The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo
Western • 2h 41m
Director: Sergio Leone
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef, Aldo Giuffrè, Luigi Pistilli, Rada Rassimov, Enzo Petito, Claudio Scarchilli, Antonio Casale, Livio Lorenzon, Sandro Scarchilli, Benito Stefanelli, Angelo Novi, Antonio Casas, Aldo Sambrell, Al Mulock, Sergio Mendizábal, Antonio Molino Rojo, Lorenzo Robledo, Mario Brega, Chelo Alonso, Fortunato Arena, Román Ariznavarreta, Silvana Bacci, Joseph Bradley, Frank Braña, Amerigo Castrighella, Saturno Cerra, William Conroy, Axel Darna, Tony Di Mitri, Gianni Di Segni, Alberigo Donadeo, Attilio Dottesio, Luis Fernández de Eribe, Veriano Ginesi, Jesús Guzmán, Víctor Israel, Nazzareno Natale, Ricardo Palacios, Antonio Palombi, Romano Puppo, Antoñito Ruiz, Aysanoa Runachagua, Enrique Santiago, José Terrón, Franco Tocci, Antonio Montoya
Best English-friendly & video release
Arrow 4K Blu-ray > Kino Lorber, see caps https://slow.pics/c/P4E9uTHR
Updated 5 months ago
Best audio release
Arrow 4K Blu-ray for English dub, Kino Lorber 2017 Blu-ray for Italy dub
UHD tiers
About the film
While the Civil War rages on between the Union and the Confederacy, three men – a quiet loner, a ruthless hitman, and a Mexican bandit – comb the American Southwest in search of a strongbox containing $200,000 in stolen gold.
- TSPDT
- 2026: #1562025: #1542024: #1562023: #1532022: #153
Director: Sergio Leone
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Arrow's English mono is from the soundtrack negatives, with light noise reduction but still the highest quality anywhere. The main title is restored from the 1985 LaserDisc analog mono.
The 1985 CBS/Fox LaserDisc for untouched English mono despite element defects and an incomplete print used. The main title on this LaserDisc is the highest quality version known to exist.
The Arrow 5.1 is a careful upmix from their mono restoration to create a purist multichannel mix.
The Italy mono exists in lesser quality but Arrow performed additional restoration work to improve what they could.
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Arrow 4K Blu-ray > Kino Lorber, see caps
1984 Key Video Hi-Fi VHS
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Flicker Alley 4K confirmed for 2027 https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=24404584&postcount=1
MoC audio is better https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=225532&page=3
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
WB 4K
Sources: YouTube (opens in a new tab)
An undeniably significant improvement from the BD yet still severely flawed. See DFIC's review.
Director: Buster Keaton
Kino Lorber new Seven Chances / Sherlock Jr. Blu-ray?
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
MoC 4K Blu-ray late 2027
Lobster Films (Kino Lorber?) > Cohen/Eureka https://slow.pics/c/3KWXoMyR The new Kino Lorber's Seven Chances / Sherlock Jr. might be using the same restoration as Lobster Films
Director: Billy Wilder
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
(transfer of the 1989 MGM LaserDisc, without problems plaguing Kino Lorber's release)
Arrow UHD is an update of the original 4K scan done for their BD. It is also visually far superior to the Kino version and adds Dolby Vision HDR. The Arrow UHD uses a new LD mono capture and has none of the issues or processing found in the Kino UHD which also used an LD mono capture and somehow mucked it up. Short of a brand new scan, the Arrow UHD is as good as it possibly can be.
Director: Michael Cimino
2020 Shout! Factory 4K
2020 Shout! Factory 4K slightly better than StudioCanal in HDR10. Similar in DV
35mm mix: 1991 Universal LaserDisc
70mm mix: StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray
35mm mix: 1991 Universal LaserDisc marginally better than StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray. Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray is downmix.
70mm mix: StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray. Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray is remix.
