6.2 | / 10 |
Users | 4.5 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
Lynn Hart is a disturbed young woman who escapes from a mental hospital where she was committed for killing her abusive father who raped her. Stealing a nurse's uniform and car, Lynn ends up in a small California town where she meets and shacks up with Zambrini, an old farmer who runs the local motel and roadside café. Zambrini also owns a group of pigs that he keeps in a pen behind his house who have somehow developed a taste for human flesh. When Lynn begins killing a number of men who remind her of her dead father, Zambrini helps her out by disposing of the bodies to the pigs. Investigating the disappearances, the local sheriff eventually becomes suspicious of Lynn's past and a private investigator, hired by the hospital to find her, slowly close in on Lynn.
Starring: Toni Lawrence, Jesse Vint, Catherine Ross, Iris Korn, Walter Barnes (I)Horror | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
DVD copy
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
While marketing efforts are more interested in selling the most macabre elements of 1972’s “Pigs” (titled “The 13th Pig” on the print), the feature really isn’t about a pack of killer swine. Instead of barnyard chaos, writer/director/star Marc Lawrence goes a psychological route with his material, exploring multiple cases of trauma and psychosis while periodically returning to the grunting exploits of pigs that’ve developed a taste for human flesh. “Pigs” is interesting work, trying to bend expectations away from B-movie exploits to something more experimental and ghoulish, blending expected violence with a mystery of sorts that plays out in a most unusual way.
The AVC encoded image (1.85:1 aspect ratio) presentation is billed as a "director's cut," restoring Lawrence's original intent for "Pigs" with periodic help from a 35mm theatrical print to complete the job. There no need to worry about extreme gaps in quality, with Vinegar Syndrome successfully manufacturing a visually pleasing HD version of "Pigs," with dips in source material easily spotted but not distracting. Colors are pleasingly refreshed for this low-budget effort, bringing out powerful reds during violent encounters, and farmland greenery survives as intended. Skintones are accurate and secure. Grain is thick but filmic. Delineation goes as far as the original cinematography allows, rarely solidifying. Granted, this isn't the most strikingly shot feature, favoring dingy locations and limited hues, but the basics of B-moviedom are protected here, without excessive wear and tear.
The 1.0 DTS-HD MA sound mix is surprisingly aggressive, favoring extremely loud pig noises to help boost scares. Clarity is missing, with inherent recording issues and age keeping the listening experience slightly muffled, but the basics of drama and horror are handled acceptably. Dialogue exchanges are adequate, preserving intelligibility as much as it can. Music offers bigness when necessary, while soundtrack selections maintain presence without precise instrumentation. Atmospherics are suitable to the picture, thick but alert. Again, it's all about the pigs in "Pigs," with squealing commanding the track, meant to overwhelm and horrify. Mission accomplished.
Pigs do feast on flesh in the movie, but "Pigs" isn't the animals-gone-wild adventure it might appear to be. Lawrence has something more macabre in mind with the material, exploring the destruction of sexual abuse, the pain of isolation, and crumbling of untreated minds. It's not especially elegant work, retaining its origin as a drive-in distraction, yet "Pigs" sustains a vision. What exactly that is isn't entirely clear, but the feature seems meaningful to Lawrence, who works through plenty of tough ideas on personal decay between bouts of traditional frights, trying to give his chiller some depth.
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