Aisle Seat Halloween Special

by Andy Dursin
www.andyfilm.com
dursin.blogspot.com

With Halloween looming later this week, I thought I'd take the opportunity to recap our coverage of new genre outings on DVD and Blu-Ray -- these have been compiled below for your reading pleasure, and hopefully will result in some chilling viewing experiences for you and yours as we hit October 31st.

Before we get to that, it's worth noting that Blu-Ray enthusiasts have had good reason to celebrate over the last few weeks thanks to sterling releases like "The Godfather Trilogy," a smattering of vintage James Bond adventures and the four-disc "Omen Collection" box-set.

Now Disney has thrown another log onto the fire with their first "classic" animated release in high-definition -- SLEEPING BEAUTY (***, 75 mins., 1959, G), the studio's gorgeous Cinemascope fairy tale that was last seen on disc in an excellent 2003 DVD that's been out of print for a little while now.

The double-disc Blu-Ray package offers a fully restored, AVC-encoded transfer with a newly "enhanced" DTS Master Audio soundtrack, both of which are hugely satisfying. The meticulously cleaned up transfer offers eye popping visuals and enables viewers at home to experience the majesty of the film's theatrical dimensions and scope really for the first time; even prior DVD renditions, which looked fine for their time, fail to compare to the depth and clarity of the high- definition Blu-Ray image. The audio end has been likewise punched up a bit, though purists may want to stick to the "restored" original theatrical soundtrack, which has also been preserved here.

Though Disney is quick to bill this release of "Sleeping Beauty" as its first deluxe "Platinum" package, the prior DVD featured a good array of supplements, most of which have been retained here (with the particular exception of a featurette on the music with Leonard Maltin and the original disc's commentary track). These include behind-the-scenes featurettes on the movie's production and legacy as a unique entry in the Disney canon (it's still a bit of a cold fish story- wise, just a spectacular looking one), with the added benefit of fresh extras including an alternate opening (with a discarded song, newly recorded for this disc), deleted songs, and additional games for the little ones. A new commentary track is particularly engaging, offering comments from Pixar's John Lasseter and Leonard Maltin, while a full run of art galleries rounds out the package. Buffs will also note the inclusion of a Disney Cinemascope short, "Grand Canyon," presented in HD and with DTS Master Audio sound on Disc 1.

In all this is an obvious must-have release for Disney aficionados and a fantastic start to their Blu-Ray roster of classic animated films ("Pinocchio" is slated to follow next March). The Blu-Ray set is also bundled together with a fold-out slipcover and a copy of the standard-definition DVD as well.

Tink talks for the first time in this computer-generated offering that follows our heroine as a young fairy-in-training in a colorful, and quite charmingly designed, Disney direct-to-video effort. Having watched many of the studio's small-screen affairs over the years fare from decent to poor to surprisingly okay, I think it's safe to say that "Tinker Bell" is easily one of the studio's finest efforts: kids will enjoy the story, while adults ought to be enchanted by the dazzling colors and satisfying animation, which looks spectacular in high-definition on Blu-Ray.

Joel McNeely's pleasant score is another plus, while a variety of celebs voice the various characters Tink encounters in her journey (from Lucy Liu to America Ferrara and Anjelica Huston). It makes for an entertaining family fantasy that doesn't overstay its welcome at 78 minutes, and Disney seems to be quite confident of its success since a sequel is already promised for 2009.

Special features on both platforms include 10 minutes of deleted scenes, a Making Of featurette, several interactive games, a dynamic 16:9 (1.85) transfer on DVD and AVC-encoded Blu-Ray presentation, plus 5.1 Dolby Digital sound (uncompressed PCM on the Blu-Ray side).

DEAD SPACE: DOWNFALL (74 mins., 2008, Not Rated; Anchor Bay): Gory tie-in to the new Electronic Arts video game is a mismash sci-fi/horror saga that "borrows" (or rips off) liberally from "Event Horizon" and "Aliens" as it spins a tale of an alien artifact that turns a spacecraft into a living hell with zombies, mutants, and other creatures running amok. Film Roman's animation is okay and horror-crazed teenagers might gravitate towards the violence and action, but the story is pedestrian and all of it feels like leftovers from the predecessors it rips off. Anchor Bay's Blu-Ray and DVD editions sport a deleted scene, trailer, photo gallery, isolated soundtrack (spotlighting Seth Podowitz's score), and a portable digital copy of the movie, along with highly effective 16:9 (1.85) and VC-1 encoded (Blu-Ray) transfers. A boisterous Dolby TrueHD soundtrack adorns the BD platter while standard Dolby Digital 5.1 will suffice for standard-definition viewers.

