Apartment 143 (2011/aka Emergo/Magnolia/MagNet
Blu-ray)/Eraserhead
(1977/Lynch/Umbrella Blu-ray)/The Moth
Diaries (2011/IFC/MPI Blu-ray)/Re-Animator
(1985/Image Blu-ray)/Vile (2011/Inception
Media DVD)
Picture:
C+/B-/B-/B-/C Sound: B-/C+/B-/B-/C Extras: D/C+/C-/B-/D Films: D/B-/C-/B-/D
PLEASE NOTE: The Eraserhead Blu-ray may be marked as Region B on the back of its
case, but our final copy was Region Free, should play on all Blu-ray players
worldwide and can be ordered from our friends at Umbrella Entertainment at the
website address provided at the end of the review.
Here’s a
new batch of Horror releases, including two classics upgraded…
Carles
Torrens’ Apartment 143 (2011/aka Emergo, ironically the name of a
gimmick from a William Castle film, but meaning a ghost either way) is more an
extended video feigning a reality TV set up than a narrative exercise as most
of this mess is shot with people looking at their cameras, setting up cameras,
being way to impressed with video cameras and more silliness as a group of
so-called ghost hunters wire the title locale to see the how, why and if it is
haunted. Unfortunately, the residents
and their visitors are so boring, you wonder why any ghosts would want to
bother.
This is
the latest cynical gimmick mess featuring that young gal with the long black
hair and white t-short (???) who keeps showing up from the dead for no good
reason and always without explanation.
Maybe she wants a new shirt and hairdo?
Maybe she is searching for a good script, so if she keeps showing up in
junk like this, she’ll never rest in peace!
This is
Spanish, in Spanish and is so un-Spanish that is it just a very, very bad Xerox
of every bad U.S.-produced variant so far.
Skip it!
Extras
include an HDNet piece on it, Theatrical Trailer, six making of featurettes and
an interview featurette, all which make this look even worse if that was
possible.
Another
bad import is Taylor Sheridan’s Vile
(2011), a very lame, belated entry in one of the dumbest cycles of all time, torture
porn. Though a female video host has a
British accent for no apparent reason (to make this seem smarter?), this is a U.S. production
and a really bad one trying to be another Saw
or Hostel, but it is just silly,
obnoxious and a real time-waster. The
kidnapped and trapped group here has their brain fluids interrupted and only
pain can save them, but not this absolutely stupid script.
Zero
brains, suspense and point, this obvious, cynical dud will be quickly
forgotten. Even by diehard fans of the cycle of there are any left. A trailer and lousy deleted scenes are the
only extras.
Mary
Harron has given us some very overrated films like I Shot Andy Warhol (she didn’t get what it was really about), American Psycho (would anyone really
remember it if it were not for Christian Bale?) plus spotty TV work. Her latest is The Moth Diaries (2011) taking place at an all-girls school where
main character Rebecca (Sarah Bolger) is still dealing with the death of her
poet father when she takes on new school assignments and that brings new people
like other classmates, a male teacher who excels in poetry so much he liked her
father’s work and a young lady named Ernessa (Lily Cole) who is hiding
something.
When she
gets assigned a book about two young ladies, one who might be a vampire or
demon, real life starts to imitate fiction and this film becomes a one-note
exercise that cannot compete with the best all-female school thrillers (Bob
Clark’s original 1974 Black Christmas)
or simply a drama that understands the environment and atmosphere of said
school (Jordan Scott’s underrated Cracks,
both reviewed elsewhere on this site) so we get a quiet, boring, predictable,
one-note lite Goth trip of a non story and a waste of everyone’s time. Yawn!!!
Extras
include a trailer and behind-the-scenes featurette that shows they did not know
what they were trying to achieve here, but I’ll blame Harron 100% yet again.
That
brings us to two films by filmmakers who know a good script when they have one
and know what to do with it. These new
Blu-rays are fine, if not overwhelming upgrades to their previous DVD
counterparts, which we have covered twice before each.
First we
have David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977)
which I always enjoy in the way it frustrates its audience (i.e., the majority
who do not get the film) and though Lynch himself created this restored version
you can order form his website, we happen to have covered the film three times
in import editions by Umbrella that are the same video masters. You can see our thoughts on the DVD at these
links for the Single DVD
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/8879/Eraserhead+%E2%80%93+Special+Edi
…plus
that DVD in the David Lynch Collection
set
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/7751/The+David+Lynch+Collection+(Eraserh
Now that
I have given my colleague a chance for his thoughts on the film to sink in with
our readers (and let people know a whole box set had been issued of Lynch’s
harder to get work by Lynch), I will make a few comments. The film is in love with silent cinema, black
and white cinema, Horror cinema and German Expressionist cinema. Though we start with a lead character in Henry
Spencer (Jack “John” Lance), Lynch is also pushing the boundaries of audience
expectation, starting out with a standard narrative and switching out of it not
unlike Hitchcock’s Psycho at a
surprise point, but the shift is suddenly out of narrative space itself, as the
film flexes it writerly European sensibilities.
The
visuals are obsessed with empty space or space denied by pollution or too much
technology making little room for humans.
