The Dead
(2010/Anchor Bay Blu-ray)/Dead Hooker In
A Trunk (2009/IFC Midnight/MPI DVD)/Fred
2: Night Of The Living Fred (2011/Lionsgate DVD)/Night Train Murders (1975/Blue Underground)/Spiderhole (2010/IFC/MPI DVD)/Texas
Killing Fields (2011/Anchor Bay Blu-ray)/2012: Zombie Apocalypse (2011/Asylum Blu-ray)/Undocumented (2011/IFC/MPI DVD)
Picture: B-/C+/C/B/C/B-/C+/C Sound: B/C/C+/B-/C+/B/C+/C+ Extras: C-/D/D/C+/D/C/D/D Main Programs: C-/D/D/C+/D/C/D/D
There was
a time in the Horror genre where if the films were not original, they could at
least be interesting, but most look like bad film student disasters trying to
imitate only a few of the great films in the genre and the results are usually
awful. That pretty much includes most of
this batch of releases, save a few with some ambition.
The Ford
Brothers give us The Dead (2010)
with a cover that looks far too much like that of Dawn Of The Dead, but takes place in South Africa and most of the
zombies here are Black Africans.
However, that is far from enough to set this apart from the thousands of
generic Romero wannabes of late, yet this did offer a few things to make it
more interesting. If only Howard J.
& Jon Ford could have made this work.
What I
liked were the locations, a lack of pretension and the lack of talking which
reminded me of how most zombie projects of the last 10 years have had some of
the worst writing ever. Unfortunately,
there is no suspense, there are too many clichés and the duo does not know what
it wants to say as it misses endless opportunities to do so. The actors are good and all are working
against a tired subgenre, but fans are more likely to enjoy this over most such
releases of late. Extras include Deleted
Scenes of interest, a behind-the-scenes featurette and feature length audio
commentary by The Fords.
Less
successful is Jen & Sylvia Soska directing and co-starring in Dead Hooker In A Trunk (2009) which
wants to be yet another Tarantino rip-off with torture porn moments, but is
handled so sloppily and idiotically that it is always like watching a version
that is not a final cut in the worst way.
Three gals (a nerd, a Goth chick, a glamed-up smarty) find the title
content in a classic Pontiac sports car (the auto is the most interesting thing
here) and this leads to fights, blood, gunshots, drugs, beatings, but no story
or script of merit. Boring from
beginning to end, I was only expecting it to get better in one early scene, but
when it failed there, I knew they were doomed.
You will be too if you waste 89 minutes of your time watching in what is
Weekend At Bernie’s for idiots and that says something.
Extras
include Deleted & Alternate Scenes of no consequence, a behind-the-scenes
featurette, trailer and on-camera interview.
Watch Hitchcock’s The Trouble
With Harry instead.
John
Fortenberry’s Fred 2: Night Of The
Living Fred (2011) is the hideous sequel to the hideous Fred – The Movie with Lucas Cruikshank
back in the title role as the endlessly obnoxious, highly stereotypical idiot
(I swear that voice is being sped-up and added later!) as WWE star John Cena
(whose made his share of bad films) plays his father (!?!) and Fred must find
out why his music teacher (who he is very attached to) has disappeared. Turns out his neighbor is a vampire and Fred
must stop him, including enlisting some friends. Wow, is this awful, like the Fright Night remake script that was
rejected. Nothing here is funny (down to
the lenticular paperboard sleeve where you can make Fred turn into a vampire)
and this is a total mess. Extras include
Fred Videos and three making-of featurettes.
Good luck with this one!
An
Italian attempt to capitalize on the original Last House On The Left, Aldo Lado’s Night Train Murders (1975) has two young ladies going home from
Germany on a train, only to encounter two male hoodlums who join an older woman
to trap, torture, rape and torment them all the way home if they can survive
that long. Some of this is effective,
but much of it is just badly done or flat out dumb and after a few plot twists,
the revenge part kicks in, sometimes literally.
They even try to make some kind of profound statement at the end, but it
just never totally adds up.
Still,
this is the uncut version and Blue Underground has done their best to do
justice to a film that I had not seen for decades. Horror fans should see it out of curiosity,
but don’t expect much. At least it
understood what it was ripping off unlike most of the entries on this
list. Extras include Theatrical
Trailers, Radio Spots, Poster & Still Gallery and an interview piece with
Lado called Riding The Night Train.
