Dismal Blu-Ray version

It's hard to believe that a major company like Fox would release a classic movie onto Blu-ray disc in such atrocious condition as The Greatest Story Ever Told. I recently bought a Blu-ray triple feature set that includes The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Robe, and the Bible.

Got around to watching The Greatest Story Ever Told last night and could not believe how bad the image looked. Before it started, there was a statement on the screen that the film used was from the best available sources. Once the movie started, I realized why they slapped that statement on there.

There is no way this movie should look this bad. The image could not have come from the original negative. It seems there was no clean up effort whatsoever. This is an absolutely horrible presentation of this movie. There's no sharpness to the image, yet film grain pours out of it. Colors are dull throughout. Toward the end of the film, half the picture turns blue for some inexplicable reason. What happened here? I don't think there was any effort made to clean this up at all.

Conversely, The Bible - which was released to theaters around the same time - looks fantastic, a major upgrade from previous home video releases.

Apparently Fox/MGM got lazy with the release of "The Greatest Story Ever Told," and that's a shame.