The film was also made on an extremely low budget, filmed in a 4:3 open matte ratio on the cheapest possible film stock available -- Eastmanstock, which is prone to color fading almost within a couple weeks of being exposed. By comparison, fanboy favorite THE WICKER MAN had a somewhat lavish budget, and international cast of stars, was filmed in 35mm Techniscope with Technicolor, had about 3 months of post-production work done on it to embellish certain special effects like Britt Erkland singing, and was archivally cared for by Warner Bros. for years. CONQUEROR WORM was regarded as a lurid, low-budget exploitation film and treated accordingly, carted around for almost 3 decades as a TV creature feature anomaly, and exists in 3 different forms due to the wishes of 3 different distributors. It is a miracle the film was made at all, and that it still has the power to effect audiences 40 years later should not be overlooked.
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SSuqui
13 years ago
Sorry for being late, but Wicker Man '73 wasn't shot on Techniscope or Technicolour -- it was shot in Open Matte format (in Europe/UK, it would be matted to 1.66, and in the US, where I live, it was matted to 1.85) and shot in Eastman Colour. (Kinda how this film was made, wasn't it?) Warner's never did release Wicker Man '73 ever in its life (it was only shown as test releases, until Warner dropped it completely); it was only later in 1978 that it finally got released here in the States --- BY AN INDIE COMPANY. The film was also shot in a low budget as well (The cast were paid nothing: If they were paid, the budget would have been unrealistic, and the film wouldn't have been made). However both this and Wicker Man '73 are favourites of mine.
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John-367
10 years ago
Agreed.
The mistake people make is in thinking that a Technicolor credit always meant a particular unique process (usually 3-strip). It didn't. The only thing it meant for sure was that the Technicolor company handled the processing and printing.
Long story short, the vast majority of films made after about 1955 which say Technicolor are shot and processed in exactly the same way as they would have been by any other laboratory on a single strip of film made by Eastman, Fuji, Agfa or whoever using exactly the same type of equipment and chemicals.
SOME prints of SOME films processed by Technicolor labs were produced by the older dye transfer process but as this was far more expensive it was not common especially on cheaper films.
Most prints of most films after 1955 which were processed by the Technicolor labs would have been treated no differently than if they had been processed by any other lab in the world.
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