Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) 4K Dolby Vision review, UK Arrow UHD disc. HDR metadata: Mastering display colour primaries: BT.2020. Mastering display luminance levels: 1000/0.0001 max/min nits. Maximum Content Light Level: 531 nits. Maximum Frame Average Light Level: 317 nits. Disc type: UHD100.

Arrow's first UHD licensed from Sony is of Ken Branagh's mid-'90s take on Frankenstein, produced by American Zoetrope hence the same 'branding' as Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (though this was before cinematic universes were a thing so there's no cross-pollination, thankfully). As I understand it Sony don't let boutiques do their own transfers so all the mastering work was carried out for/by Sony, using the OG negative with Branagh approving the grading according to the booklet.

There's little to no contemporary coverage in the usual places on how the movie was shot but it's self-evident that it was done 1.85 on 35mm, likely using the newer EXR stocks of the period which greatly refined the grain versus those gritty '80s stocks, and didn't carry as prominent dye clouds as later stocks would produce. There is however a piece on the digital visual effects of the movie in the December 1994 issue of American Cinematographer and it helped to answer something that was bugging me from the start: why do the exteriors of the Arctic scenes that bookend the film look rather crappy? Answer: they shot that stuff in a studio against a dark background but it was decided to tart it up a bit in post, so the VFX house added digital mist, stars and some icebergs in the distance, as well as desaturating the footage, totalling some 90 shots. The actual work is pretty good, as even in such early form these digital composites were way more seamless than any optically-composited versions of the above effects, but it's the quality of the filmouts that vary wildly from this period and these here examples are noticeably soft with quite 'busy' grain. They look very dupey and while I'm assuming that they always did, the 4K transfer does them no favours especially because the first generation footage is absolutely fookin stunning.

But at the same time I regularly call for studios to leave the opticals alone, this applies to nascent digital effects too (Universal, I'm looking at you!) and there's no obvious DNR wank going on here. There are a lot more digital VFX than you might think in the rest of the movie too, like for the arcs of electricity used in various scenes and even the electric eels were rod-operated puppets that had to have the rods removed in post. I think there's even a digital wipe or two, like in the shot when Dr. Frankenstein is climbing up the stairs to his new digs in Ingolstadt: the quality is conspicuously dupey once again and the reason becomes clear when he passes in front of camera to go through the door, they hide the transition from the real location to the interior set as he does so. But hey, it is what it is and not every VFX looks as ropey as the Arctic bookends do, the electricity stuff holds up quite nicely.

I'd imagine that the movie was cut to A/B rolls though (separate strands of original negative cut to hold alternating pieces of footage) because most of the dissolves look absolutely cherry, done digitally when doing a new transfer by using the first generation negative, and that's a very good thing as this movie has a LOT of dissolves! If they had been done as regular opticals then a massive chunk of this 'original negative' wouldn't have been original negative at all but lots and lots of dupe neg, and with all the VFX filmouts as well then the movie could've ended up looking rather cruddy. As it is, it's spectacular. Now, the movie was shot with in-camera filtration almost as a matter of course, which is what causes that delicious 4-point 'star' on sources of light, but it doesn't soften the image too much and they kept it looking quite contrasty which maintains the perception of sharpness. And as it's 1.85 they're not having to deal with anamorphic distortion or whatever so the detail is extremely crisp from corner to corner, they spent money on some rather grand sets like the Frankenstein mansion/palace and by golly we get to see them.

The actors are similarly exposed, there's such fine detail on clothing, hair and skin you can count the spots on Helena Bonham Carter's forehead, and the prosthetics on Robert De Niro hold up to even the closest scrutiny. And the grain, OH the grain. It's ultra-fine and very much a constant feature, staggeringly sharp with almost no blotching from dye clouds, looks utterly amazing and is a wonderful complement to the imagery. The new Blu-ray of this transfer does a good job at preserving most of this but it just can't resolve the high-frequency information like the UHD can, the finest details in wide shots start to drop off and the grain simply doesn't look as sharp.

