NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Indicator Blu-ray (June 2022): Indicator have transferred Roy Boulting's Pastor Hall to its world premiere on Blu-ray. It is cited as being "newly restored from 4K scans of the nitrate duplicate negative". The 1080P image is at Indicator's high standard - on a dual-layered disc with a max'ed out bitrate. Contrast is excellent and the image has consistent texture. There are no marks or speckles - an occasional hair in the gate - but overall a magnificent transfer of an incredibly important film.

NOTE: We have added 62 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Indicator use a linear PCM mono track (24-bit) in the original English language. Pastor Hall has aggressive moments from gunfire to lashings. The track exports authentically modest depth. Dialogue can be occasionally scattered. The score is by Charles Brill and Hans May (The Love of Jeanne Ney, Carol Reed's The Stars Look Down, Boulting brother's Brighton Rock etc.) supporting the film's dramatic moments adeptly in the uncompressed audio transfer. Indicator offer optional English (SDH) subtitles on their Region FREE Blu-ray.

The Indicator Blu-ray offers offer a 96-minute archival audio recording; 'The IWM Oral History with Roy Boulting' from 1980, running to the film. He discusses Pastor Hall and the evolution of the production among many other topics. It was marvelous to hear from him. Faith Beyond Borders has Matthew Hockenos, author of Then They Came for Me: Martin Niemöller, the Pastor Who Defied the Nazis, discussing the true and fictional accounts of the pastor’s life. This is new (2022) and runs 1/4 hour. The Cutting Class is also new and has ex-BBFC examiner Richard Falcon talking about the film’s censorship history for about 14-minutes. From 1946 we get Niemöller Speaks in Hamburg - a 3-minute extract from the 'Welt in Film' newsreel, featuring footage of Niemöller’s speech about post-war German guilt. The Dawn Guard runs 7-minutes from 1941. It is a short directed by Boulting, starring Pastor Hall actors Percy Walsh and Bernard Miles as members of the Home Guard. Minefield! was made in 1944, and is a 1/4 hour documentary short produced by Boulting for the Army Film Unit. Indicator include their own image gallery of promotional and publicity material and the package has a limited edition exclusive 36-page booklet featuring a new essay by Fiona Kelly, archival news articles, a look at the lost Eleanor Roosevelt prologue, contemporary critical responses, and film credits

Roy Boulting's "Pastor Hall" is a terrifying true account of how the Hitler's SS - a platoon of stormtroopers - attempt to transform a small German village, Altdorf, to adopt the precepts of Nazism ('The New Order') purging their chosen targets, isolating one after the other in the 1930s. They try to divide and conquer using selective murder, intimidation, torture, and coercive threats with one brave man refusing to comply. That's how we defeat it - YOU don't comply. The prophetic ‘First They Came’ poem was written by German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller on whom "Pastor Hall" is based... where many people become mercenary in the face of fear-induced evil. The U.S. version of "Pastor Hall" opened with a prologue by Eleanor Roosevelt denouncing the Nazis. Her son, James Roosevelt, presented the film in the US through United Artists. The Indicator Blu-ray is the world premiere of a chilling masterwork of essential history and cinema. It shares themes of persecution, guilt, repentance, and personal responsibility. I was floored. It has our absolute highest recommendation of a film that YOU must see. Wow.

Gary Tooze