Vampire Hunter D - Not For Kids

By samson7point1
My fondness for the 1985 animated film Vampire Hunter D has always been a bittersweet one. I first saw the movie late at night on TBS in 1994. I absolutely loved the animation style, the very dark subject matter, and silent and deadly main character. When I tried to describe it to people, words failed me. I spent more time than I can remember pouring through TV guide hoping to see that it was coming on again so I could tape it. Unfortunately, I didn't have Internet access back then. No Internet=no Google. No Google=how the hell did we ever find anything back then?

Well, I used to use the phone book. I called every store in the yellow pages under "Video Rental/Sales" until I found a Suncoast that actually had a copy of it in their "Japanimation" section. Yay!

So I bummed a ride to Suncoast and bought it right up for the handsome sum of $30. (Man, I can't believe how expensive anime was back then!) Unfortunately, the copy I purchased just happened to not have the "Not for Kids" warning label on it. I had no inkling or warning about some of the "Adult" content that the unedited version of the movie contained. And right on queue, my mother walked into my room as a shot of full-frontal nudity popped onto the screen, surprising me as much as her. That did not end up well...

Now, don't get me wrong, I admire the form of the female body as much as any red-blooded boy ought to by nature, but I don't need it spilled into my dark-hero anime. In fact I don't need it spilled into my TV screen whatsoever. If I want to see a naked woman, that's what my wife is for. Of course I was only about 16 at the time, so I wasn't married yet, but I knew I'd get to see as much of the female form as I wanted to once I was.

So I was embarrassed and angry all at once because the version of Vampire Hunter D that I had fallen in love with contained none of this gratuitous nudity. And make no mistake, I really loved that movie. I returned the video to Suncoast. They tried to refuse on the grounds that the sticker had warned me ahead of time, but I showed them the cellophane wrapper sans-sticker and they had no choice.

Over the years I have made numerous attempts to "clean up" Vampire Hunter D. First by some creative editing with a pair of VCR's. When the DVD was released, I purchased a copy and made an edited version on SVCD (DVD writers weren't yet available to consumers), but in the process I lost the menus, extras, alternate audio, subtitles and all of the other fun stuff.

Thanks to a remarkable program called DVDRemake Pro, last night I was able to remove the offensive content from the DVD without losing any menus, audio or subtitles. And now I have a full-quality, full-feature version of the movie that I can share with friends and family. Yay!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What I've Learned Fixing Optical Drives

By samson7point1
So You Want to Fix an Optical Drive If you found this page looking for advice on how to fix an optical drive, you might be in luck.  There's a lot of information and prognostication out there these days that might tell you fixing a laser mechanism is a losing proposition, but the fact is that in many cases these drives are completely fixable. Over the past decade I've begun fixing a optical drive failures in a wide variety of hardware. In the process I've learned a thing or two about a thing or two and I've compiled my findings here in the hopes they may help someone else. Full disclosure: I'm a technical professional, just not in the field of electrical engineering.  I do this as a hobby.  My skills and information comes from a lifetime of curiosity and decades of reading manuals, reading books, learning from experts and practical application. My success rate in repairing these drives and restoring them to original function seems to be in direct opposition to popul
Read more

FM Towns PC ODE - Grey Tower Wizard Installation Notes And Review

By samson7point1
Image
The Gray Tower Wizard is an Optical Drive Emulator (ODE) for FM Towns PCs, not to be confused with the FM Towns Marty (which is a stripped-down and consolized version of the PCs) or the Doc Brown ODE for Marty (which is made by the same person).  The FM Towns PCs have dual floppy drives and the ability to add RAM which makes them capable of running more complex or resource-heavy games than the Marty. How Do You Get One? The kit including shipping ran me 150 Euro.  Ordering one is basically the same process as the GDEmu, Rhea, Phoebe and Doc Brown.  I had never ordered anything from Deunan before but I'm more than familiar with the popular complaints about it being difficult.  It's not like ordering something from Amazon, but I didn't find it to be very difficult at all.   I signed up for blog updates, waited until he announced he was going to sell them, then refreshed the Wizard Ordering page  until he activated it.  When he did, the ordering page changed to a form to submi
Read more

ColecoVision RGB Mod [Updated]

By samson7point1
Image
[Updated June 2020]  As with all hobbies these things can be learning processes. After initially completing this mod, I discovered some new things and made some changes.  Primarily, I've re-incorporated the RF box for actual composite video, figured out the black & white picture problem, added a buffering capacitor to the audio output and tapped the audio from a different location to maintain compatibility with the ColecoVision Expansion Module #1.  The Expansion module doesn't work with RGB out, but now it's at least usable with composite Genesis 2 cables.  Background ColecoVision wasn't something I had or even played growing up, but several years ago someone gave me one.  Since its only AV output is RF and that makes it hard to have multiple systems connected at once, it sat in a box for about 10 years until I stumbled across Ben Heck's tutorial on a very straightforward composite video mod. The Picture Quality Produced by the Ben Heck composite vide
Read more