After owning the VHS version, I was recently shocked to realize that the "Widescreen" DVD I recently got, instead of being the full frame of the the film, was nothing more than a Pan & Scan version with black bars at the top and bottom of the screen to reproduce the 35mm shape.
Has anyone else noticed this?
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Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie, or are you gonna bite?
Hmm... never noticed. I go between the two so often. Interesting....
shareOkay so long story short:
Open Matte Filmmaking.
Essentially not all film is actually in the wide format but rather shot on a full frame and then masked to produce the image the director wants. This allows for adjustment in post production incase some framing was off slightly. Very VERY common in the 80s (Terminator was done this way, Manhunter was done this way, many many many movies done this way).
So what they do for the full frame movies that were shot in open matte is simply remove the matte. This way it fills the full screen. This is why some films feature goofs in their full frame versions (boom mics and such. Fish Called Wanda has a huge goof in which once removing the matte you see John Cleese is wearing pants in a scene in which he's thought to be nude).
There was a big lawsuit going on a few years ago because a lot of MGM DVDs had some issue regarding their Fullframe/Widescreen presentations (if I remember correctly some were open matte films with the matte removed, in other cases they merely took the fullframe image and matted it removing actual picture rather than masking what the director never intended to show). While the DVD is distributed by Warner, the film was original MGM. Perhaps it's an MGM thing, I dont know, but that's my guess as to why this Widescreen version is the way it is.
hope that helps.