Saturday Night Fever (1977) [082 884-1]

This review is for the French version of "Saturday night fever" (La fièvre du samedi soir) from 1977 in the PAL format. This is a decent transfer but not stellar either by any means. This release has its share of video noise, especially during the disco scenes but that almost goes without saying on an older release like this. What really bothers me is the lack of punch during the opening credits when "Staying alive" is running. It has a hollow feel to it and the lack of bass is apparent for a movie like this that depends so heavily on the music score to set the mood. The dialogue however is right in your face and crisp and clean too. But after the opening music the rest within the film seems to be normal again. Perhaps that is the way it was meant to sound but I remember quite a different experience when I viewed it in the States decades ago. There are no encoded chapter stops on this release. Naturally the picture is pan & scan like all other laserdisc releases of this title. The quality all in all is decent and I enjoy having it in my collection and watching it from time to time.

I think the original home video master had a flat sound, the Discovision version (which came from a tape from Paramount) did.

It's also probably open matte, not P&S.

Yea, I hadn't thought about the open matte possibility. Nice to know that my copy is not unique regarding the flat sound...thanks for pointing that out!