Altitude
(2010/Anchor Bay Blu-ray) + Fallen
(2006/Image Blu-ray) + Assault Of The
Sasquatch (2010/MVD Visual DVD)
Picture: B-/C+/C Sound: B/C+/C Extras: C/D/D Films/Episodes: C/C-/D
A few
more Horror titles have arrived for Halloween 2010 and two of three are on
Blu-ray. One we have covered before, and
all are silly at best.
Comic
Book Artist Kaare Andrews’ feature film debut Altitude (2010) is a stuck-in-a story, which can either be used for
comedy or suspense, as in Hitchcock’s Lifeboat
and though this is not anywhere near that good, it is interesting, amusing and
somewhat ambitious on a B-movie level.
The cast of young actors are not bad either, but it is just we have seen
this so many times. They take a plane
trip on their own and their plane gets lost in some strange zone and possibly
via some strange force. It never becomes
a good Twilight Zone episode either,
but it is consistent on its limited level and will be worth a look to some.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image was shot in the Super 35mm format, but
has so much digital work and other issues that you would not know that, which
is a shame because this might have looked better without going overboard on the
digital effects. The Dolby TrueHD 5.1
mix is much better with rich strong sound that is warm enough and a solid
soundfield that was a pleasant surprise, as well as the default highlight of
the disc. It makes the many flaws more
bearable. Extras include a behind the
scenes featurette, Green Storm
featurette, Original Concepts Gallery and feature length audio commentary track
by Andrews.
Fallen (2006) is a mini-series we
recently covered on DVD, which you can read all about at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9882/Fallen+(2006/ABC+Family/Image+DVD
Unfortunately,
the upgrades to 1080p 1.78 X1 digital High Definition image and PCM 2.0 Stereo
sound only show more flaws than enhancements in the presentation, so it is no
improvement over the DVD and adds the Blu-ray exclusive of a Paul Wesley
interview, but this is for fans only.
That
leaves the silly, awful Andrew Gernhard disaster Assault Of The Sasquatch (2010), which essentially wants to be a Predator rip-off (the recent revival
beat them to it) with Bigfoot (notice they did not use that name) looking more
like the gorilla in the 3-D camp classic Robot
Monster minus the space helmet (or was that a fish bowl?), but this was
just bad, the tough guy frontin’ was highly overdone and make-up a mess. If they had permission, they could have just
bought an old Bionic Bigfoot from Kenner
(from The Six Million Dollar Man/Bionic Woman collection) and shot
close-ups of that, which would have been an improvement over the dime-store
Halloween job we get here. What a wreck!
The
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image was shot on bad digital video and looks
soft, awful, has color issues, detail issues and motion blur all over the
place, not to mention haloing, all making it difficult to watch. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is a badly boosted
version of some bad, barely stereo low-budget audio that is compressed, has bad
microphone recording, volume dropouts from the location shoot and a choppy
soundfield. It is amazing the Chiller
Channel ever picked this up. Extras
include a featurette, “Sasquatch”
Music Video (we are not kidding! Pac Man Fever suddenly seems like a Bob
Dylan classic), feature length audio commentary track and Bloopers that
resemble much of the final product.
- Nicholas Sheffo