The colour's really nice too. Not that it "pops" (ugh) as that clearly wasn't the intent for something intended to reflect the 18th century, but there are distinct colour schemes like the duck egg blue of the mansion's grand hall, the earthier tones of Ingolstadt's streets and gorgeous caramel-coloured candlelit interiors. The way that the warmth plays across the faces of the actors is sumptous, although skin tones obviously cool off when outside, and HBC's porcelain skin remains a striking counterpoint to Branagh's bronzed buffness in all lighting conditions. What's interesting is that the new Blu-ray has a few extra points of yellow next to the more neutral UHD, it makes the Blu's colour more saturated but not in a good way as those caramel faces instead look more like oompa-loompas in some shots, and I'm not being hyperbolic. I say this so often but skin tones genuinely have more nuance in the HDR, you still get that radiant warmth in the interiors but there is still variance underneath the lighting, if that makes sense, whereas on the Blu the warmth is allowed to overpower the image, trading in the richness of the UHD's colour for something markedly gaudier.

The HDR looks terrific, or at least terrific for my tastes. This is far from a Light Cannon™ job by Sony (perhaps because the director had his say on it?) but it still has some very keen usage of the extended dynamic range vs the new Blu-ray. Smaller light sources like the candles have added intensity vs the SDR, and effects like the lightning flashes retain more range in HDR, but it's the shots of fire that benefit the most. You get more range and depth inside the flames but more than that is the potency of the brightness. Not so much that they're blinding, I'm not saying that, but there's a definite increase vs the SDR viewed at 140 nits peak and it makes that fire gag near the end look even more insane than it already is. On the Blu it loses plenty of punch because of how the flames are being clipped and the peak brightness is bleh, but in HDR you wonder how the stunt person got out alive such is the visceral ferocity of it. The fire actually has more of a yellow tone in SDR whereas it's less saturated in HDR, but the HDR itself more than makes up for it. Average brightness levels tend to fall on or below the SDR equivalent but this is what enhances the sense of contrast when those brighter HDR moments kick in. To use an audio analogy the SDR is just loud all the way through whereas the HDR uses the highs and lows way more effectively. The black levels are good and thick to the point where shadow detail falls off rather quickly even on hair and clothing, leaving little black voids everywhere, but the new Blu is the same and so is the old Blu from the looks of it, and it's done without any horrid tints in near-black regions so no complaints.

I was surprised to read in the booklet that this disc was not authored by Fidelity in Motion, but such is the increasing popularity of the format amongst indie labels that dear David cannot possibly do everything. From looking at BFinfo numbers alone I think most people assumed that this was a David M joint, what with the massively high bitrate for the HDR10 layer and only a minimal DV layer containing the metadata and nothing else, but the booklet sez that 'Blu-ray Authoring & Subtitling' was done by The Engine House and Visual Data Media Service (the latter having done the BFI's recent UHD of The Proposition). It doesn't distinguish which did the UHD authoring but whoever did: we've got a new sheriff in town. I will worship the ground that David walks on until the day I die, right, but this here 4K encode for Frankenstein is every bit as good as anything he would've done, no word of a lie. The grain is allowed unfettered access to our eyeballs with no blocking or chunky chroma noise to spoil it, gradations of colour are handled superbly and sudden shifts in brightness present zero problems. Outstanding.

I saw the movie many years ago and it didn't particularly stick with me but hoooo boy am I glad I revisited it (and only because I got 10% off the steelbook at zavvi!) because I done enjoyed it far more than I thought I would. It's not as batshit campy as Coppola's Dracula but still has a few theatrical flourishes, and the set design as mentioned is beautifully done, with Frankenstein's lab having something of an almost Gilliam-esque bent to it, like with the undulating sac of amniotic fluid. Good solid cast, always nice to see Cherie Lunghi, and I thought going in that Branagh may overplay it but he's surprisingly restrained, as is De Niro's prosthetic-laden creature, and both end up just as sad, alone and ultimately pathetic as the other. Cracking movie supported by an excellent transfer, minor source-related issues aside, aided and abetted by an outrageously good encode. Arrow have smashed it. Again.