Don't bother with the Region 1 DVD from VCI.

Don't bother with the Region 1 DVD from VCI, because it's a major disappointment. The aspect ratio is listed as being 1.85:1, which, on the face of it, gives the customer the impression that they will at long last be able to see on this DVD the original, full width VistaVision wide screen image. But things are not as they seem. All they have done is to take the old 1.33:1 heavily cropped at the sides version as seen on the Region 2 DVD (a transfer made for television decades ago) and simply cropped that image top and bottom, to make a false wide screen shape. So even less of the image is visible now than it was on the old cropped at the sides 1.33:1 transfer and we still have the scene where Jon Whiteley is lying on the doctor's couch and his head and neck are cropped off on the left of the frame. Shocking! Added to that, the image on the VCI transfer is far less sharp than on the earlier Region 2 DVD. To be quite frank, it's a mess and it totally spoils what is, otherwise, an excellent film. The only thing to do here is stop messing about making old 4 x 3 transfers into fake looking wide screen ones and go back to the original 35mm VistaVision negatives (if indeed they still exist after 60 years) and transfer the film properly at long last. Such a newly remastered transfer would be expensive to do, but the result would be worth the trouble.