Behind the Monsters: Season One Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Behind the Monsters: Season One Blu-ray Movie Review

"The Bad Guys" was already taken.

Reviewed by Randy Miller III June 1, 2022

Shudder's original series Behind the Monsters examines classic horror movie villains from the last few decades, bringing together fans, actors, and crew members from long-running franchises such as Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Child's Play, and more to pay tribute to their iconic central figures through new and archival interviews. At roughly 35-45 minutes apiece with one villain per episode, these six episodes from Season 1 -- now available on Blu- ray from RLJ Entertainment -- obviously doesn't dig as deep as feature-length documentaries or even the mountains of vintage featurettes created for past home video collections, but they'll prove interesting enough for newer fans who just want a basic primer. That's my diplomatic way of saying hardcore fans won't learn anything new here... but with the endless sequels and remakes for each franchise in mind, horror fans should be used to disappointment.

Structurally, these six episodes -- "Michael Myers", "Candyman", "Chucky", "Freddy Krueger", "Jason Vorhees", and "Pinhead" -- play it straight, pairing a lightweight blend of historical context and behind-the-scenes stories with iconic film clips and gushing tributes filling out the gaps. The former are obviously highlights, as Behind the Monsters features a few OG big names (Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Savini, Tony Todd, Kane Hodder, Wes Craven, Robert Englund, and Nick Castle AKA Michael Myers) along with newer faces and second-gen talent (F13 guru Peter Bracke, John Craven, director Gabrielle Binkley), with other comments by genre contemporaries including actors, writers, and directors from films and franchises not covered (yet?). A few reclusive icons, such as John Carpenter, appear briefly are mostly seen in vintage interviews, some of which were likely taken from earlier releases. Then, of course, there's the sea of bloggers, super-fans, and other enthusiasts that always crawl out of the woodwork for shows like these, offering comments that range from kinda valuable to superfluous. I mean, who cares what some random online journalist has to say?

The end result is, as expected, lightly entertaining and not consistently revealing. But the good news is that Behind the Monsters' even-handed pacing and steady barrage of interviews almost guarantees that you don't have to necessarily be a huge fan of all six franchises -- some of which are obviously much denser than others -- to get something out of each episode. (In fact, the opposite is probably true.) The running time of each installment is mostly right on point with only a few entries, like the season bookending episodes "Michael Myers" and "Pinhead", feeling somewhat padded for length. I went through all six of these in two nights; this may have contributed to a vague feeling of redundancy in the home stretch, so spacing them further apart might yield even more enjoyable results. Or hey, maybe binge-watching all six before nodding off with your hand in a bag of Funyuns sounds like an ideal Friday evening.

If there's any objective room for improvement regarding (potential) future seasons, it's that they dig a little deeper literally and figuratively by exploring earlier decades and less mainstream fare. Although big franchise names obviously draw in bigger audiences, the glut of already-available material regarding their history and characters don't make their respective episodes all that historically valuable. But this is at least a decent starting point, and the same thing goes for RLJ Entertainment's welcome Blu-ray set: the A/V presentation clearly exceeds its Shudder streaming counterpart and it's not censored for language like Eli Roth's History of Horror. What a dumb fuckin' decision that was.

Behind the Monsters: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

I wasn't expecting all that much from Behind the Monsters from a visual standpoint, as some documentaries feature poorly-lit interviews or cropped film clips taken from dodgy and varied source material. But the good news is that this is a largely consistent presentation: one that features mostly well-lit talking head interviews, decently-preserved archival material, and the large majority of film clips look to be on par with their most current Blu-ray editions (as of 2021)... and in their original aspect ratios to boot. These film clips are one of this release's closest thing to "hit or miss" from a visual standpoint, but RLJ's Blu-ray set smartly divides all six episodes on two dual-layered discs, helping to eliminate most compression issues such as banding, posterization, and other eyesores. A few obvious flaws are, of course, still inherent to some of the source material but newer interviews look crisp and clean with simple on-screen graphics identifying each speaker, although some of the background gradients are prone to slight banding.

Perhaps the worst-looking moments arrive in the form of rare TV footage, from old Siskel and Ebert at the Movies clips to merchandise commercials, promo spots, and other odds and ends, some of which are heavily pixelated and obviously sourced from low quality digital transfers or even low-res downloads. Again, that just comes with the territory. Overall, this is a more than passable presentation that easily exceeds the streaming experience which, depending on your setup and/or connection, would likely be riddled with moderate to heavy compression artifacts.

Behind the Monsters: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Although I'm tempted to dock Behind the Monsters' DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio mix for its occasionally mixed-down film clips (after all, a portion of this content was created with surround sound in mind), the stereo experience nonetheless seems largely appropriate for a series of this type. Dialogue is clean and crisp from start to finish, anchored squarely in the center for most interviews -- except those where two or more participants are speaking, of course -- with a slightly wider sonic expansion when classic film clips are shown. These transitions aren't jarring unless they're supposed to be; after all, even horror film documentaries aren't immune to the occasional jump scare. Overall, it's a fairly standard but dutiful mix that does the job well enough, getting its main points across with no real distractions aside from occasional ambient background music during openers, photograph montages, and occasional interview transitions.

Optional English (SDH) subtitles are included during all six episodes.

Behind the Monsters: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This two-disc set ships in a keepcase with simple but stylish cover art, a promotional insert, and a no-nonsense menu interface. Sadly, no bonus features are on board -- not even additional scenes or extended interviews.

Behind the Monsters: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Shudder's original mini-documentary series Behind the Monsters: Season One offers a decent entry-level examination of classic horror villains including Freddy, Jason, Chucky, Michael Myers, Pinhead, and Candyman. As told by original members of each franchise's cast and crew, as well as horror contemporaries and other genre fans, this is film history aimed squarely at newcomers; die-hards might learn a thing or two, but the mountains of content already available for some of the bigger names makes some of this stuff a little redundant. RLJ Entertainment's Blu-ray set is pretty solid for a movie-only disc, featuring good A/V specs that decently surpass the streaming experience. At its current sale price, Behind the Monsters is an easy enough blind buy for casual horror fans and non-subscribers.