In spite of its flaws, the original THE OMEN (***, 111 mins., 1976, R; Fox) and its sequels form a trilogy that's a rarity in the horror genre: glossy "A-list" studio productions with outstanding Jerry Goldsmith scores, effective Panavision cinematography, and a compelling story line that runs through all three pictures. The pay off may not be worth the wait, and some narrative opportunities are fumbled in the sequels, but with Goldsmith's symphony of horror carrying the viewer through effortlessly, it's still an annual viewing experience for this critic around this time of year.

Concerning director Richard Donner's 1976 original, it's still hard to believe Gregory Peck and Lee Remick attached themselves to such a piece of pulp-horror nonsense, but the picture is so well-made -- expertly directed by Donner, atmospherically shot by Gilbert Taylor -- that it remains something of a genre favorite, if not a classic. The widescreen images and use of music are quite unsettling, even if the film's satanic-oriented plot has been copied so often by now that the picture has lost some of its original punch. Goldsmith's soundtrack, which certainly established itself as a bona-fide masterpiece of genre music, does wonders for the film, which moves at a steady pace, accentuating psychological horror almost as much as it does the outright apocalyptic elements in David Seltzer's screenplay.

The AVC-encoded HD transfer in Fox's Blu-Ray disc (the only of the original "Omen" films to get a standalone release outside the box-set) is superb, adding a layer of sharpness and clarity to the cinematography we haven't seen since its original theatrical release. Some grain remains, and the print isn't blemish-free, but it's certainly a huge upgrade on the standard-definition release and fans will appreciate the additional detail only the Blu-Ray affords. On the audio side, the DTS Master Audio track is comprised of the remixed 5.1 track from the last DVD release, and sounds superior to the original mono mix, which is also included here for purists.

For extras, Fox has wisely culled together all the extras from a number of prior DVD editions, sweetening the pot by including a new commentary from Nick Redman, Lem Dobbs and Jeff Bond, and restoring Jerry Goldsmith's isolated score in 5.1 along the way (note that the late '90s laserdisc also offered a stereophonic isolated score track as well, though the Blu-Ray's 5.1 mix comes from superior elements, producer Mike Matessino tells me).

Redman, Dobbs and Bond offer an interesting account of the film's production, with plenty of attention given to Goldsmith's Oscar-winning score and how it functions so brilliantly in the movie. Two other commentaries have been reprieved from earlier DVDs, including a 2006 talk with Richard Donner and screenwriter (and, obviously, "Omen" fan) Brian Helgeland, as well as an earlier (and often hilarious) discussion with Donner and editor Stuart Baird. Donner and Helgeland's talk covers some of the same terrain as the Baird-Donner commentary, though it's amusing how Donner has some variations on the same anecdotes he discussed previously (then again, the movie WAS produced over 30 years ago!). While all three tracks will be of interest for fans, the Donner-Baird discussion is the most consistently engaging of the bunch, while more production detail is relayed in the Redman-moderated 2008 track, which is exclusive to the Blu-Ray platter.

Additional extras include the hugely entertaining, feature-length AMC documentary "The Omen Legacy," which Image released in its own DVD back in 2001 (with a vintage "Damien: Omen II" featurette still exclusive to that disc), plus Donner's introductions from preceding releases, a "Bonus View" picture-in-picture track mainly comprised of rehashed interviews from other featurettes and "The Omen Legacy," and a brief talk with filmmaker Wes Craven discussing his fondness for the picture.

Also on-hand is the 45-minute "666: The Omen Revealed" documentary, plus lengthy interviews with Jerry Goldsmith and David Seltzer, along with a deleted scene that was added to the 2006 DVD platter. That sequence -- showing Mrs. Blaylock's original demise -- is presented in rough workprint form and offers commentary by Donner and Baird as well.

