids.

 

Mr. Mann has very tight control over most of his films & TV shows, and I don't think anybody can do anything with or to them without his involvement.

Naaa, I saw John Carpenter's original The Fog in the theater, and it was fine. We did the transfer on it at U.S. Video around 1980 or so, and it wasn't that dark. I dunno how it fared in the decades that followed, but John Carpenter is not an ultra-dark guy in terms of the look.

 

I did that one so long ago (1980), I can barely remember it except that it was large flying cockroachers that farted fire. Not director William Castle's finest hour. It was just a straight across, non-tweaky transfer, knocked out in a couple of days... which was standard for that period. Normal whites, normal color, black blacks, reasonable standard def broadcast stuff.

It was rare any video mastering took more than a week in those days. Now, a week is a minimal amount of time for many features, and it frequently goes 3-4 weeks. And 6-months for A-level films (Marvel, Disney, Peter Jackson, Michael Bay, Jim Cameron, etc.).

 

Sort of related: I remember Eddie Murphy, back in the 80s, commenting on how, having dark skin, it was hard to see the features of his face in a lot of his films because most of the people who work on the sets were used to lighting scenes with white people in them. I can see this.