You know, my wife is right when she keeps telling me that I shouldn't buy more than one edition of the same movie. In this case, what I got for over $80 is a port of the Synapse R1 disc, stripped of extras & the English audio track, and re-encoded to fit onto DVD5. The difference this makes in the image quality is almost imperceptible though. In the example below (blown-up to 200 %), you might be able to discern a slight loss of the texture in the DVD5 version (normal: Kinokuniya Company, mouse over: Synapse Films - requires JavaScript):

However, the next example, which I stumbled upon by pure chance, and 30 seconds longer playback time make me think there is more about the Kinokuniya DVD than meets the eye: ;-)

Now, to tell the truth, the only reason I bought this set was the rumour I heard, that Riccardo Freda's "L'orribile segreto del Dr. Hichcock" was supposed to be released on DVD in Japan, bundled with Lucio Fulci's "Non si sevizia un paperino" & Pupi Avati's "La casa dalle finestre che ridono." I searched the Japanese Internet (I understand Nihongo a bit ;-)), but didn't find any relevant piece of information. What I did find, however, were two recent Euro Horror sets from the Kinokuniya Company, the 2nd being the one reviewed here, and the 1st - "Êga wa osoroshî: Horror Movies Best of Best DVD-BOX" - containing Giorgio Ferroni's "Il mulino delle donne di pietra," Jack Clayton's "The Innocents" & Mario Bava's "La frusta e il corpo," a combination vaguely similar to the rumoured set. Hoping that there might be a trailer, or at least a leaflet advertising the contents of the next box, I bought the 2nd set, just to find... nothing. Nothing at all... :-(

A few interesting facts I stumbled upon:

1. The French edition contains 3 scenes not seen on the other two DVDs:

2. The famous "in the nudd" scene is replaced with a "no nudd at all" one:

0:20 @ 1:17:31 [Synapse, left] / 0:19 @ 1:14:52 [Seven7, right]
(Sorry, this one is going to be a bit longer...)


Overall, the quality of the French transfer is much better, as you can see in our gallery...