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Duck, You Sucker (Fistful of Dynamite) (1971)
Duck, You Sucker (Fistful of Dynamite) (1971) poster
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Duck, You Sucker (Fistful of Dynamite) (1971)

Giù la testa

Western • 2h 37m

Overview

At the beginning of the 1913 Mexican Revolution, greedy bandit Juan Miranda and idealist John H. Mallory, an Irish Republican Army explosives expert on the lam from the British, fall in with a band of revolutionaries plotting to strike a national bank. When it turns out that the government has been using the bank as a hiding place for illegally detained political prisoners -- who are freed by the blast -- Miranda becomes a revolutionary hero against his will.

Director: Sergio Leone

Best English-Friendly Release

Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-ray

Best Video Release

Eureka Blu-ray slightly better than Kino Lorber. Note that the Eureka release has ~6 seconds of cuts due to BBFC rules.

Best Audio Release

Eureka has original mono.

Format

1080p Blu-ray

Length

157 mins

Type

Movie

Alternative Titles

A Fistful of Dynamite, Duck, You Sucker!

Last Updated

9 months ago

Contributors

Best English-Friendly Release

Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-ray

Best Video Release

Eureka Blu-ray slightly better than Kino Lorber. Note that the Eureka release has ~6 seconds of cuts due to BBFC rules.

Best Audio Release

Eureka has original mono.

Format
1080p Blu-ray
Length
157 mins
Type
Movie
Alternative Titles
A Fistful of Dynamite, Duck, You Sucker!
Last Updated
9 months ago
Contributors

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  • 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.

Best English-Friendly:

Arrow 4K Blu-ray

Best Video:

Arrow 4K Blu-ray

Best Audio:
  • 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.

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Best English-Friendly:

251 min cut (Extended): Fox Blu-ray. Eagle Pictures has forced Italy subs in some parts

229 min cut (theatrical): WB Blu-ray

139 min cut (US theatrical): VHS

Best Video:

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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.

Best Audio:

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)

Additional Info:

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.

Best English-Friendly:

251 min cut (Extended): Fox Blu-ray. Eagle Pictures has forced Italy subs in some parts

229 min cut (theatrical): WB Blu-ray

139 min cut (US theatrical): VHS

Best Video:

Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray from nic's review. Will wait for the caps to decide whether it's better than previous Blu-ray

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.

Best Audio:

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)

Additional Info:

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US theatrical cut is infamously bad, was panned at release and never re-released on home video.

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