6.2 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
The family members of an Irish family are being killed off one-by-one by one of their own who is after the family's inheritance.
Starring: William Campbell (I), Luana Anders, Bart Patton, Mary Mitchel, Patrick Magee (I)Horror | 100% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: Dolby Digital 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region free
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 2.5 | |
Audio | 2.5 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
In my recent review of Fiddler on the Roof, I talked a bit about the decline of the big budget film musical, especially those culled from original Broadway tuner sources. My recap of various box office calamities which hit virtually all of the major studios with their musical releases in the late 1960s and early 1970s included two behemoth Warner Brothers films which turned out to be twin albatrosses around the studio’s neck, Camelot and Finian’s Rainbow. Camelot, on paper anyway, probably looked like a sure thing to Warner: it was the huge hit follow up musical to Lerner and Loewe’s iconic My Fair Lady, which had been one of the studio’s most successful adaptations, musical or otherwise, in its entire history, despite the controversy surrounding the non-casting of Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle. Finian’s Rainbow, on the other hand, was a rather odd choice for a film adaptation in the tempestuous year of 1968. First of all, the Broadway musical, while certainly a sizable hit and one which spawned several popular song standards (“Old Devil Moon” and “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” among many others), had actually trod the Great White Way over two decades previously, certainly one of the longer gestation periods for bringing a Broadway smash to the screen, something perhaps more like Development Purgatory than outright Hell. And while the film turned out to be Fred Astaire’s last starring role, and featured a top flight cast which included Petula Clark and Tommy Steele, one of the film’s oddest selections for crew turned out to be its director: Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola himself has spoken about how completely fortuitously this directing assignment came to him, which he has joked stemmed from him simply wandering around the Warner backlot one day. Coppola certainly did not follow in the august footsteps of musical directors like Vincente Minnelli or Stanley Donen. His screen career pre-Finian’s had not been exactly prestigious, with a couple of low budget “nudie” films, two probably not much higher budgeted knock offs for Roger Corman, as well as the proto counterculture comedy You’re a Big Boy Now. Film fans have had a special place in their cultish hearts for Coppola’s Corman efforts. Both Dementia 13 and The Terror offer a peek inside a developing artist’s attempts to get a foothold in the film industry, and both are fascinating studies in their own way, even if neither would ever be called outright successes, let alone a masterpiece. Both Corman films are debuting on Blu-ray courtesy of public domain niche label HD Cinema Classics/Film Chest, and first up is Dementia 13.
Anyone who has ever seen any of the many PD releases of Dementia 13 over the years knows already that this was far from a sharp looking film to begin with, and that same fuzzy, inchoate softness is not helped much if at all with this new high definition upgrade, via an AVC encode in 1080p and 1.78:1. This release, sourced from a 35mm print, has been significantly cleaned of scratches and other damage, but there's also been an attendant noise reduction which will no doubt drive grain lovers slightly insane. The worst thing about this release, which truthfully has hobbled every print and previous home video release of Dementia 13 I've personally seen, is the overblown contrast and appallingly soft look in midrange and short range shots. Midrange shots which are ostensibly of faces devolve into white blobs, with no facial features apparent at all. Even close-ups lack sharp, differentiated contrast, and whites frequently bloom badly. A couple of passing scenes offer reasonably rich blacks, which ups the contrast quotient considerably. There's also intermittent telecine wobble throughout the film, though it's never too troubling. This is certainly better looking than a lot of previous home video releases, at least if you don't mind DNR, but anyone looking for a topflight restoration will probably be disappointed with the results here.
Was Dementia 13 actually not filmed in Ireland, but at Italy's vaunted Cinecittà Studios? I ask this fanciful question because the film seems to have been completely, or at least mostly, post-dubbed, as was the practice in Italian film for decades. This new Blu-ray offers two standard Dolby tracks, one in 5.1 and the other 2.0, which do nothing to improve the film's boxy sounding soundtrack. Occasional synchronization issues crop up from time to time, and while there's no egregious damage per se, this is one of the narrowest sounding tracks, with unappealing (and really pretty nonexistent) highs and lows, and a really processed sounding middle frequency range. Strangely, Ronald Stein's score comes off best in this enterprise, managing to escape the boxiness so apparent in the dialogue. In terms of surround activity on the repurposed 5.1 track, it's intermittent, to say the least, and sounds as artificial as the entire track. It would have been better to have been given a lossless version of the original soundtrack than a faux surround mix which never really provides much immersion anyway.
There's nothing here that I "officially" count as a supplement, though for the record the BD includes:
A lot of purists get up in arms when public domain labels like HD Cinema Classics/Film Chest can't get back to decent source elements, let alone a negative, but the fact is, anyone who's ever seen Dementia 13 should know there really weren't any stellar source elements to begin with. Anyone expecting a major upgrade in either image or audio is going to be sorely disappointed with this release. But that doesn't mean this is a worthless release. The film has been cleaned up considerably, at least compared to many (and I mean many) PD releases I've seen through the years. That cleaning includes some obvious DNR, so grainophiles will no doubt rage at the machine about this transfer. The film itself is a fascinating look at the nascent directorial style of Coppola, and for that reason alone film lovers should watch it at least once. Whether you'll want that once to be this release will depend on your tolerance for a release that is nowhere near state of the art in image or audio.
1968
Communion / Holy Terror
1976
1964
The Secret of Marrowbone
2017
1971
2010
Profondo rosso
1975
Standard Edition
1982
Reazione a catena
1971
Scre4m
2011
Unrated Collector's Edition
2007
Unrated
2013
2020
Sei donne per l'assassino
1964
2017
2015
2016
2020
2018
2018