Samson and Delilah (1949) ~Remastered and RARE!~

Samson and Delilah (1949)
Produced and Directed by Cecil B. DeMille
Starring Victore Mature, Hedy Lamarr, George Sanders, and Angela Lansbury


One of the great biblical epics from the golden age of film, I remain astonished that Samson and Delilah has not received the big studio digital remastering that it deserves--or an official DVD/Blu-Ray release at all, for that matter. Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr remain definitive in the title roles, and any man who grew up (as I did) with Angela Lansbury on "Murder, She Wrote" will be stunned to see how gorgeous she was as a young woman. The special effects remain a marvel of the era, and still hold up today. Victor Young's score remains one of his finest works, both bombastic and subtle as required. This film is, in short, one of DeMille's masterpieces.

As mentioned, there has been no "official" DVD release. There are Region 0 DVDs available from overseas (various Asian imports), one of which is the original source for this version. I was not satisfied with the digital remastering; while the crispness of a DVD release was present, the colors appeared washed out. To create this version, I decrypted using DVD Decrypter, then dropped the .VOB files into Sony Vegas 8. Here I boosted the brightness, luminosity, and saturation and rendered a new .MPEG file. AVS Video Converter was then used to create this .AVI, using XviD compression on the video and 320kb/s MP3 compression for the audio. The results, I believe, are pretty fantastic. Another technical note--this movie was NOT filmed in widescreen, so the aspect ratio of 4:3 is true to the original theatrical release.


Please enjoy this version of this classic film! It has been a true labor of love for me to bring it to you.