A 4K restoration of cult classic Razor Blade Smile is heading to Pigeon Shrine Frightfest 2024, ahead of a physical media release.
The 4K Restoration supervised & approved by director Jake West is now the definitive vision of the film.
Jake says of the new master,
“‘With the wonderful team at Silver Salt Restoration handling all the precious film materials and the incredible talent and dedication of digital colorist Vince Knight we carefully maintained the original spirit of the 1998 cinema release’s colour grade, but have now pushed certain visual elements even further to get the final vision of the film down that I always had in my head. This couldn’t be fully achieved with the analogue optical printer light technology of the time we had to use to create the look back in 1998, and the only master that’s been available for the last 25 years is a standard definition telecine video master. That’s now all changed!
“We unearthed and went back to the original standard 16mm double perf camera negatives. These elements were originally neg cut as A, B & C Reels before being blown up to 35mm for the cinema release prints. The optical process of doing the blow-up via interpose & internet took the image & sharpness down by several generations for the final result. All that is now back!
“All the original film elements were scanned in 4k with the Arri XT scanner. A huge amount of digital clean-up removing film damage, dust and despotting has been done in months of painstaking work.”
Technically the film was shot on Standard double perf 16mm (not Super 16 – as Jake managed to blag a free Arri SR1 Camera with standard 16 gate, plus a load of short ends of 16mm stock from numerous production companies around Soho). The film was primarily shot on a large variety of different Kodak 16mm stocks from the crystal clarity of the fine-grained 5OD (daylight) at one end of the scale through to the (then) ‘new’ ultra high-speed Vision 500T. And we shot in about every conceivable type of Iighting situation, often having to switch stocks as the production was losing light (one of the disadvantages of shooting in winter!).
Jake added,
“The film wears its grain with pride and every bit of detail is now visible. In fact, there’s something about film grain that has a vampiric, timeless quality. Vampires and myths feel like they come from a dirtier more dangerous analogue world. One of the very first films ever made was in fact a vampire, the 1922 classic ‘Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror’, and growing up all the Vampire cinema I was weaned on was all shot on film. So I think the medium of film itself has that alchemical quality that a vampire film needs to feel timeless & perhaps a little more dangerous. There’s a feeling in the film stock’s grain itself that imbues it with magic… something that is missing now in the ultra-clean digital images of today’s modern camera tech.”
This brand new master will debut at the world-famous London Frightfest for its 25th Anniversary year at the Odeon Leicester Square Luxe on August 25th 2024 & then with more festival playdates around the world TBC.
The film will then be finally re-released in 4k UHD & Blu Ray by Severin Films in the US and Nucleus Films in the UK. Release date 2025 TBC.
Catch Razor Blade Smile at Pigeon Shrine Frightfest 2024.
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