Goldsmith's interview segments include the composer's views on how Donner wanted the sequence where Damien panics outside the church to echo the throbbing, primal sound of John Williams's "Jaws" theme; about winning his Oscar (calling himself "familiar with losing"); how his wife Carol came to sIng "The Piper Dreams," and about working within the confines of the film's stringent budget. In fact, the producers coughed up an additional $25,000 to hire Goldsmith at the time, since he was initially outside the realm of the picture's then-miniscule studio budget! (The film cost $2 million without the composer's services).

During the other documentary materials, it's also interesting to hear how Donner stripped a good deal of the overtly horrific elements out of the picture (he and Baird talk about how they cut out Billie Whitelaw's extended fight with Gregory Peck from the final cut because it was too excessive), and one of the biggest revelations comes when they talk about the movie's original ending -- where Peck, Remick, and Damien are dead, ending the film on an ambiguous note and asking the audience to question if Peck wasn't simply insane.

Alan Ladd, Jr. (who seemed to add a good deal of his own input into now-classic '70s films like this and a little movie that followed called "Star Wars"), then-bigwig at Fox, asked Donner if Damien couldn't be alive at the end of the movie, and the filmmakers agreed to shoot the now-famous final sequence, where the demonic little tyke smiles at the camera while holding the President's hand at his adopted parents' funeral. The disparity between Donner wanting the film to be a psychological thriller and Seltzer's original intent of creating a supernatural horror movie comes through quite clearly here, both in the finished product and the various extras housed on this essential Blu-Ray release.

Both DAMIEN OMEN II (**1/2, 107 mins., 1978, R) and THE FINAL CONFLICT (**1/2, 108 mins., 1981, R) continued to chart Damien's apocalyptic rise, first as a young teen unaware initially of his heritage, and later -- as portrayed by Sam Neill in "The Final Conflict" -- a political prodigy newly appointed U.S. ambassador to England.

The AVC-encoded transfers on the sequels are superior to "The Omen" only in that the elements appear to be in healthier condition; "The Final Conflict" in particular looks exceptionally good here. As with before, DTS Master Audio sound is the default listening option, offering a pleasing, if not quite enveloping, sound stage for Goldsmith's marvelous soundtracks, which only improve as the series progresses in their thematic depth and dramatic effectiveness. Each film also offers previously-available commentary tracks (from producer Harvey Bernhard on "Damien" and director Graham Baker on "The Final Conflict") plus trailers.

Bernhard's commentary on the 1978 sequel "Damien: Omen II" does go into some detail about the sequel's woes, including the early firing of Mike Hodges -- whom the producer blames for taking too much time filming establishing shots -- and the general problems involving the rather pedestrian screenplay of the first "Omen" follow-up.

"Damien" isn't a bad movie by any means, but it is a disappointing one considering the potential of the project. Damien's growth and understanding of his demonic background could have made for a richly dramatic and eerie tale, but the resulting film is rather simplistic and by-the-numbers, playing out like a rehash of its predecessor. There are still many elements about the movie that are worth recommending: Goldsmith's score, Gil Taylor and Bill Butler's cinematography, and several crackerjack death sequences (gotta love Lew Ayres' demise!) make the movie entertaining in spite of its near constant predictability.

Though "The Omen" was initially slated to chart Damien's life in four installments (note Leo McKern's line about the "four faces" of the Anti-Christ early in "Omen II"), declining box-office revenues on "Damien: Omen II" cut the series down to a trilogy, which was concluded in 1981's "The Final Conflict."

Regarded by most viewers as the weakest entry of the three films, "The Final Conflict" is a problematic movie still worthy of re-evaluation: Sam Neill's performance as the adult Thorn, the vivid photography of Phil Meheux and Robert Paynter, and another outstanding Goldsmith score -- for many his finest of the series and one of his strongest of the 1980s -- make the finale an interesting variant on its predecessors. There's more of a mature, apocalyptic tone to the film, and several marvelous moments -- namely, the terrific, wordless opening, underscored only with Goldsmith's accompaniment -- help to compensate for the tepid, anti-climactic finale, which works only because of the music...and for Damien meeting his demise at long last.