Like Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate
(1980) a few years later, Lynch is walking the line between Hollywood readerly
and European writerly narrative approaches, but takes his film into a different
realm than Cimino would (trying to do both at once, perhaps, but more on that
film when Criterion issues their Blu-ray) or anyone else had before. But Lynch knew what he wanted and his small
film had a huge impact and put him on the worldwide list of top cutting-edge
independent directors to the point he still makes films today.
Despite
his occasional commercial successes, he is still making films and never sold
out, still able to make a film and its visuals so dense as to be palpable. That started here and the film holds up 35
years later. I will also add you still
could not make this on the best HD video around today since you could not get
the HD camera to reproduce these rich monochromatic images, making Eraserhead a black and white pure film
classic to boot. See it if you never
have and see it again if you could not stick with it the first time around.
Extras
repeating here include Stories (a 90 minutes making of documentary) and the
Theatrical Trailer.
Finally
we have the other genre classic, Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator (1985), a darkly comical, Expressionistic tale on the
Frankenstein legend as well as one of the only films to understand and deal
with H. P. Lovecraft’s work properly. A
film that becomes more popular all the time, we have covered the two previous
special DVD editions (via other writers) now out of print including the famous Elite
Entertainment Millennium Edition:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/3387/Re-Animator:+Millennium+Edition+(Elit
…plus the
upgraded Anchor Bay edition that even copies with a
collectible bonus:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5169/Re-Animator+-+Anchor+Bay+Limited
Sardonic
and dark like Verhoeven’s Robocop
(1987, both films spawned unusual sequels); Bruce Abbott plays a grad student
at a university where a morgue employee (Jeffrey Combs) has found a way to
bring the dead back to life, but not in some clean, neat way. Fascinated at first, the Dan (Abbott) starts
to get too involved and this slowly leads to all hell breaking loose.
Immediately
reminding me of some aspects of Paul Morrissey’s Flesh For Frankenstein (1973, X-rated at the time; this cut of
Re-Animator is unrated), the film can go a little overboard with its
still-impressive, palpable make-up effects and was part of a cycle of
Horror/Sci-Fi films (including some even Spielberg made) that were make-up
crazy, but one could also argue that this fits into the geek/genius cycle that
was otherwise a series of teen films (Real
Genius, Weird Science, Revenge Of The Nerds, etc.) so add how
well it has aged and you can see the film was not just a silly gorefest or the
like, but a serious attempt to tell a tale of science gone mad, but now aided and
even condoned by the authority and “respectability” of universities. It’s reputation is earned and in some ways,
it seems more relevant than ever in a world of science denied and genetically
engineered foods.
Extras include two separate audio commentaries (one with
director Gordon and the other with cast members Abbott, Combs, Crampton and
Sampson), a 70-minutes-long retrospective featurette, three on-camera interviews
with cast and crew, separate discussion of the music with Composer Richard
Band, interview with Fangoria Magazine editor Tony
Timpone, a deleted scene plus several extended
scenes, TV spots, Theatrical Trailer, Poster
Gallery and Production Stills.
The 1080p
1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Apartment is the poorest of the Blu-rays here as the video is as
bad as it is obvious and to think this is intentional, but it does not make it
“realistic” on any level, is as unoriginal as anything and the image can even
look strained. Very lame! The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on
the Vile DVD could have at least
competed with it if it had been a decent looking low def disc, but it still
manages to look worse, poorer, softer and weaker throughout with even more
strained images. No demo material in either
case!
The 1080p
1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Moth, 1080p 1.66 X 1 black and white digital High Definition image
transfer on Eraserhead and 1080p 1.78
X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Re-Animator tie for the best performers on the list, though Moth ought to be the champ as it is the
newest production. However, the images
have been color-gutted and styling has been overdone, though it was shot in
Super 35mm film format for 1.85 X 1 presentation, sometimes referred to as
Super 1.85. That leaves Eraserhead (looking better than ever as
Blu-ray can do the Black & White more thoroughly and deeply than any DVD
could) and Re-Animator easily
looking better than their previous DVD counterparts, if not spectacularly so as
Eraserhead can show its age from the
film footage source and Re-Animator
offers better color and definition, but also has more grain, some fading in
parts and some strained shots, but not as bad as the newer production.
The best
soundtracks appear on the Blu-rays of Apartment,
Moth and Re-Animator, which all sport DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless
mixes, but they all have their sonic limits including inconsistent
soundfields. Apartment has some audio flaws that are on purpose, but it is often
sloppy so you know some of the flaws were unintended and some were left
in. How weak. Moth
has many moments of quiet and it is often a dialogue-based film, but the
recording in competent. Re-Animator seems to have the same 5.1
soundmaster as the Anchor Bay DVD did, which offered both regular DTS and Dolby
Digital. The result is some dialogue and
sound effects are not as good as others and the music tends to sound the best,
That
leaves lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on Eraserhead
that simply repeats the same soundmix from the DVD versions supervised by Lynch
himself and as good as they are going to get.
We surmise he did not try PCM or DTS-MA since the age of the soundmaster
(even restored) would have had new flaws for any improvements they could have
brought. The worst sound is easily the
lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 Stereo on Vile
that in 5.1 has a lower-than-it-should be center channel and 2.0 mix that is
also on the weak side. Both are puzzlingly
problematic so be careful of volume levels and volume switching on this one.
As noted
above, you can order this Blu-ray import version of Eraserhead exclusively from Umbrella at:
http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/
-
Nicholas Sheffo
