Nightmare at Noon Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.0

Nightmare at Noon Blu-ray Movie Review

It's not easy being blue-green.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 27, 2022

Anyone here remember the "Mother of All Bombs"? The Department of Defense's GBU-43/B, as it is officially known, was developed in the early aughts of the 21st century and then rose (or perhaps more appropriately, fell) to prominence when it was used in a 2017 Air Force strike in Afghanistan. The GBU-43/B has its own military sobriquet, namely Massive Ordnance Air Blast, whose acronym may have given rise to the more colloquial Mother of All Bombs, and hence a somewhat confounding (at least to some, ahem) hashtag. One way or the other, as someone who was born and raised in Utah and who often spent at least part of every summer vacation in the rural latitudes of the state, I was seriously confused (yes, what else is new?) when #MOAB suddenly started populating in my social media feed in April of 2017. "What could possibly be happening in Moab?" I mused, referring to a Utah town that was, at least in my childhood, a couple of rows of hotels and restaurants built up around a largely abandoned feeling Main Street (which it looks like has been subsumed by U.S. 191). Well of course, nothing was happening in that Moab, at least to the level that it would warrant a hashtag explosion (no bomb pun intended), but for anyone wondering what the little burg in southeastern Utah might be like, look no further than this 1988 opus by the typically at least slightly gonzo Nico Mastorakis.

Nightmare at Noon concerns a mad scientist known only as The Albino (Brion James) who is part of some mad scientist aggregation which is conducting an experiment in the isolated Utah town of Canyonland (there is no actual city by that name, Moab was the site of the shoot). That experiment entails some kind of nasty agent being added to the water supply, which, when imbibed, basically turns people into marauding zombies. Now I will say only in passing that I'm old enough to remember knock down, drag out fights in the "big city" of Salt Lake when some supposedly "mad scientistS" proposed adding fluoride to the public water supply (if my online research is correct, a rather large number of Utah counties still don't add fluoride to their water, and Salt Lake County has only been doing it since circa 2003), so this part of the film struck me as unavoidably hilarious. That said, the whole fluoride debate took place out in the open, while this film's conceit is that this is obviously a "secret" experiment known only to a few (though the plethora of veritable heavily armed Men in Black tooling around in SUVs might be a clue to those paying attention). That said, once a number of townspeople and/or visitors start transforming into blue-green skinned freaks, the uninfected start to suspect something odd is going on.

Among those aforementioned visitors are a trio who become a focal part of the story. Ken (Wings Houser) and Cheri Griffiths (Kimberly Beck) are vacationing in an RV and pick up hitchhiker Reilly (Bo Hopkins) on the outskirts of the town where The Albino's nefarious experiment is already underway. When the three stop at a local diner, a crazed citizen who has in fact been drinking the water first horrifyingly stabs a waitress and then goes completely berserk, which is when local Sherriff Hanks (George Kennedy) gets involved. Suffice it to say Hanks is ultimately rather smart at figuring out what's going on, but perhaps less intelligent about when to quench his thirst, and there is at least one other character going to the dark (or at least the blue green) side whose morphing might come as a bit of a surprise.

By the time this turns into a horse chase out in the evocative Utah countryside, things have, in true Nico Mastorakis tradition, gone pretty gonzo. This film at least has some genuine marquee value in Kennedy at least (Mastorakis refers to the actor as the "Rolls Royce" of his profession, while reserving decidedly less positive comments for Wings Hauser, who evidently was arrested for assault during the production). There's almost a bit of a "bait and switch" that happens in terms of who might be assumed to be the focal character(s), and then who actually turns out to be. The film kind of interestingly also has a score co-written by Stanley Myers and Hans Zimmer.

Nightmare at Noon Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Nightmare at Noon is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Arrow's insert booklet contains the following information on the restoration:

Nightmare at Noon is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio with 5.1 and stereo 2.0 audio. The film was restored in 2K resolution from a 35mm interpositive by Silver Salt Restoration, London. The high definition master was provided by Nico Mastorakis.

This is a frequently pretty great looking transfer, especially in some of the brightly lit outdoor material, where everything from the gorgeous red sandstones of Utah to nicely blue skies help the palette to really resonate appealingly. Detail levels are also at their best in some of the outdoor material, and fine detail on things like the glut of denim fabrics or even the crags on George Kennedy's face is typically excellent. There are some noticeable variances in grain resolution and resultant clarity, with some interior shots in the police station in particular looking a bit grittier and without the same general levels of detail. My score is 4.25.

Vis a vis nothing in particular aside from branding, this release seems to offer a new Arrow masthead and music.

Note: It looks like Shout! Factory put out a Blu-ray of Nightmare at Noon back in 2018, but as of the writing of this review, we haven't reviewed that version and so I can't offer comparisons to screenshots.

Nightmare at Noon Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Nightmare at Noon features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 options. The surround track definitely opens up the soundstage in the outdoor material in particular, and some of the big effects sequences, including things like car crashes and/or explosions, have considerable force and energy in the surround track in particular. I frankly would not rate the score here at the apex of either Stanley Myers' or Hans Zimmer's careers, but the music does have a more spacious accounting in the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track as well. Dialogue and the occasional incoherent quasi-zombie babbling is presented cleanly and clearly. Optional English and (kind of charmingly) Greek subtitles are available.

Nightmare at Noon Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Films of Nico Mastorakis: Nightmare at Noon (HD; 33:15) is a fun retrospective with a lot of archival footage some good interviews.


• Behind the Scenes Cuts of Nightmare at Noon (HD; 49:15) offers some interesting ping ponging between more behind the scenes footage and then brief snippets from the finished product.


• On Set Interviews offers more of the same interviews seen in the above pieces. While ostensibly in high definition, these were obviously sourced from videotape and in some instances (the Beck interview in particular) have some kind of odd artifacting going on.

  Wings Hauser (HD; 12:39)

  
  

  Bo Hopkins (HD; 11:06)

  
  

  Kimberly Beck (HD; 7:36)

  
  

  George Kennedy (HD; 4:28)

  
  

  Brion James (HD; 17:09)

• Trailer (HD; 3:04)


• Image Gallery (HD; 12:30) is accompanied by the score by Stanley Myers and Hans Zimmer.

Additionally, Arrow provides its typically nicely appointed insert booklet with an essay by Johnny Mains, and packaging features a reversible sleeve.

Nightmare at Noon Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Some may remember the lesser known Woody Allen comedy Don't Drink the Water (the link points to a less than hilarious film adaptation), and this release actually includes that "warning" on its back cover. You actually kind of have to drink something to "get" Nico Mastorakis' often decidedly outré filmography, but this outing is well produced and generally well performed, even if it's patently ludicrous. Technical merits are solid and the supplements very appealing for anyone who may be considering making a purchase.