ADDITION: Warner - Region FREE - Blu-ray May 15': Dark Victory looks a shade thicker and softer than I would have anticipated from watching The Hunchback of Notre Dame Blu-ray but I do think this is an accurate representation of the film. Grain textures are very prevalent - a bit clunky, perhaps due to the single-layered transfer with a low-ish bitrate. In motion the black and white visuals look rich, lush with superb contrast. Darker than the SD. There are no speckles to speak of and a wonderfully clean and film-like presentation.

Warner remain authentic with a DTS-HD Master 1.0 channel mono track at 1026 kbps. It sounds predictably flat but clean showing a smattering of depth in the dialogue and the score sounds brilliantly dramatic in lossless and is by Max Steiner (Casablanca, The Caine Mutiny, Bird of Paradise, Beyond the Forest, Pursued.) The audio probably can't, or ever will, sound much better than this. The Warner Blu-ray disc offers subtitles and is region FREE.

***

ON THE DVD: First MGM released their DVD of Dark Victory - as expected the quality was abysmal (see comparison below), then Warner re-issued in September 19, 2000 - I am unsure of this quality but it was in a Snapper Case, now this Restored and Remastered Edition is brought out in both the Bette Davis Collection and individually - in an Amaray Keep case. Although the quality is infinitely better than the original MGM edition there are still some damage marks and occasional contrast flashes in this release. It still ranks very high in my opinion and remarkable that we can see how far DVD production has come. Typical earmarks of a Warner restoration process are the intensive grain prevalence that appears most predominantly in close-ups. Regardless of our critique, this is a no-brainer purchase - actually the whole set is especially if you have none (or even one) of the initial releases. I haven't got into the commentary yet but  am looking forward to it.  out of    

Gary W. Tooze