German DVD - Is it supposed to be this dark?

The answer is ..... yes and no. One problem with the Warner UK disc, the German Anolis disc and the old Anchor Bay disc, is that they all boost the night scenes to bring out the detail in the near blacks and enhance the contrast. The result is that the carefully shot day-for-night scenes are rendered pretty much as day-for-day. With the German disc, which has an overall brown cast to it as well, the result is that the blacks and near blacks look dark but muddy (as you said), and the sky looks too bright to be a night sky. There's a lot of detail in the night scenes you can clearly see but which you should not. For instance, after the Kents escape in the coach from Dracula's castle, the coach falls over and Charles carries Diana through the dark eventually stumbling and falling. We should see the feet of an unknown person in front of him - but who is it? On DVD, we can see immediately it's not Dracula because the shot is rendered too brightly, but it should only be revealed as being Father Sandor after the slow upwards camera pan is complete and he delivers his line "I told you not to go to the castle Mr. Kent". Whew - relief - it's not Dracula after all. But that effect is spoilt. Daylight scenes look dark and muddy too in the German version - greens are particularly attenuated for instance (look at the trees).

A huge amount of the suspense of the narrative depends on the change from day to night and night to day and how fast this is happening, and the visual representation of this is lost because of all this rebalancing of brightness and contrast. Still a good film though. But what we want is bright and contrasty where it is appropriate, and dark and unclear where that is appropriate. The DVD producers should sit down and run a good Technicolor 35mm print as a reference rather than letting their own judgment - or even worse an automatic computer rendering - win the day. There's a new UK release coming out in late October, but my guess is it won't address these issues.

i got my dvd from an ebay seller in Brazil. i think the movie looks the same as on tv. so you might want to try that if you are a big how it looks person.

I THINK THIS LINE'S MOSTLY FILLER--Willow BTVS