Thursday, February 24, 2022

By the Gods!


Ramses XIII (Jerry Zelnik) in PHARAOH (1966) 

This is one of the most amazing movies ever made, PEPLUM or not. Not necessarily because of its quality (it's great) or how entertaining the movie is (it's very stylish) but because the filmmaker decided to recreat ancient Egyptian culture in Poland, with a Polish cast. The entire recreation is something to behold. Of course, today, this movie would be canceled because of 'cultural appropriation' or something, in their eyes anyway, but for me the recreation is almost out of this world. A one of a kind movie. I recently got two copies of this, one nearly uncut but not the right aspect ration, and one cut with the correct aspect ration. This one. The resolution is 2532 x 1074. It's not regular HD, which is 1920 x 1080.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love this movie. I had the uncut version on VHS many years ago. Now I only have a two hour English dubbed version on UK DVD. It is the correct aspect ratio which my VHS tape was not.

Gene B said...

Hey! Thanks for the heads up! I've been collecting 'ancient world' movies for a good few years now but had no idea this one even existed... You're the man!

Anonymous said...

I was surprised to discover that in 2015 there was a Blu-ray set called Martin Scorsese presents Masterpieces of Polish Cinema. Pharaoh was one of the eight discs. Of course it is now Out of Print and hideously expensive on ebay.