Muller staged a competition between the studios regarding their digital restorations. He said he was going to call Grover Crisp at Sony and tell him that Paramount has just done an awesome digital restoration of Sunset Blvd. and that his Noir City audience was going to compare it to Sony's restoration of Experiment in Terror. The studios like this, Muller explained, because this is actually how the future is going to work. He has to be able to hold the studios' feet to the fire and say, "This is now the bar. This is what the public expects." I clearly took this staged rivalry too literally, however, when later in the mezzanine I cornered Muller and placed my vote. I wasn't much impressed with the digital restoration of Sunset Blvd.—the contast seemed off to me and the blacks never seemed more than a dark grey—but, Experiment in Terror was thrillingly lustrous, especially in its darkest scenes. In my opinion, Sony had set the bar. Hearing this, Muller tossed me a disgruntled look and emphasized that—as far as he was concerned—both of them had done a great job. Whoops! Whether or not we were supposed to actually choose, my vote remains with Sony.
Director Blake Edwards loved San Francisco so much that he filmed two movies here back to back—Days of Wine and Roses (1962) and then Experiment in Terror—and really gave Alfred Hitchcock a run for his money with Experiment. Though everyone thought of him as a comedian, Edwards proved he could pull a Hitchcock and ratchet up the suspense, plus he worked with his long-time collaborator Henry Mancini on an absolutely fantastic score; one of the best ever, really.
Because Experiment in Terror includes fantastic location shooting in San Francisco, as a special treat to his San Francisco Noir audience Muller offered a clip reel concocted by Brian Hollins—administrator of ReelSF.com—which shows all the San Francisco locations used in Experiment in Terror, first as they originally appear in the film, followed by video of how they appear today.