Director Graham Baker's DVD commentary is, at best, weak -- Baker has little to say about the movie and the result is one of the least satisfying and sporadic commentaries I've ever heard on DVD. (If you're looking for more substantial supplements on the sequels, you can find them in "The Omen Legacy" documentary, which includes a wealth of interviews and production detail on the entire series).

Fox has rounded out the set with a reprisal of the THE OMEN (**1/2, 110 mins., 2006, R) remake's previously available Blu-Ray disc.

This straightforward re-do from director John Moore ("Behind Enemy Lines") met with moderate box-office results in June of 2006. Here, Liev Schrieber and Julia Stiles are the not-so fun couple who find out too late that their child Damien isn't really their son and really IS the Anti-Christ.

I had mixed feelings while watching the 2006 "Omen." On the one hand, the film is reasonably well-produced and Moore adds a few visual twists (namely, a number of nightmarish dream sequences) that truly surprise since they're unexpected. Sadly, the film otherwise is so bland, banging all the same notes as the original but with less style and inferior production values. Whatever deviations are made from David Seltzer's original script (an additional death sequence at the beginning; less of a reliance on biblical prophecy) are also ill-advised and Stiles seems far too young to carry off her part.

The Blu-Ray edition contains a commentary track, a few extended scenes and an alternate ending that's not a whole lot different than what ended up in the final cut. Of the few Making Of featurettes, there's a fairly lengthy look at Marco Beltrami's music, while the MPEG-2 transfer is fine and DTS Master Audio sound rounds out the disc.

Overall, Beltrami's score sums up the whole movie: it's perfectly serviceable, but it doesn't hold a candle to Goldsmith's original '76 soundtrack, primarily because there's no memorable thematic material in it. The rest of the new "Omen" basically conveys a similar sentiment -- there's nothing "wrong" with the film per se, but why watch a John Moore version of this story when you can see Richard Donner's rendition...and with Gregory Peck and Lee Remick in place of Schrieber and Stiles. As I mentioned before, though, at least it's superior to "The Omen IV"!

Overall, this is a terrific Blu-Ray box-set marred only by its packaging: the feeble cardboard box is awfully slender to house a four-disc release like this, with the individual discs being attached -- barely -- by a single sticky "spindle holder" on the center of each pane. In other words, there's no hard casing here at all, making this a perfect candidate for being crushed en route to your home. Needless to say a release of this caliber deserves better.

This Spielberg-produced, Tobe Hooper "directed" tale of a suburban family (father Craig T. Nelson, mom JoBeth Williams, and kids Heather O'Rourke, Oliver Robbins and Dominique Dunne) haunted by spirits in their California home has its "shock" moments, but also an effective depiction of an otherworldly "other side" that few supernatural films have so successfully evoked -- even with all the technical advancements that have occurred in genre films since its original release. The story, a variant on the old "Twilight Zone" episode "Little Girl Lost," has moments of humor and warmth interspersed at various points, as well as suspense and "roller coaster" like thrills provided by superb ILM special effects and a pace that never flags throughout its 114-minute running time. At its core, though, are the natural performances of Nelson, Williams, and the young cast members, who come off as real people and make you care about their plight throughout.

After being available only in a weak 1998 DVD from MGM, Warner Home Video issued a 25th Anniversary Edition last year with remastered visuals. Regrettably, while Warner's restored and remastered new Blu-Ray platter does boast a vivid new HD transfer (VC-1 encoded) with eye-popping colors and an enveloping Dolby TrueHD soundtrack that provides an effective soundstage for Goldsmith's classic score, the disc -- like its standard-def predecessor -- comes up empty when it comes to meaningful extras.

Shockingly, not even the trailer is included here -- in fact, there's nothing at all related to the movie itself in the entire package. No Making Of featurette (remember the vintage 1982 segment, seen on TCM and the 1994 laserdisc, that showed Spielberg instructing actors and establishing camera angles while credited director Hooper stood by, silently, on the sidelines?), no discussion about its production...the lone supplement is a simplistic, two-part featurette on real-life paranormal investigators that's nowhere near as entertaining as your average "Ghost Hunters" episode on the Sci-Fi Channel.

All of this is perhaps unsurprising -- the issue over the creative involvement of writer-producer Spielberg and the debated contributions of Hooper has been hotly contested even prior to the film's theatrical release in June of 1982 (check Aint It Cool News for a 2007 interview with Zelda "Tangina" Rubinstein, who implies that Tobe Hooper was basically under the influence and states that Spielberg handled directing chores on all six days of her shooting).

