I just finished watching the Japanese release of Air Force One( I wanted to escape all the rot issues of the American release), and after finishing the credits, I let my player flip over to the blank side. I've seen probably 100+ blank sides, but this one was different - this one was filled with multi colored noise speckles( on top of the usual message), and emitted static from the speakers. An odd phenomenon to me, but perhaps, not to anyone else out there who collects Japanese Laserdisc releases. Has anyone else ever seen this blank side before?

Sounds like extremely bad laser rot. Be glad it's only on the flipside.

I'd definitely say its rot........but it almost looks intentional.......hmmm

It certainly sounds like rot to me, but I've never heard of rot only occuring on the blank side before.

It could certainly have been classified as a joke had the blank side had an on screen message such as "this is what the inferior American pressing looks like." lol.


STAY AWESOME!

It's not unusual for rot to only happen on one side of a disc, in my experience. But another possibility is that there was a problem either with pressing or with the stamper, so that many of the pits are missing or imperfectly replicated. That could cause a similar effect.

I'll have to take a video of it to show you guys, it was so weird

why does laser rot usually only affect one side? would'nt the oxidation in the glue affect both?

I've lots of laserdiscs with laser rot on just one side - it is very common. I've also seen laser rot on just the dead side. As others have said be thankful that is the only side affected as who cares about that side.

Since LDs are effectively two separate discs sandwiched together one can be affected and the other not. I doubt if the glue is the source of the problem in US or Japanese LDs.
The reason the glue was the source of laser rot in UK discs was they used water based glue and it oxidised the aluminium layer. On those discs the rot was actually visible on the physical disc - you could often see black pitted or discoloured areas like bad rotted teeth!