Well, I finally gave up the ghost and ordered the Creature Features Blu-ray/DVD combo on eBay four days ago. It arrived today with a disclaimer from the seller that he searched for proper licensing and found the film to be in the public domain.gunnar wrote:I think that The Sleeping Car Murder was restored a few years ago and released on Blu-Ray in France. Somebody appears to be selling a bootleg Region 0 BD/DVD set on eBay with the US dubbed release on dvd and the French restored version with English subtitles on Blu-Ray. The legitimate French version can be found on Amazon (and likely elsewhere), but it is probably the wrong region.Big Magilla wrote:Back when I had the equipment to do so, I copied my old VHS copy of Madame Rosa to a DVD-R. It is really unwatchable. The only film that looks worse than that in a VHS-DVR-D-R transfer is The Shameless Old Lady. Those two films and The Sleeping Car Murder, also starring Signoret, are the three foreign language films I have most wanted to see restored to what they once looked like.
One down, two to go.
The letterboxed Region 0 Blu-ray (in French with English subtitles) is flawless. The 4x3 English dubbed DVD looks horrible. The dubbing, which I remembered as being very good, is irritatingly out of sync.
With this and the excellent recent Kino Lorber Blu-ray of Madame Rosa, my lone holdout among foreign language films in bad need of replacement is The Shameless Old Lady. The classic Hollywood films most in need of replacement are The Blue Veil and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs. Besides those three, most in need of a U.S. release is To Each His Own which is strangely only available on a Region 2 DVD.