Director: Orson Welles
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · blah-ray.blogspot.com (opens in a new tab)
WB Europe 4K Blu-ray
WB Europe 4K Blu-ray slightly better encoding than Criterion (caveat: missing Criterion extras)
Theatrical Cut: Italy Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray
Redux Cut: Lionsgate vs Eagle Pictures?
Final Cut: Lionsgate or Eagle Pictures, both are not great (visible chroma noise)
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Theatrical: Germany 4K Blu-ray/US Blu-ray DD 5.1 (1979 mix)
In the Lionsgate US/UK 6-disc set, there are 4 discs of the main feature. For whatever reason, the 4K discs lack the *original track. The Germany 4K Blu-ray release is different on this matter.
UBD: Final Cut: Atmos, DD2.0
UBD: Redux/Theatrical: Atmos
BD: Final Cut: Atmos, DD2.0
BD: Redux/Theatrical: Dtru5.1 (Redux mix?), DD5.1 (?), DD5.1 (Theatrical only), DD2.0 (downmix??)
As a result the Theatrical Cut has 4 tracks, The Redux has 3. Differences are unclear.
BD: Hearts of Darkness
BD: Special Features
Director: George Lucas
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
OG: "4K77" or "D+77" on high seas.
Special Edition: "4K97_IV" or "D+97_IV" on high seas.
2027 Original Trilogy restoration/50th anniversary rerelease clips leaked plus release confirmed
OG: LaserDisc audio is the best option for the Dolby Stereo mixes (and usually included in fan restorations). There are 16mm/TV rips of the mono mixes.
Special Edition: Cinema DTS or 1997 LaserDisc for the Special Edition.
Director: David Lean
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
The 5.1 on Sony 4K Blu-ray is from the 1989 70mm mix. The original is 4-track. not on the disc.
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab) · Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
251 min cut (Extended): Fox Blu-ray. Eagle Pictures has forced Italian subs in some parts
229 min cut (Theatrical): WB Blu-ray
139 min cut (US theatrical): VHS
Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray, caps
The 4K includes both theatrical and extended cuts. It's overall a solid upgrade over previous discs, but some will strongly dislike the color grading.
There are some issues with encoding and grain management.
Nic's review:
Some definitely messed with it as there’s grain management going on that resulted in magnetic, squishy grain movement. Both cuts (4K discs) are affected and it doesn’t look like an encoding issue to me as the bitrates don’t drop down to single digits á la Paramount or StudioCanal. During opticals, the lowest I’ve noted on the Extended 4K was around 30 MB/s vs. ~5 MB/s more for the theatrical cut.
Darker scenes are mostly (but not always) better but when it gets brighter, particularly in exteriors or scenes like the Jennifer Connelly dance scene at minute 38, I can’t unsee the digital tinkering as it does some damage texturally.
I compared it with the Eagle Pictures and Warner Bros Fox Blu-ray of the extended cut and they all look fine without grain management like that. Eagle Pictures’s Blu-ray is an older one if anyone’s curious and credited to another authoring house than 64Biz, which did the 4K.
Other than that, except for some encoding-related chroma noise that peeks through in the DV layer, Eagle Pictures did everything right. They corrected the framing to 1.85, kept the original English titles, the English restoration note, subtitles, HDR/DV is gentle and respectful of the source black levels are better than on the Warner Bros/Fox Blu-ray. Without that grain management, this would’ve been the all-timer release we all longed for.
229 min cut: Warner Bros LaserDisc
251 min cut: Fox Blu-ray (24-bit, Eagle Pictures is 16-bit, not audible)
229 min cut: Warner Bros LaserDisc (missing 2 minutes, but original mono mix was never released on DVD/Blu-ray)
Extended edition adds scenes cut from the theatrical, but from a much lower quality source. It's intended to approximate the original cut, but to what extent that is true is debatable.
US theatrical cut is infamously bad, was panned at release and never re-released on home video.
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