6.3 | / 10 |
Users | 2.5 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.1 |
Two cannibalistic brothers kill various young women to make their flesh part of their new special dish at their rundown restaurant while seeking blood sacrifices to awaken a dormant Egyptian goddess.
Starring: Rick Burks, Carl Crew, LaNette LaFrance, Roger Dauer, Lisa ElainaHorror | 100% |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Some of you who have been around long enough to have made it through various incarnations of home video formats may remember the Dark Ages of something called VHS tapes. It may be hard for younger collectors to realize what a sudden boon the home video market created for film lovers when these now clunky seeming cassettes showed up on the market. Up until the advent of VHS (and Betamax, of course), it was next to impossible to have a personal collection of favorite flicks unless one were fortunate enough to own 16mm prints and projectors. But suddenly with this “newfangled” technology, there was an exciting new supply of content available, something that started to grow exponentially once the VHS vs. Betamax “format war” was over and labels starting churning out tapes of their catalogs. Among the first big players in the VHS market was a rather unlikely one, Vestron Video, built out of the ashes of Time-Life Video (of all things), and then, once the nascent label got a secure toehold in the industry, with a slew of mostly second string features that were culled from the likes of the Cannon Films library. Vestron was a favorite of early collectors, and soon the company actually branched out into producing its own films (including such hits as Dirty Dancing), but it’s Vestron’s early video releases which still tend to spark a certain nostalgic fervor in collectors. Now, in a marketing turn that has perhaps appropriately been called a resurrection (considering the science fiction and/or horror aspect of many Vestron titles), Lionsgate is bringing back the imprint with a new line of offerings under the Vestron Video imprint.
Blood Diner is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films and its new Vestron Video imprint with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The press materials on both this and Chopping Mall advertise they've been "transferred from the original film elements" without detailing what exactly those film elements are (there's some scuttlebutt on the internet about the provenance of the elements and scan resolutions, but I've found nothing I personally would deem authoritative). I've given this the same 3.5 score I afforded Chopping Mall, but this is a somewhat less detailed looking overall transfer, one that's probably hobbled by a number of dark and even steamy (courtesy of the diner's kitchen) scenes where detail levels rarely rise to overwhelming status. Elements have either faded or there's a somewhat odd general grading approach here, for a lot of the palette seems slightly skewed toward a brownish or even yellowish tone. Grain can be pretty chunky at times, and as such (and again as with Chopping Mall), occasional compression hurdles enter the fray. Still, in decent lighting and when close-ups are employed, detail levels can be very good, with some of the practical effects work literally showing its seams on a couple of occasions. There's just a tiny bit of wobble during the closing credits sequence, but otherwise image stability is fine. My score is probably more at the 3.25 level.
Blood Diner features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track that serves the film decently well. It's obvious that at least some swaths of this film were post-looped, for there's little if any agreement between words being spoken and lip movements at several key junctures (keep your eyes peeled during that aforementioned deep fat fryer sequence for one especially noticeable example), and that tendency brings with it a slight but noticeable difference in overall tone and things like ambient reverb. Otherwise, things sound fine if unremarkable, with the film's goofy sound effects (many traipsing a kind of static electricity sound) reverberating with decent force. Dialogue is rendered cleanly, but occasionally encounters prioritization issues in some of the noisier moments.
I have loved Blood Diner since I first stumbled across it on some late, late show years ago and couldn't believe the delirious silliness I was witnessing. This new Blu-ray offers a significantly improved video component even if things aren't perfect, and the audio is similarly upgraded if occasionally problematic. Lionsgate and its new Vestron Video imprint are off to a great start, even if this release doesn't quite have the abundance in the supplements department that Chopping Mall has. Recommended.
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