100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		0.5
Video		2.5
Audio		2.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		1.5

100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck Blu-ray Movie Review

What's more terrifying: the spirit of a mass murderer or The Asylum's latest film?

Reviewed by Martin Liebman August 4, 2012

Whatever ground The Asylum may have gained, what little attention the studio may have garnered, what glimmer of positive reaction it may have enjoyed with the "quality" releases of American Warships and Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies has all been lost with Alien Origin and, now, 100 Ghost Street, two of the most miserable movies ever made and easily the two most unbearable "found footage" films ever created. It's as if The Asylum has some sort of deal with the devil to make lousy movies, and a hard 180 back into the depths of cinema hell was a contractual necessity. It's hard to fathom two movies being this bad, anyway, and one cannot imagine the effort involved to make movies this awful when even trying to do so. Granted, 100 Ghost Street fares a tad better than Alien Origin (the Blu-ray.com review system prohibits the scoring of "zero," but rest assured Alien Origin is a zero) if only because there's an identifiable plot and there's no tacked-on gibberish in the last few seconds in order to "sell" a premise that just isn't in the rest of the film. But 100 Ghost Street is nearly as miserable, scoring zeroes pretty much across the board, from the acting to the awful script and even the box art which shows a character running away from a house rather than a much larger dormitory structure where the film actually takes place.

The cast watches a better movie on the iPad.

On April 2, 2012, a TV crew was in Chicago to shoot a documentary about mass murderer Richard Speck, a particularly awful human being who committed unspeakably heinous atrocities, including raping and murdering nurses in a medical dormitory, in room 220 to be exact. Legend has it that Speck's ghost still haunts the abandoned walls, waiting for fresh victims. The crew enters the building with photographic gear, primed and ready to make a killing with what they hope will be a one-of-a-kind haunted house exposé. This is found footage from that documentary production. Thanks go out to the Illinois police department's homicide division for showing the material to the public.

Considering the entire premise is based around "found footage," and that the movie states up front in plain English that only the footage was found and that the people in it never turned up, the entire dramatic arc of 100 Ghost Street is ruined from the outset. There will be no survivors, Speck's ghost will win, and it's only a matter of time before all of the obnoxious, unlikable, undefined, worthless characters are eliminated. Good, because it would be a travesty for the movie to end with any of them left alive. Bad, because even in well under ninety minutes in length, the movie takes far too long to take out the characters for what amounts to zero payoff. There's no gore that cannot be seen elsewhere, no drama that cannot be enjoyed in superior found footage or haunted house movies, no themes or original ideas through which the audience might actually stop and think about what it is they are watching. No, 100 Ghost Street is the proverbial steaming pile of you-know-what that offers zero intensity, no good characters, an absence of thrills and chills, frivolous gore, and worthless jump scares. The picture moves slowly and is a bore to watch and a chore to sit through. Most audiences will be sick of it only minutes in and no, it doesn't get any better.

Suffice it to say the movie does nothing well, and it would be an exercise in futility, not to mention a waste of time and a misuse of bandwidth, to cover it all. Certainly, though, it's worth mentioning a few of the more prominent misfires from a general cinematic sense. First, the movie is very cheaply made, which pretty much covers every element, anyway. The movie lacks production values of almost any sort, which in a sense fits the "found footage" angle but, then again, Cloverfield managed plenty, so using the genre's inherent style as a crutch isn't going to cut it. The movie appears very cheaply made. The filming location isn't at all bad, but there's never much sense of genuine creepiness because the filmmakers cannot use it to the film's advantage. Rather than a location, it's merely a stage, a stage overrun by bad actors who were probably scooped up from a local college's drama club and inserted into the movie at random. All of them are terrible, though in their defense so is everything around them. Even Denzel Washington couldn't improve on this rubbish, so there is that. The actors struggle with lines, inflection, and basic coherency. Even the girl who is supposed to host the Documentary fumbles her way through those scenes where she's performing her host duties, struggling to piece together a complete sentence and string together an idea. This is just abysmal filmmaking, terrible acting, awful storytelling. There are no redeeming qualities, other than that short runtime and the foreknowledge that all the characters are eventually killed off. Thank goodness for life's little cinema blessings.

100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

100 Ghost Street features a lackluster transfer. It's sourced from the "found footage" which consists of mid grade prosumer type photographic equipment as well as "spy cams" mounted here and there throughout the building and that offer black-and-white or green night vision-style visuals. Pretty much the entire film is lit by the camera's own light, but front-and-center objects manage acceptable clarity and detailing. Faces and clothes reveal suitable textures, and some of the grimy tiles, grungy floors and walls, and even filthy toilets look rather good, all rather nicely defined and accurate. Colors fare well enough in the spotlight, too, most of them bright reds and blues and oranges seen on the characters' clothes. There's some noise in the darkest scenes, where black crush often smothers most surrounding details. Light banding and blockiness run throughout but aren't much of a distraction considering the necessary lower grade of the photography. This isn't a bad image for what it is, but audiences won't be floored by it, either.

100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

100 Ghost Street arrives on Blu-ray with a boring Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack that's pretty much dialogue and a few scattered sound effects. The spoken word comes through clearly. Dialogue is never lost under surrounding sounds, and it's balanced and crisp at reference level. There's some inherent harshness in a few scenes, mostly a result of the low-end production that's a natural part of the "found footage" schtick. There are precious few atmospherics; the dark and dingy locale never really comes alive with any sort of sonic signature save for random background rumblings. The film's dominant sound effect comes in a little motorized radio controlled car that darts around a few rooms with a light whirring-type mechanical grind. There's some rattly low end effects, but otherwise this is a plain, dull, dialogue-only track that gets listeners through the film and nothing more.

100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of 100 Ghost Street contains only an assortment of trailers for other Asylum titles.

100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

In closing, 100 Ghost Street is a miserable movie that beats out absolute bottom-barrel dreck like Alien Origin only because it offers an identifiable plot. Otherwise, this is cinema junk of the worst kind. Almost every single element rates as "awful" or worse; about the only two good things one may say about 100 Ghost Street is that the primary location is acceptable (though underutilized) and the movie runs under ninety minutes in length. The Blu-ray is nearly as bad as the movie. The Asylum certainly went cheap on everything; the video's MPEG-2 encoded, the soundtrack is of the Dolby Digital 2.0 variety, and there are no supplements. Skip, pass, stay away, etc.