VCI's new DVD of HANNIBAL (1960) is quite good, but not quite perfect. The image is gorgeous, and looks to be taken from the original Technicolor negative. I compared the DVD to my long OOP Japanese prerecorded VHS, and noticed two differences: the disc's letterboxing deletes a small bit of picture information on the left edge of the frame, and the print runs nearly four minutes shorter. The sources I checked indicate that the film runs 103 minutes, so the VCI print runs a bit short at 100 minutes. Overall, though, the disc is splendid, and looks as good as Fox's THE 300 SPARTANS disc.

. . . it was a pleasure to finally see this film by Edgar G. Ulmer as it has always been a missing check mark on my list of his many, many films . . . the DVD does look pretty good, particularly so when you consider this is no doubt a film about which not too many people have shown an interest - great credit goes to VCI for thinking of it, as well as for giving it a presentation beyond expectations . . . anyway, this is not an Ulmer film I would use to try to convince the uninitiated (even some of the initiated) of his worth as a director (he didn't appear to have a lot of interest in this project), but it was a nice way to spend a rainey Seattle Friday afternoon, and made be very pleased we used a train when we crossed the Alps . . .