Die Hard is a 1988 American action film directed by John McTiernan and written by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza. It is based on the 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp, and it stars Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Alexander Godunov, and Bonnie Bedelia. Die Hard follows New York City police detective John McClane (Willis) who is caught up in a terrorist takeover of a Los Angeles skyscraper while visiting his estranged wife. Reginald VelJohnson, William Atherton, Paul Gleason, and Hart Bochner feature in supporting roles.
A title I think every collector is fully aware of. Originally supplied as a 5 x 600ft full feature from Derann on LPP polyester stock. Ours is edited onto 2 x 1200ft Elmo spools.
A few years ago a fellow collector did inform me that if I should obtain a copy, unless it was an early pre stripe stock copy, I may be a little disappointed with the sound for such a title. My own verdict is this, the image is very good throughout, and there is a scene or two, (mainly reel two) where a couple of scenes are a tad softer than that the rest of the film but generally it is very good.
Colours are very good as you may expect on LPP stock from Derann. The sound itself is “good”. A stereo soundtrack with the Derann oxide paste stripe. I personally do not like this stripe, as I found out from a man who knows, they had to use a lot of glue in the mix to get this stuff to stay on the film. Quite often, two thirds glue, one third oxide. This results in some hiss in some scenes and on others, (only a couple on this print) some bumps. In a nut shell, you know that while the sound is good, this is not the pre stripe sound stock we all love. After my conversation about this oxide stripe I made a decision to ensure I don’t over view these films as in my opinion, this stuff is abrasive on sound heads. If you’re not too sure that this is the case, get a piece and put it under a decent magnifying glass, take a look at how rough this stuff looks One of the worst for this is the Madagascar Penguins, a very hissy soundtrack.
For me, too many prints in a collection with this oxide stripe could well shorten the life of many a sound head.
I wonder how many prints of this title were made with pre stripe before they ran out and had to use the later oxide.
Overall, the print is A-, the sound B+

Hi Tom,

I love this print - ill have to run a triple bill on 8mm one day - Die Hard, Die Hard 2 and Die Hard with a Vengeance.

All 3 are good David, unusual with most sequels, nice super 8 prints too, Mark

Tom,

Thank you for sharing the details about the rough sound stripe on some (many?) prints of this title. I don't own Die Hard, but will take a look at the Madagascar Penguins stripe of my copy to see how it looks.
The possible impact to magnetic heads is bad enough, but I wonder if cumulatively over time, a rough sound stripe could add to the wear and tear on some of the plastic film path pieces on the Elmo projectors?
Nice pics of a great action film..The scope print ratio sure helps ratchet up the viewing enjoyment.

Greg, i think so, i may be way out of line in some peoples views on this but speaking to the people in the know, i was really surprised to hear how much percentage of the glue compound had to be used to make sure it stuck and stayed stuck onto the film. A good example is a second copy of Reflections i bought a few years ago.
When i bought it you may recall i was chuffed because i thought it was a stereo re-recorded print. Well, as it happens, i recently found out that this was not the case. In fact, this appeared to be a later print, (i already have the UK and USA reflections on earlier pre stripped stock with great sound), this later print has the oxide stripe. If you play back only the main stripe its full of hiss, low volume and a few bumps. Switch on the balance track and what you get is a booming re record which is excellent. The previous owner had clearly gone to a lot of trouble to get it right. But it appears that track one is just mostly glue with the oxide mixed in. The quality of the sound is very much like the Penguins release.
I will add though that Die Hard is no where near this lower quality, the sound overall is good, the hiss is on a few quite parts especially when the group are in the room with the water feature, the water running in the background sounds weird, something between a hiss and something else. I do believe though that this oxide stripe may well be very abrasive to the projector's heads and film paths.
At the end of the day Derann did at least do something to keep super 8 going, BUY, they were in the business of making money so once Kodak announced they were to end pre stripe stock, Derann had a lot of deals in the bag and a lot of films to sell, the health of our projectors would not have been at the forefront of their thinking. It was a shame that Kodak made this announcement at a time Derann were at the top of there game for new releases.
For collectors, i think we need to consider the health of our machines for the long term, if it means i dont project these films so often then so be it at least until someone can convince me that this stripe is not abrasive.

I have said this before Tom on this forum, a conversation i had with Derek and his frustration and anger with Kodak in supplying the formula, minus the vital ingredient resin to glue this to the film base !!!!!!!!!!, only many miles of film later and retrying this did they get it together, at some expense too i guess. Not a very good gesture from such a company who he must have spent a lot of money with over the years, not sure how they found out there was a element missing, but i understand derann tried a tie up with EVT magnetics but nick turned down the offer, how accurate though this is, i don't know, maybe they asked him if he could shed some light on this, we may never know...........

This is how the very big companies treat the smaller ones i guess. As you said Paul, Derek must have spent a fortune with Kodak over the years only to be dropped overnight. Mind you, this is the company that invented the digital camera back in the 70s but never pursued it, did they miss out!!

Thanks for the review, Tom. I added it to S8D now :-)