Deathsport
(1978)/BattleTruck (1982/DVD) + Humanoids From The Deep (1980/Blu-ray +
DVD) + Piranha (1978/Shout! Factory
Blu-ray + DVD)
Picture: C/C-/B-/C+/B-/C+ Sound: C/C/C+/C+/C+/C+ Extras: C/C/C-/B- Films:
Deathsport (1978) C
BattleTruck (1982) C
Humanoids From The Deep (1980) C+
Piranha (1978) B-
Shout!
Factory’s roll out of deluxe editions of Roger Corman’s New
World catalog continues with a DVD-only double feature and two key
B-movies from the later years of the studio.
A while ago, we actually covered the 1978 laugh-fest Deathsport
(1978) as paired with Death Race 2000
in an import DVD set from Australia’s
Umbrella Entertainment. You can read
about it at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/7996/Death+Race+2000+(1975)/Death+Spo
The new
edition here is not full screen 1.33 X 1, but anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1
video and though it looks a little better than the import version, the problem
is that too much picture image is missing, as if the person doing the transfer
zoomed in too much on the frame when going widescreen. This is not a bad-looking film and it would
be nice if a Blu-ray were made, but certainly not with this transfer. Shout! has paired the film with the long
out-of-print Battle Truck (1982)
about a deadly truck run by proto-fascists in a (you guessed it)
post-apocalyptic world trying to run it by intimidating the people in it. Playing like a dark satire of the TV series Ark II (reviewed elsewhere on this
site), the film wants to be Mad Max
and some other Australian exploitation films, but was actually made in nearby,
underrated New Zealand.
Director
Harley Cokeliss, who would direct Tommy Lee Jones in the mixed, odd would-be
action film Black Moon Rising (1986)
does a mixed job of making this film work.
Some parts are amusing, some good and some flat and dull. Michael Beck plays the lead hero two years
after being stuck in the infamous would-be musical bomb Xanadu with Olivia Newton-John, but this and Megaforce back to back could not revive any lead status despite the
following of he had from Walter Hill’s The Warriors (1978, reviewed on this
site), but this was issued the year John Ratzenberger debuted on the hit series
Cheers.
The film
is enjoyable for what it is and it even looks good, despite the poor 1.33 X 1
transfer we get here. Ken Loach’s
Director of Photography Chris Menges, later known for The Killing Field and The
Mission among others, does give this film a good enough look, while it also
has an interesting score by Kevin Peek, who scored some early episodes of Roald Dahl’s Tales Of The Unexpected
(reviewed elsewhere on this site). Too
bad the Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on both films in this double feature set shows
their age and is so flat.
That
leaves the big films here, starting with Humanoids
From The Deep (aka Monster) which is Roger Corman’s best rip-off of Ridley
Scott’s Alien (1979) for no other
reason that he threw in a heaping of Creature
From The Black Lagoon, outdoing Galaxy
Of Terror and Forbidden World by
default. Of course, anything Jaws about it was not avoided and the
film has some good moments, but it is not great, yet it at least is a decent
genre piece if nothing else.
An
experiment with a totally unrelated purpose has the intended living creatures
gestate into full human-sized killers ready to compete with the human
race. This is not done very
convincingly, but there is just enough interesting activity to keep one
watching and Director Barbara Peters does not do a bad job. Ann Turkel is a scientist who figures out
what is going on and becomes a target of the new breed, while Vic Morrow turns
up in a supporting role that would be one of his last in a major feature film
before his accidental death a few films later.
A
then-unknown James Horner did one of his first-ever scores for the film and it
is not bad, while Director of Photography Daniel Lacambre (The Velvet Vampire, Lady In
Red) delivers a better-looking film than expected.
Finally, there
is Joe Dante’s best film, Piranha, a
1978 knock-off of Jaws that managed
to be a hit simply by being more original and more amusing than most of the
films that wanted to be the Spielberg blockbuster. By changing from a single non-human antagonist,
the film was a throwback to Hitchcock’s The
Birds (1963) in a way not often acknowledged, but that is part of its
success.
Everything
just comes together well for this film, which moves along very well and will
remain one of the best film Corman ever produced. An experimental lab has a pool and is a
little too close to the local river when a school of the title fish is
accidentally released and a doctor at the lab (Kevin McCarthy), he and two
people (Heather Menzies from the TV version of Logan’s Run; Bradford Dillman) who made this disaster happen when
looking for two teenagers who disappeared sets the film off and running.
Besides a
solid supporting cast that includes Keenan Wynn in his later genre film glory,
Barbara Steele (a queen of the genre) and Melody Thomas (in the middle of her
big screen career that included The
Beguiled, The Car and The Fury before becoming a soap opera
superstar), you would never know this was just another B-movie and it turned
out to be much more. Later, a Piranha II was made (though James
Cameron directed hardly anything on it) and this reissue comes out as Piranha 3-D arrived in theaters.
Also
helping the film work better than expected (and it still holds up well) is a
score by Pino Donaggio, in the midst of his classic work with Brian De
Palma. John Sayles of all people
finished the screenplay started by Richard Robinson (Kingdom Of The Spiders)
and Director of Photography Jamie Anderson (Malibu Beach, What’s Love
Got To Do With It), A.S.C., does some of the best work of his career.
The 1080p
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on the Blu-rays for both Humanoids and Piranha look better than their anamorphically enhanced DVD
counterparts, but not always by much. Humanoids has better color than Piranha, but you can see more noise and
print issues on its Blu-ray. It is still
better to see these on Blu-ray because they are much closer to what a new print
would look like in 35mm, but a little more work could have been done on both. The Blu-rays have PCM 2.0 Mono sound, while
all the DVDs have Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono with the PCM having the slight
edge. It is a shame stereo upgrades
could not have been made, especially if the music scores were recorded in
stereo and sound effects stems could be located.
Extras on
all four films include stills and feature length audio commentary tracks by the
major participants of each film. All but
BattleTruck add TV Spots and Trailers.
Humanoids (which is here in
its uncut version) adds Leonard Maltin interviewing Corman on the film, Deleted
Scenes that were just discovered from the MGM/UA vault (some with no sound),
New World Trailers and a Making Of featurette.
Piranha adds
behind-the-scenes footage, a Making Of featurette, Bloopers & Outtakes,
behind-the-scenes stills from Phil Tippett who made the killer fish, New World
Trailers, additional scenes made for the Network TV version and commentary on
the trailer for the film by Producer Jon Davidson. You can also see the trailer with its
original audio. I also liked the
lenticular slipboard case the DVD of Piranha
had, which is one of the best such lenticular pieces we’ve seen in a while.
Once
again, Shout! Factory has done a great job with deluxe reissues of these films
and more are on the way.
- Nicholas Sheffo
