Killer Clans - technical question DVD

[Killer Meteor]

During the scene early in the film between Chen Ping and Chung Wah, there are several shots from the same position which look incredibly fuzzy and zoomed in, with neither character managing to be successfully in the frame.

This happens again during a later scene with these two.

Is this from the original production or Celestial using a compromised source for those shots?

[The Silver Fox]

I have the IVL and the Dragon Dynasty version of KC and they're both the same as far as I can tell on that zoomed in scene. My understanding is that it was one of the first remastering jobs Celestial did and therefore a little rough. I seem to remember reading that somewhere but I could be mistaken.

[shaolinkng7]

What has happened is either Celestial or Shaw Brothers did a closeup of the frame during one of the scenes. Either to censor something that was on the original print ( such as nude body parts, or something that was not considered offensive when the film was made, but is now no longer PC ) or perhaps to edit out an extra who was in frame that Celestial or Shaw Brothers no longer wants in the frame. The question is, did Celestial censor the film as part of the restoration, or was this done when the film was first released and could not be corrected by Celestial?

Another possibility is that Shaw Brothers, for some reason, no longer had a complete print of the film in their vaults. When Celestial searched for a source print to replace missing footage all they could find is a theatrical print with the English and Chinese subtitles permanently burned on the print. In that case they would have needed to do a close up on the print until the subtitle was out of frame.

I have seen this sort of distortion before. On the Disney film Fantasia. In 1969 Disney Studios decided to get rid of a racially offensive black character during the Greek Myths segment. Since fantasia was timed to it's musical soundtrack, cutting anything out would have ruined the sequence. The only other alternative was an extreme closeup of the film until the offensive character was out of frame. When you watch Fantasia today the parts where this censorship took place look very grainy, and characters are out of frame as if you were watching a bad pan and scan.