Wow - what a mess! 8 years ago (almost to the day) Image Entertainment distributed a single-layered unconverted PAL-sourced transfer of René Clément's Joy House (Les Felins). It was bare-bones in a snapper case and was eventually fetching ridiculous prices on auction - including by third party profiteers on Amazon's Marketplace.

Koch Lorber now comes to the rescue (or do they) with a dual-layered, bare bones, interlaced, contrast -boosted replacement. It offers the French (with optional subtitles) or English audio (no subtitles) version of the film but the combing is horrendous with lots of artefacts - worse than the improper-standard 'ghosting' on the old Image disc. The Koch transfer is also slightly pictureboxed with a black border circumventing the frame.

Audio on both is fairly weak too - maybe with the Koch gaining the upper hand. 

Gee whiz - couldn't someone do better? This is awful. I've become quite sensitive to brightness boosting and I actually think I prefer the Image DVD which may be stretched a shade horizontally.

I'm very disappointed that after 8 years - something much better couldn't be produced. The film is not brilliant but seems to encapsulates that certain time of quintessential French-ness that we can feel very nostalgic about - Delon, Fonda and Lola Albright look so good in this. I kinda like Les Felins but and am now clinging to my Image disc - presumably for a long time to come (hopefully not another 8 years till a better attempt is made). Koch dare ask OVER $20 for their DVD. Shameful.   

Gary W. Tooze