On Friday, January 21, the fabulous, unrepeatable, sickly and eternal will arrive at FlixOlé ‘Rapture’. Iván Zulueta’s masterpiece looks better than ever thanks to the extraordinary work of Altered Innocence and Video Mercury Films, who deliver a 4K restoration worthy of its cult following.
The ultimate outburst
to know a little better how the possibility of restoring the film arose I was able to chat with Miguel López, head of marketing for the platform, and with Frank Jaffe, head of Altered Innocence, the most artistic division of the indispensable Vinegar Syndrome.
“Well, ‘Arrebato’ has always been extremely difficult to find and virtually underground in the United States. It has always been a shadow movie. I know of some arthouse cinemas like the Anthology Film Archives and the Austin Film Society that used to show it through a 35mm print that was badly damaged and also badly translated.Jaffe says.
For his part, López assures that “We believe that this is a title of vital importance in the Spanish cinema and we have felt that the film deserved a restoration like this, from the original camera negative. We achieve the best image and sound quality thanks to the latest technologies so that the experience of watching ‘Arrebato’ is as enriching as possible. It is the philosophy that we have followed at FlixOlé since our beginnings, where we have always tried to recover as much cinema as possible with meticulous restoration processes that offer us the highest possible quality. Culture in general and cinema in particular, is an asset that we must preserve and it is one of our fundamental objectives. In addition, the collaboration with Altered Innocence makes this new restored material available in a market as important as the United States.“.
“Every good movie deserves a chance to be accessible to the public, and the fact that a brilliant auteur horror movie like ‘The Outburst’ wasn’t available here was criminal.“, they add from Altered Innocence. “I decided to work with the film from the first moment I saw it. I felt that the filmmaker was putting me in a trance, but at the same time I couldn’t contain my personal enthusiasm for release something so dangerous and unknown in the United States“.
The truth is that the enthusiasm of these veteran archaeologists in the cult It is a source of pride for national film buffs and great news for our cinema. Lopez speaking: “The truth is that working with Altered Innocence was the result of a common interest. When we became interested in the film to include it on our platform, it was at the same time that they were asking about the film. We quickly saw that it was a very beneficial opportunity for both of us and we began to work together on its restoration. Like us, Altered Innocente bet on ‘Arrebato’ from the first moment and without a doubt the result has been very positive“.
jaffe us talk about the restoration process: “Video Mercury Films in Spain provided me with a raw, ungraded 4K scan of the OCN (original camera negative). After that, Sebastian del Castillo of the American Genre Film Archive (a nonprofit archival, restoration, and distribution organization of the Alamo Drafthouse theater chain) restored the film in 4K using Phoenix Finish for dirt, dust, and scratch removal. Color grading and image stabilization were done with DaVinci Resolve.”
“Audio noise removal was done with Izotope RX 8 Audio Editor. It was not a negative in the best conditionsSo there were issues with dirt, color lines, image stabilization, and certainly we didn’t have enough time or money to do the perfect restore, but over the course of a month or so we identified the biggest issues and we work to solve them“. I must say that the result is a copy of ‘Outburst’ as we have never seen.
“The start of the pandemic just coincided when we began the entire process for its restoration. The truth is that the work was always very professional, looking to add value to a cult film little known in the United States. Some labels are committed to recovering catalog films and putting them back on the agenda. And this time they have done a great job“, they add from the platform.
I also asked Jaffe about the controversial 40th anniversary Spanish edition. “If you mean 39 Echelon bluray, then yes, I am well aware of the poor standard definition conversion. I was pretty horrified and while my restoration wasn’t an answer to that, I was certainly excited about it. be able to provide a much better quality copy of the film to the fans“.
Lopez adds: “People are interested in the work of Ivan Zuluetabut not everyone is willing recover from the negative the film material, nor the time to work on the communication of a somewhat forgotten film. The work that has been done now will undoubtedly allow this masterpiece to be given a second life in Spain and beyond our borders.“.
It also answers the million dollar question, now that tariffs make it so difficult for us to be able to support the initiatives of people like Vinegar in the same way as before. “Yes, there are already conversations to create a new blu-ray with this new material for marketing in Spain“. All great news.
Thank you both very much for your time and information..