6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A spy is brought back from cryogenic suspension after being almost killed in a plane crash returning from a mission to learn about a deadly new weapon being developed in the East. But the vital memories are being suppressed, so the authorities use ultra-advanced technologies to try to uncover the secret.
Starring: Christopher George, Greta Baldwin, Henry Jones (I), Monte Markham, Harold GouldSci-Fi | Insignificant |
Mystery | 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 Mono
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Spring 2012 greeted a boisterous box office hit with Project X, a Hangover wannabe that kept its
generic placeholder title when it started creating buzz, buzz that couldn't overcome the film's rather blistering critical
reaction (not that it much mattered in terms of receipts). A generation earlier, there was another Project X, a
1987 science fiction thriller starring Matthew Broderick and a young Helen Hunt that dealt with super intelligent
monkeys. A generation before that there was a little remembered William Castle production called Project
X, another science fiction-esque thriller that recasts a sort of quasi-James Bond plotline with elements of mind
control (shades of The Ipcress File, another Bond-esque spy thriller) and some sociopolitical ideas that were
beginning to make headway in the late sixties.
This particular Project X has long been a fascination for this reviewer, for
as a child I bought a little paperback book called The Artificial Man by L.P. Davies simply because the cover
looked "really cool". I was instantly swept up into a compelling story where a man wakes up in his little English village,
walks downstairs to get breakfast and has a brief, terrifying moment where he can't remember which way to turn to get
to the kitchen when he gets to the bottom of the stairs. It's his first clue that not everything is as it seems, and he
slowly begins to become aware that he is in fact some kind of pawn in a rather complex scheme that may involve the
highest reaches of the British government.
The hero of The Artificial Man is supposedly an author and he is
working on a novel about a spy--until he starts to realize that what he's writing about may in fact be actual memories
of his
own "real" life. The book was a bit confusing for a child of my age and I remember passing it off on my eldest sister to
see what she thought of it (especially the somewhat confusing, ambivalent ending), and against some considerable
odds, The Artificial Man intrigued her as much as it had me. Years after this childhood reading adventure I
became aware that the book had been adapted into the William Castle film Project X, albeit evidently with major
changes (what else is new?). In years of trying to track it down (in the pre-cable and pre-internet days), it always
seemed to elude "capture". But here it finally is, as one of the ongoing slate of Paramount catalog titles that Olive Films
has been licensing and releasing on Blu-ray.
Project X is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is
undeniably one of the nicest looking Paramount catalog releases licensed by Olive yet to appear on Blu-ray, at least for the
most part. The elements here are in mostly superior shape (more about a few niggling qualms in a moment),
something that might be due to the fact that Project X had a very brief theatrical shelf life and hasn't even
been broadcast very much in the decades since its short theatrical run. The image here is wonderfully sharp and colors are
very bold and extremely well saturated. As with most of these HD masters provided to Olive by Paramount, there once
again does not appear to have been even slight digital tweaking, and so the image is very film like, with natural grain, but
also with (very) occasional specks and other slight damage. What is occasionally odd about this transfer are some very
shoddy looking cutaways in certain scenes, brief shots that almost look like they were sourced from a print rather than an
interpositive, and perhaps even a 16mm print at that (see screencap 7 for a good example of this anomaly). Note for
example some of the two shots featuring Jones at around
the 10 minute mark when the "future" consortium is deciding how to handle Arnold's thawing and memory implantation.
While the bulk of this scene is very sharp and boasts excellent fine detail, there are a number of coverage shots that are
really soft (almost to the point of being out of focus) and ragged looking. Having never seen Project X
theatrically, I can't state definitively whether or not these anomalies have always been present, but they stand out like a
sore thumb simply because the bulk of this Blu-ray looks so good.
Project X features the same lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix that has graced a lot of the recent glut of Paramount catalog releases from Olive. The soundtrack here is rather good sounding, albeit obviously narrow. It's too bad we don't have at least a stereo track to enjoy Van Cleave's bizarre but fun score, which has the composer working in a sort of Lalo Schifrin territory, with Mannix jazz waltzes mixed in with some more bizarre nascent electronic elements (replete with special credit for the Lowrey Organ). Dialogue is crisp and clean and the sound effectsâ€"including the one you're certain to recognizeâ€"are delivered with excellent fidelity. While there's not a lot to get too worked up about with regard to this mix, there's also nothing major to complain about either.
This is yet another Olive Films release with no supplements of any kind.
Project X is one of those late sixties kitsch-fests that is wackily enjoyable on its own small scale terms. The problem is the film could have been so much better if only it had stuck closer to Davies' original concept. I highly recommend any of you who like trippy science fiction-esque novels to seek out The Artificial Man (especially the Scholastic paperback edition, which has a "really cool" cover) and to read it, either before or after seeing Project X. As for the film itself, it's definitely a mixed bag, albeit one I'm prone to like simply because I've wanted to see it for so long. Despite the problems with the film itself, this Blu-ray is easily one of the nicest Paramount catalog releases we've yet seen from Olive Films, and that groovy Van Cleave score makes the audio enjoyable as well. With caveats noted, Project X comes Recommended.
2017
1966
1966
2002
Robo Man
1974
1993
1986
백두산
2019
Primal Impulse / Le orme
1975
1995
2018
1998
2015
2018
2016
1935
1969
Atlantis Interceptors / I predatori di Atlantide
1983
1951
1988