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