Yet after all this time, it's disappointing Warner couldn't have assembled a package that danced around the sensitive elements and given us as thorough a history of the film's production as possible -- along with some deleted scenes and, at the least, its original advertising materials. Considering the studio's outstanding track record with special editions, you'd have to assume that long-standing "controversy" between Spielberg and Hooper was undoubtedly the reason for this disc's lack of content. And it's a shame, because "Poltergeist" -- still a perfect mix of thrills, chills, humor, and warm, likeable characters a quarter-century after its debut -- deserves more.

That said, the movie has never looked nor sounded better, and Warner has housed the disc in another of their terrific "Digipack" hard-bound book cases featuring color stills and production notes. It's a nice looking package and a dynamic presentation of the movie that, even in spite of its lack of extras, should satisfy all "Poltergeist" fans.

MGM's Blu-Ray edition of "Carrie" resembles an early format release with its MPEG-2 encoded transfer and lack of extras save for a trailer. The single-layer 25gb platter also includes a decent DTS Master Audio soundtrack, and while the transfer is attractive enough (particularly given the movie's soft focus photography and the age of the source elements), it's a disappointment that the documentaries produced for the 2001 DVD Special Edition weren't retained here.

James Brolin and Margot Kidder essay George and Kathy Lutz, who move into the quiet Long Island community of Amityville. Unbeknownst to them, their new home was previously occupied by a family that was slain by their teenage son in a series of brutal shootings. Whether or not the teenager was driven mad by the house (or something in it), the Lutzes soon find themselves being barraged by a variety of haunted house cliches: slime flowing out of toilets, glowing eyes in the upstairs bedroom, invisible play pals of their young children telling them secrets, and George being taken over by some kind of entity from another dimension. Even a local priest (Rod Steiger) fails to clean the house of its inherent evil after giving it the old Father Merrin try.

Directed by Stuart Rosenberg, "The Amityville Horror" is standard but competent late '70s horror. The performances are solid but the movie has that "plastic" kind of look so many films of its era do. It's like watching an "Eight Is Enough" episode crossed with "The Exorcist." More effective is Lalo Schifrin's score, which unfortunately was copied in so many other genre films (and used in even more trailers) that it's then-unique mix of child chorus and creepy orchestral arrangements also seems well-worn.

MGM's Blu-Ray edition of "The Amityville Horror," like "Carrie" above, contains no special features of any kind -- a disappointment given that the 2005 Special Edition DVD of the film offered documentaries, a commentary from paranormal expert Dr. Hans Holzer, and additional History Channel specials on the "Amityville" house itself. All of these extras have been excised from the single-layer 25gb Blu-Ray release in favor of a decent, but not spectacular, AVC-encoded transfer of the movie with DTS Master Audio sound. Visually there's more depth to the picture than the prior DVD, but the film's plastic cinematography can only be enhanced so much, while the sound is equally modest in its effectiveness.

A PG-rated story "jacked up" to R-rated proportions by its studio for the sake of garnering additional box-office dollars, "The Happening" starts off with New York City residents killing themselves, and each other, with no rhyme or reason. Thinking that terrorists have dumped a chemical into the air causing the tragedies, Philadelphia high school teacher Wahlberg (really?) finds wife Deschanel and tries to get out of the city. There they attempt to navigate with other survivors in a rural landscape where nothing is certain -- except for the hot-dog munching guy they meet who tells them plants are behind it all. And no, I'm not kidding!

Any movie that includes a scene where Mark Wahlberg apologies to a plant and asks its permission to "go to the bathroom" is ripe for ribbing, and "The Happening" is a total disaster from the second it starts. Shyamalan's penchant for minimalist performances only enhances the comedy inherent in the picture's completely awkward delivery, depicted no more effectively than in the performances of Wahlberg and Deschanel.

In fact, the typically cute and appealing Deschanel is so awful here that you'd think she was in an Ed Wood movie -- her reactions are so at odds with what's going on that you basically feel her performance was shaped by the director screaming "Zooey, laugh!" "Zooey, act scared!" "Zooey, cry!" in a completely random fashion. Certainly the way in which the film is edited does little to dispel that notion.

