I guess there's no elaboration necessary to tell which version looks better - you can easily see that for yourself. Which version sounds better, however, is one of the tough ones. I'd say the Russian disc's got an edge for the inclusion of the original Czech soundtrack, but it's no good unless you understand spoken Czech, or written Russian...

One more thing about the Russian DVD I'd like to mention is the packaging - I was pleasantly surprised to find out it was made completely out of paper. ;-)

Although showing a few extra lines of image, this seems to have come from the same source as Moskwood's version = nothing to write home about. There's a sort of jaggedness to the picture, suggesting its origin in an analogue tape of some kind. So far, only the Japanese edition seems to be film sourced...

Beautiful transfer, clean as a whistle too - I think I noticed one little scratch near Petr Čepek's head in one scene, but that's about it! As regards the competition, we can discard all the crappy interlaced-like (analogue/tape source?) PAL editions immediately, and the Japanese one... it does show more picture especially on the right side, but Athanor's new master blows it out of the water in every other aspect.

Oh, and the new 5.1 mix is very nice too - very "ambient", although the purist in me wishes they had included the original mono audio - it's not as if there was no space on the disc left for it...

This Blu-ray collection was one of the perks for the supporters of Švankmajer's Indiegogo campaign intended for co-financing his ultimate film, "Hmyz" ("Insect"), and it's not commercially available at the time of this writing.

The transfer is just as good as on the 2012 DVD, only in 1080p, but it's a pity the audio didn't get a bump to lossless - especially since there's enough free space left on the disc to accommodate both soundtracks in high resolution.