WITCHFINDER GENERAL is a true restoration: the original score's been put back, shots if not scenes have been reinserted that disappeared when AIP released it in the USA, and it now has its original title for the first time in the USA. For the first time since the film's first home video release in 1988, the director's work is actually available to people. It's a very hard instance to beat.

The POPEYE cartoons are a case where extraordinary restoration measures were taken, making very old films look brand new, and they carry a special charge because they've been replaced in circulation on TV for so long by those wretched colorized (actually just painted) versions that also incorporated misleading short cuts in the animation. So to watch these is like seeing the soul of the Fleischer films restored, a not-insignificant thing.

I agree that the John Brahm films look grand in that FOX HORROR CLASSICS set, but they have really been treated to no restorative measure that wouldn't be accorded to any other film in the Fox library. Fox takes extremely good care of their archive materials. I know I'm not the only person who laughs in bewilderment at their "restoration demonstration" side-by-sides. You have to look really hard even to see a differential speck go by!

Two other titles that warrant nomination as restorations are BBC Warner's COUNT DRACULA (which restores the baby-eating scene missing from US version since its original airdates) and Warner's QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE (a nearly 50-year-old movie that no one could see in scope for love or money for much of that time).

QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE also features a fun and informative audio commentary by the ever-able Tom Weaver and the Queen herself, Laurie Mitchell.