No more effective is Wahlberg in the least convincing performance by an actor in the role of an educator you are ever likely to see. Like Deschanel, Wahlberg's awkward facial expressions and reaction shots almost seem like they're better suited to an episode of "Mr. Belvedere" than a drama supposedly about the end of the world.

"The Happening" is total and complete misfire on every conceivable level, but thankfully it's so...well...wrong, for lack of a better term, that it crosses the threshold from the realm of merely boring (like "Lady in the Water") into unintentional yuck territory. If you're in the mood and have enough friends over to join in the fun, this is certainly one of the livelier films Shyamalan has made -- even if it's for all the wrong reasons.

Fox's Blu-Ray disc includes a solid, but not spectacular, AVC-encoded transfer with 5.1 DTS Master Audio sound. Ample extras include a wealth of deleted scenes with Shyamalan introductions, Making Of featurettes, a gag reel (and I thought the whole movie was a gag reel!) and a digital copy of the movie for portable media players.

Johnny Depp is superb as the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, who returns to his grimy London home to seek vengeance on the magistrate (Alan Rickman) who imprisoned him, taking his wife and young daughter in the process. Helena Bonham Carter is the unhinged Mrs. Lovett, whose floundering pie shop proves to give Todd -- the former Benjamin Barker -- a "unique" means of disposing of those who stand in his way.

With a few musical exceptions (the opening and closing "Ballad of Sweeney Todd" has been reduced to an orchestral overture), the film is faithful to the show and stylishly assembled with the creative input of Burton's creative team (cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, production designer Dante Ferretti, costume designer Colleen Atwood). Depp's singing voice matches the intensity of his performance, and he's well complimented by Bonham Carter, even if her performance is more psychotic than prior stage renderings by Angela Lansbury among others. The supporting cast is likewise exceptional, with Rickman turning in strong work as the villainous Judge, Timothy Spall as his cohort, and Sacha Baron Cohen in a highly amusing turn as the fraudulent hairdresser Adolfo Pirelli.

The subject matter is perfect for Burton's cinematic sensibilities, though it's somewhat surprising that the show's black humor has been toned down while the violence and gore have been raised up several notches. Some of the latter is due to the very nature of the cinematic medium, yet I couldn't help but think a less graphic interpretation wouldn't have served the picture more effectively, as the gore can be off-putting to mainstream audiences (and likely might've been the reason for the film's somewhat disappointing box-office in-take).

That said, "Sweeney Todd" is still a symphony of great filmmaking and one of the finest cinematic musicals to come our way in many years.

Dreamworks' Blu-Ray disc, distributed by Paramount, has been eagerly awaited by the movie's fans since its release last year and does not disappoint. The VC-1 encoded transfer is superb and the Dolby TrueHD is forceful when called upon. Extras (in HD) are ample, including a number of featurettes examining the production from its origins, with copious interviews with Sondheim, Burton, and the stars on-hand. The trailer and a look at the actual historical events that formed the basis for the Todd legend round out the package.

Fans should note that Warner Home Video issued the film on Blu-Ray overseas last spring in a nearly identical package, save for a pair of supplements (Depp & Burton "Moviefone Unscripted" and the original trailer) which are exclusive to the U.S. Blu-Ray platter.

Zombie here tries to tap into the psychological, white-trash origins of masked killer Michael Myers, who as a kid enjoyed torturing animals before slaying most of his family. As you might expect, those revelations aren't especially shocking, the film not especially scary, and the performances all just kind of bland (even Malcolm McDowell's Doc Loomis seems muted, lacking the unhinged vivacity of Pleasance's performance). Tyler Bates' score reuses John Carpenter's classic theme but for the most part "Halloween" 2007 shows how more is less, especially when compared to the relative subtlety of the original.

Dimension's double-disc Blu-Ray edition of Zombie's "Halloween" includes a four-plus hour (!) documentary on the production of the film by the director, comprising all of the second platter. The film itself is presented in its 121-minute Unrated cut with loads of extras including deleted scenes, an alternate ending, the trailer, interviews, screen tests, and additional Blu-Ray Live functions. The 1080p transfer is excellent, as is the Dolby TrueHD audio.