When I
saw the title Spiderhole (2010) all
I could think of was the infamously bad Spider
Baby, but this is simply a British torture porn film with four teens
driving off and taking over what they think is an abandoned house, but
“SURPRISE!!!” it is not. Yawn. Instead we see four good actors wasted in a
dumb 82 minutes exercise that is trying to be Saw but we “saw” all of this
already. A trailer, behind-the-scenes
featurette and interview segment are the extras.
Watchable
at times, Ami Cannan Mann’s Texas
Killing Fields (2011) is a sometimes good thriller with Sam Worthington and
Jeffrey Dean Morgan (in the best thing either has done in a while) are police
partners investigating a series of dead female bodies showing up all over the
place in the title locale. Jessica
Chastain is also a detective, but she is splitting with Worthington’s character and still experiences
plenty of sexism on the job. Morgan’s
daughter (Chloe Grace Moretz) is also being harassed, though the film never
effectively paints a sexist Texas
out, so these moments seem more like plot devices, but with that it eventually
becomes a cheap child-in-jeopardy romp.
It is too bad Writer Donald F. Ferrarone could not make this more
intense, original and spared us much of the predictable melodrama and being
“inspired by true events” (loosely we gather) is no excuse. A feature length audio commentary by Cannan
and Ferrarone is the only extra.
Nick
Lynn’s silly telefilm 2012: Zombie
Apocalypse (2011) was made with the SyFy Channel and it shows, not knowing
if it should be serious, gross, violent, a joke or hip, but it will do anything
to be part of the genre and get fans to like it. Too bad the intent to appeal to fanboys (stereotypically
so) had this mess all over the place and casting Ving Rhames and Taryn Manning
does not save it either. Wow, what a
dud! Extras include a Gag Reel (at least
someone was having fun, because it is not the viewer), Trailer and a Making Of
featurette.
Last and
probably least is Chris Peckover’s Undocumented
(2011) seems like a torture porn film at first, but there is something else
going on here as masked white supremacists/separatists kidnap Mexicans and
other non-whites coming over the border and decide to torture, terrorize,
mutilate and destroy them slowly and otherwise, including children. Far from “a new one” that we needed to see,
this at first seems like any other such genre work, but then it gets political
and gets into trouble.
By being
so shallow all the way through, it thinks it is being a comedy or satire, but
in all actuality, it intentionally or inadvertently becomes a pro-racist work
making such activities palatable and with zero ironic distance and zero talent
behind the camera or in the script, any comment seeming against such things
becomes a celebration of them and as much of a starting gun to do them as
Griffith’s Birth Of A Nation (1915)
was to relaunching the then-dead Klu Klux Klan.
I only accuse them of blatant stupidity and not irresponsibility, though
all involved are responsible for its content.
As for spoofing patriotism in the genre, William Lustig’s Uncle Sam (1997, reviewed on Blu-ray
elsewhere on this site) is a much better film.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers on Dead and Killing are the
newest theatrically-intended shoots, but they both are styled down somewhat to
their disadvantage, allowing the 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image
on Train which comes from the uncut
35mm camera negative and has both the best color range and best Video Black
despite some flaws from age. The 1080p
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on Apocalypse
is the softest of all looking like an HD shoot with older HD cameras, including
limited color and more noise than expected.
All the
DVDs are anamorphically enhanced with Hooker
& Spiderhole at 2.35 X 1 and Fred & Undocumented at 1.78 X 1.
All but Fred are also styled
down, but Hooker is barely better (shockingly) as the rest are much softer than
they should be, while all include some motion blur too.
Apocalypse claims on the back of its case to
have a DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix, but when you play it, all you
get is inferior, lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 and it is not that good and is on par
with the same kind of mix on the Fred,
Spiderhole and Undocumented DVDs with a lack of overall soundfield. Hooker
has the worst sound with plenty of location audio issues beyond any attempts at
realism or style with a Dolby Digital 2.0 mix that is stereo at best. Fred
has a Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo alternate track that is almost as weak.
That
leaves lossless mixes on the remaining three Blu-rays. The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix on Dead and Dolby TrueHD 7.1 mix on Killing are the best here, but on par
with each other as Dead makes the
most of its soundfield even when it is quiet and Killing is pushing it a bit by
trying to expand to 7.1. Still, they are
decently recorded for the most part.
That leaves a DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix on Train that is in much better shape than
expected despite showing some of its age.
- Nicholas Sheffo
