Czech authoring house Brickbox Digital Media has restored Dario Argento’s acclaimed 1977 classic horror film Suspiria on Blu-ray and DVD. Released on 18 January, Suspiria is Nouveaux Pictures’ first Blu-ray title.

Brickbox’s restoration team initially reviewed all the materials available and produced recommendations on improvements that could be made to the picture and audio quality of the existing materials to make the film look “simply stunning” in high-definition for its Blu-ray release.

Once a cost-effective budget had been agreed the restoration team began the task of restoring the feature. The restoration techniques employed included frame-by-frame film and digital artefact restoration, scene-by-scene colour correction and noise reduction. The opening credits were fully restored by taking out damaged frames and stabilising the picture.

Suspiria had previously been released with stereo audio and Brickbox’s audio department fully restored the original audio by taking out low level audio noise and up mixing the stereo audio track to a dynamic 5.1 DTS HD Master Audio mix.

UK magazine Home Cinema Choice declared, “This film’s stunning AVC 2.35:1 encode... offers a sumptusously rich and detailed encode. I’ll be amazed if there’s a better looking version of this film in existence.”

Story filed 25.01.10