Some time ago Anchor Bay Entertainment announced that it will start rolling out the majority of their films in widescreen versions that are enhanced for 16×9 TV sets. Apart from “The Car”, “Halloween” and “Army Of Darkness” no specific titles were given at the time to determine when Anchor Bay would back this claim up with releases.

After double-checking a number of their recent releases, we have found that Anchor Bay has already started shipping out discs with anamorphic widescreen transfers, almost unnoticed by the public, but much to the delight of their fans.

Lucio Fulci’s The New York Ripper, the gothic Hell Night starring Linda Blair, and Fade To Black are all releases that are already 16×9 enhanced. We have also checked upcoming titles like William Friedkin’s The Guardian, and Melvin And Howard and indeed, both discs also contain full anamorphic widescreen transfers of the finest kind. It makes you look forward to their hot new releases all the more. Apart from the increase in resolution, the benefit of these anamorphic transfers is that they all come from new film transfers and as a result yield much better results than those that were previously seen on their Laserdisc counterparts.