Don’t Be Afraid Of The DVD?

By Less Lee Moore

As a fan of the 1973 made-for-TV movie Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark, the news of the upcoming remake made me skeptical.

Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark was one of those movies from my childhood that could scare me just thinking about it. I can’t even remember if I actually ever saw it, but like I said a few years back, I always remembered it as “the movie with the things in the fireplace.”

I was lucky enough to catch it on a free preview of Scream TV during Halloween in 2007. It definitely lived up to its reputation. Had I seen this as a kid, I would have been scared silly.

The 2011 remake was co-written by Guillermo del Toro, which bodes well for its creepy factor. They’ve changed the plot so that it’s a child being tormented instead of a grown woman, but this tweaking will probably be more palatable to younger audiences who find the “hysterical housewife horror” genre of the ’70s a little too antiquated for their tastes. The preview trailer gives me a lot of hope that the casting of Guy Pearce will cancel out the casting of Katie Holmes.

Yet the buzz around the movie and the fact that I have to wait a few more months to see it just leaves me with a huge hankering to watch the original again. I did a Google search hoping that it might have been finally released on DVD to coincide with the upcoming remake. And it has . . . well, sort of.

The good news is that Warner Home Video has made Don’t Be Afraid available on DVD; the potentially bad news is that it hasn’t been remastered, but been “manufactured from the best-quality video master currently available and has not been remastered or restored specifically for this DVD and Digital Download release.”

Several commenters who’ve bought this version have noted that the quality isn’t the best, but it’s likely a lot better than the tenth-generation VHS copies floating around and certainly better priced than the ones on Ebay. Unfortunately, Warner Home Video only ships to the US, and $14.95 for a digital download than can only be watched on a PC seems a bit steep.

Let’s hope that Warner Bros. reissues a better quality version soon.