At
The Devil's Door
(2013)/CAM2CAM
(2013/MPI/IFC Midnight DVDs)/Christmas
Evil (aka You
Better Watch Out/1980/Vinegar
Syndrome Blu-ray w/DVD)/Samurai
Cop (1989, 1991/Cinema
Epoch Blu-ray)/Traffickers
(2012/Well Go USA Blu-ray)
Picture:
C/C/B- & C+/B-/B- Sound: C+/C+/B- & C+/C/B- Extras:
C/C-/B/C+/C- Films: C/C-/C+/C/C
Here's
a new set of action thrillers that started with ideas that could have
worked, then they go down their own paths to often bizarre results...
Nicholas
McCarthy's At
The Devil's Door
(2013) has the director of The
Pact
going into the world of devil children and the women made victim to
accomplish this. Though there are some good ideas, a few good
moments, some suspense and a decent cast, the plotting falls flat and
never adds up to what it could or should have been. The early scene
of a guy seducing a young woman his age as a sacrifice to Satan is
creepy, but still too obvious and predictable, then we drift into a
tale of two sisters, one of which lands up wanting revenge for what
was done to the other.
As
I watched, it sometimes seemed as if McCarthy was second-guessing
himself, then I turned to the Deleted Scenes and it turns out he
threw out a potentially much better film by making the worst possible
decisions at every turn and at the expense of exposition, realism and
impact. What a big shame, but the devil was in the details and he
threw out too many of them down to some points in the ending. He
should have been much more disciplined.
Extras
include those Deleted Scenes with director commentary, Making Of
featurette entitled Speaking
Of The Devil, a trailer
and a feature length audio commentary with the director.
Joel
Soisson's CAM2CAM
(2013) is the big dud here, with its issues with women (young gals
deserve to be assaulted, especially if they toy with sex and
lesbianism on the net?), also the transgendered are bad (don't ask),
torture will usually follow if not outright murder and act as if this
could only happen in Thailand. I'm being too nice. If there was a
serious attempt to do a thriller here instead of an overindulgent
exploitation flick, this could have been something, but it is seedy
from the first shot and the few times it mighty get better, it
doesn't. Yawn!
A
trailer and feature length audio commentary with the director are the
extras.
Lewis
Jackson's Christmas Evil
(aka You Better Watch
Out/1980) might at first
seem like another 'killer Santa' film, but it is more amusing and
less simple than that high concept. Involving the clever producer
Edward R. Pressman with its sights on maybe being the next Black
Christmas (the original
1974 Bob Clark classic, reviewed elsewhere on this site) has a
traumatized Harry (Brandon Maggart in a better performance than it
would first seem) is a white collar worker at a local toy
manufacturer (more realistic and believable in the pre-Reagan era
than now) who is haunted by some bad, shocking holiday memories
(seeing his mother getting it on with Santa, who he believed was
real, especially) and has him in a mode of regression.
When
one of the workers unknowingly sets him off, he decides to transform
himself into Santa and if anyone, anyone
gets in the way of his happy memories or a happy holiday, they will
die! To the script's credit, it waits for this to build a while so
it is not outright angry exploitation (and therefore does not qualify
for that silly war on
Christmas trend), but its
violent moments are not that well done. Yet, this is still creepy in
other ways we don't see enough in thrillers these days and the actors
are amusing all around. Jackson goes bonkers trying to make this
work with his limited resources, so his ambition goes a long way, but
he also makes some very bad choices in advance (wait until you see
all the big names he passed on that he could have had here in the
extras!!!) that hurt the film in the long run. The one good choice
he made was hiring Director of Photography Ricardo Aranovich after
seeing his work on Alain Resnais' Providence
(1977) and would shoot Missing
(1982) and Hanna K
(1983) with Costa-Gavras soon after.
In
all that, the film deserves some serious rediscovery and can be a
hoot at times, so you might want to catch it, especially if you are a
fan of such demented thrillers.
Extras
include two feature length audio commentary tracks with Director
Lewis, a third with John Waters, an Original Theatrical Trailer,
Deleted Scenes, Actor Screen Tests, Storyboards Gallery, a few
archival interviews with Lewis and lead actor Maggart and Vintage
Test Screening Comment Cards.
Amir
Shervan's Samurai Cop
(1989, 1991) is another very low budget Robert Z'Dar film, but now it
is on Blu-ray, though we covered it on DVD a little while ago:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/12240/Samurai+Cop+(1989/Cinema+Epoch+DVD
The
two schools of thought on this film is that either (as my fellow
writer would vote) it is so bad it is good or as I thought, it is a
wreck, though amazing how ambitious it is with very limited talent
and funds to emulate the pricier action films (and maybe cheesy sex
flicks, softcore at least) of the 1980s making it one of the more
bizarre time capsules of the time by default. Some gay-baiting also
puts in in the camp comedy category, but it is still more watchable
than an Expendables
film since it is less pretentious and more authentic by default. Oh,
and its attempts at martial arts set the arts back a good bit, but at
least that too is amusing.
Extras
are increased from the still galleries, interviews and trailers from
the DVD, with the solid additions of three audio commentary tracks, a
photo shoot for the sequel and music score excerpts.
Kim
Hong-Sun's Traffickers
(2012) is a Korean thriller that wants to be comical and gross while
taking on serious subjects of drug transportation and human organ
stealing. The plotting gets convoluted very early on and never
recovers including a gangster (cliché of one), 'nice' couple and
some very sick, corrupt people all over. This all becomes a mess
quickly, though again, if the makers had thrown out the comedy and
tried for more mystery and suspense, they have a good cast and this
could have worked much better. What we get instead is yet another
disappointment, especially since they had somewhat of a good budget
here.
A
trailer is the only extra.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image in Traffickers
should have been the visual champ here and it does have its share of
shots, but it also has more than its share of slight motion blur,
Video White that is a little blown out and other odd shots that
undermine its consistency. The 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High
Definition image transfers on Evil and Cop can show the
age of the materials used as expected and Cop looks better
here than it did in its DVD version, but it too has some Video White
blowout issues along with the variances of the film print material
used (it looks like parts of 5 prints stored in varied conditions)
leaving Evil also rough, but actually having the best color of
all the releases on the list. It looks better than the decent
anamorphically enhanced DVD version also included and the hard work
to restore it and do a new 4K transfer from original 35mm elements
has paid off nicely.
The
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image in Door and
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Cam should at least
look as good as the Evil DVD, but they are soft HD shoots
(especially Cam) with some good shots and even color, but too
soft throughout. Blu-ray versions could only improve both so much,
though Door would likely benefit more.
As
for sound, Traffickers
has a sometimes interesting DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix
that should be the all out sonic champ, but it is inconsistent and
some dialogue is flatter than it should be, so the DTS-HD MA
(Master Audio) Mono lossless mix on Evil
can match it despite its flaws and age. It has warmth and the music
score in particular sounds good. The
lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Cop
is about the same as the DVD version, but it
is so badly recorded that it becomes comical in ways they could not
have imagined then. That leaves lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on Door
and Cam
sounding better, yet not great, but still offering the occasionally
good surround moment.
-
Nicholas Sheffo