Some time ago, I "hailed" Artus Films' take on "I lunghi capelli della morte" as the best (PQ-wise) of the bunch I've got the chance to compare. I considered their "The Emperor and the Golem" release pretty good too (until the Czech one came along ;-)). And now - this...

It seems they started from the same master Retromedia used, however, the result is an interlaced mess of an encode. What I don't understand is the 4 minutes shorter playback time; I always thought that one of the tell-tale signs of an improper "standards" conversion (NTSC > PAL in this case, or so I appreciate) was the virtually identical length of both the NTSC source and the PAL "target" (or vice versa). A nice example of what I'm talking about:

"Late August at the Ozone Hotel"

• ČT2 DVB, 1:17:38.20; a proper PAL transfer
• Facets Video, 1:17:41.21; PAL > NTSC standards conversion
• Noshame Films, 1:17:46.09; NTSC > PAL standards conversion of the above (!)

I guess Artus Films must have used a more "sophisticated" approach... :-P

This is the only reasonable-quality version of "The Ghost" currently available, so there's no point fussing about the damage the print displays. However, I'd still like to bring your attention to 2 things:

1. An encoding problem that appears in scenes where the red colour is heavily employed (note that the following example was not squeezed to get the correct AR):

2. A strange artefact I found, which can be seen also in the Noshame's edition of Freda's "Caltiki - il mostro immortale." I wonder what it's supposed to be...