Brand new factory sealed dvd has a small punch-out hole in the bar code that was done at the factory to indicate an item that is no longer being manufactured. The final word in stylish murder mysteries, Dario Argento's DEEP RED broke out of the cinematic horror gutter and became a bona fide classic around the world. Apart from Mario Bava, no one had managed to create such an ingenious combination of visual style, devilish plotting, and a gripping soundtrack; indeed, this is not only perhaps Argento's greatest film, but also one of the highlights of Italian cinema as a whole. At a parapsychology conference in Rome, German psychic Helga Ullman (Macha Meril) finds her public demonstration disrupted when she senses the presence of a psychotic killer in the audience. "You have killed, and you will kill again," she proclaims, pointing out into the audience. Soon after, she is brutally killed in her apartment, an act witnessed from afar by a British pianist, Marcus Daly ('Blow-Up's' David Hemmings brilliantly cast). Spunky reporter Gianna Brezzi (Daria Nicolodi) realizes Marc's value as an eyewitness but cannot protect him as the killer continues cutting a bloody path right to Marc's door. Through some amateur detective work, our neurotic hero deduces the killings may be related to an abandoned, supposedly haunted old house on the outskirts of town... This evidently is the Japanese cut containing several extra gory shots and a comic relief sequence with Hemmings and Nicolodi riding in the latters junky car. There was a two hour Italian version, but it did not contain any extra gore or plot information but rather a lot of extra local colour and comic/romantic interplay. And yes the film works best in English and is probably the closest thing to a definitive Deep Red we will ever see.