Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		1.5
Audio		2.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		1.5

Sheena Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman April 14, 2019

Mill Creek has released Director John Guillermin's 1984 Fantasy-Adventure film 'Sheena' to Blu-ray. The film makes its Blu-ray debut as part of the studio's line of releases featuring 'Retro VHS' slipcovers. The Blu-ray presentation is poor, featuring heavily processed and poorly compressed video and a bland and flat two channel lossless soundtrack. The release does not include any supplements. Read on for brief film, video, audio, and packaging reviews.

A young girl is left an orphan when her parents are killed while on a scientific expedition in Africa. She is taken in by African Zambouli and placed in the care of the kindly Shaman (Princess Elizabeth of Toro). She is considered to be the fulfillment of prophecy, “a golden god-child” who shall “grow in wisdom and be the protector of the Zambulis and all their creatures.” She is given the name Sheena: Queen of the Jungle. Years later and now an adult, Sheena (Tanya Roberts) finds herself in the middle of a conspiracy to kill the king of Tigora, Jabalani (Clifton Jones). When the king’s brother, prince Otwani (Trevor Thomas), successfully pulls off the crime, he has Shaman framed and sets his sights on valuable titanium deposits which are, of course, found on Zambouli land. Sheena teams with a Western filmmaker named Vic Casey (Ted Wass) to protect her land and put an end to Otwani’s scheme.

At its best, Sheena is giggly goofy. At it's worst, it's goofy garbage. The plot is ridiculous, the plotting is contrived, the acting is lacking, and the movie never quite falls into a rhythm or reveals a sense of purpose. Some of the scenery is nice and the animals play well to the camera, but there's little more of any value. There are a few fun moments on tap, and Wass and Roberts build up a passable chemistry, particularly early on when they're still in the "feeling one another out" stage. The movie has some value as filler for a bad movie marathon but it's more inconsequential than it is poor, leaving it in a lonely middle ground where it's not good enough to warrant a watch and not bad enough to earn cult status.

Sheena Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sheena's 1080p Blu-ray presentation is not what one would call "ideal." The presentation struggles in all areas of concern. Problems arise right off the bat when large fires are lit in early scenes during a ceremony in which an ill man is brought back to health in the "healing earth." Significant visible macroblocking comes to define the scene, even more so than poor black levels and print speckles galore. The scene, and much of the entire image, appears on the verge of digital collapse. Compression artifacts abound, and just as bad, severe digital processing smooths out textures, erases grain, and leaves the picture appearing smudgy and artificial. It's a digitally processed disaster, for the most part, with the odd shot appearing more stable but never fully, or even approaching, filmic-natural. Details are extremely poor, whether considering skin textures which barely reveal common features with any depth or clarity. Clothes and environments, including manmade and natural locations alike, also succumb to shoddy detailing. Structures are smooth and grasses and trees are smudgy and indistinct. Colors are probably the transfer's best asset. Essentials, like natural greens or Sheena's blonde hair, present with a semi-realistic tone, but the palette is generally flat and without much life to it. Black levels range from pale to crushed and skin tones are pasty. What a mess.

Sheena Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Unfortunately, the included DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless soundtrack is also of poor quality. A cave-in early in the film barely presents with even a basic sonic signature. There's a slight feel for the core sounds of collapsing rock, but there's no depth and no detail. The effects sound sharp and unkempt, and the track's general unreliability, especially beyond music and dialogue, remains throughout. Roaring beasts, blasting gunshots, wailing sirens, and all variety of would-be prominent effects fizzle. And that's not to say music is majestic. It's adequate, presenting with unremarkable clarity and not much wide front end spacing. It's also not very prominent at reference listening level. Dialogue does image to the center and basic clarity and prioritization are fine.

Sheena Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Finally, a purpose for slipcovers! So often the collectible outer shell features the exact same artwork, front, back, and side as the Blu-ray case inside, making them largely ornamental at best. Occasionally embossing/debossing work adds a little variety but this reviewer has always pitched them in the trash, partly for that reason and partly because doing so saves precious (albeit finite) shelf space, critical when one's collection is in the thousands. Mill Creek has taken a step to make slipcovers a little more meaningful with this line of "Retro VHS" slipcovers that offer a shrunken-down approximation of a vintage rental store copy and also feature a portion of a VHS tape extending from the side of the case, even if most VHS covers were open at the bottom.

For Sheena, the cover features a bit of fake wear (creases, edge frays) notably along the corners. The box features a pair of stickers, one notifying of the film's PG rating and the other advertising that the film is an Action/Adventure, the former appearing near center, just to Sheena's left, and the other at the bottom, the remnants of a much larger sticker that has long since been peeled off (a nice touch). The front artwork is significantly different than the Blu-ray case inside, which is a much less interesting and dynamic Photoshop-like image, but it's nice to have two different artworks available in one package. The main title sticker on the VHS tape reveals the film's title, some legalese, and a rating. The sticker shows some handling wear, too. A "Please Rewind" sticker has also been applied. Of course these are not real stickers (it would be great if they were) but rather part of the print, and there's no texture to the cassette, either. Still, it's a pretty nifty visual. The rear side is a little less neat, keeping up with the vintage look at the top but showing a few necessary tech details on the bottom that correspond to the Blu-ray. The bottom side of the VHS tape is also visible. Humorously, a handful of Blu-ray disc logos appear on the front, rear, and spine to break the illusion (though not entirely); the one on the front, situated at the top, in a fairly large size, is the worst offender, though on this release it is accompanied by "home video" text which at least gives it a little more weight as something in the tradition of "vintage." Truly: kudos to the folks at Mill Creek cooking these up. They're all unique while following a basic template. There's room for improvement, but these really are worth collecting.

What would be really cool would be if the entire box art mimicked the VHS cover and the Blu-ray artwork underneath entirely mimicked the VHS tape, which could have easily been accomplished. That would offer more of a seamless illusion of actually pulling a VHS tape out of the package rather than it simply appear printed on part of the slipcover.

Note: Photographs of several other Mill Creek 'Retro VHS' slipcovers can be found here, here, and here. Because each slipcover offers the same basic layout with only some small unique identifiers distinguishing one from another beyond cover art, photos will not be included for every release in the line. Those linked images do offer a good overview representation of what to expect form this line.

As for on-disc supplemental content, there is none. This one at least offers a top menu screen, but its only option is "Play."

Sheena Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Sheena is not a particularly good film. It's choppy, overlong, and underdeveloped. It's tonally inconsistent and doesn't accomplish much of narrative excitement or dramatic value. Unfortunately for fans, Mill Creek's Blu-ray borders on "abysmal." Video quality is poor, riddled with compression artifacts and signs of digital tampering. The audio is not much better. No extras are included. The packaging is decent, but the video quality is just too bad, and consistently so, to recommend.