Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.5

The Awakening Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson July 13, 2021

Charlton Heston was originally considered for the role of Robert Thorn in The Omen (1976) so it's interesting that four years later, he starred in The Omen knockoff, The Awakening (1980). Accounts differ if Heston turned down the leading role or if Fox bypassed him for Gregory Peck. In The Awakening, Heston plays Egyptologist Matthew Corbeck, who's infatuated with uncovering the secrets to a mysterious tomb from 3,800 years ago. The film opens with a flashback in which Dr. Corbeck (Heston) is leading an archaeological expedition in the Valley of the Kings. Anne Corbeck (Jill Townsend), the archaeologist's wife, has grown unhappy during the trip because her husband has shown more interest in digging up ancient ruins than he has in paying attention to her. Mrs. Corbeck is also peeved that he's become close to his assistant, Jane Turner (Susannah York). Dr. Corbeck comes across a tablet with hieroglyphics bearing this warning: "Do not approach the Nameless One, lest your soul be withered. The Nameless One must not live again." He's so obsessed with unlocking the tomb that he ignores the tablet and begins beating the outside of the tomb with a sledgehammer. Editor Terry Rawlings crosscuts between Corbeck pecking away and his wife experiencing premature labor pains. At a hospital in Cairo, Mrs. Corbeck goes into labor while Dr. Corbeck and Mrs. Turner are still excavating the tomb. Unfortunately, the baby comes out as a stillborn. However, when Dr. Corbeck and his team open the tomb to see the remains of the sarcophagus, the infant magically resuscitates and begins crying. Mrs. Corbeck is sorely disappointed when her husband arrives belatedly to peer into the hospital nursery to look at their child.

The narrative flash-forwards eighteen years later to the movie's present day. The Corbecks have divorced. Anne lives in New York with her 18-year-old daughter, Margaret (Stephanie Zimbalist). Matthew has remarried and lives with his second wife, Jane Turner, in England where he teaches archaeology at a university near London. Margaret experiences some weird feelings within herself. She's in Central Park where the hyenas stare at her like they know something is wrong. Margaret is deeply interested in her father's excavation of Queen Kara and much to her mother's dismay, travels to Britain to stay with him and Jane. Dr. Corbeck and Jane know that after the sun's eighteenth eclipse, Kara may seek reincarnation. Is it a coincidence that Corbeck's daughter was born the same day he unearthed Kara's tomb? Is Kara's spirit permanently laid to rest or will the evil queen "reawaken"?

The Awakening is a plodding mystery for about three-fourths of its runtime before delving into the supernatural. The film begins losing its audience when Dr. Corbeck phones his second wife and gives her precise instructions about what to do with ancient artifacts connected with Queen Kara in their household. Jane is supposed to be as smart and knowledgeable as her husband. She's been married to him for at least several years and trusts him. Why she does the opposite of what he instructs her to do is beyond me.

I'm always open to films with ambiguous endings that leave plenty of room for interpretation. I'm not as open to endings that suddenly conclude, which is the case of The Awakening. The movie doesn't wrap with any kind of resolution, which left me unsatisfied. The Baltimore Evening Sun's Lou Cedrone sat in the city's Hippodrome movie palace with an audience which "roared their disapproval" at the ending. While The Awakening received a slew of negative reviews, several were surprisingly favorable. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram's two film critics each awarded it with three stars. The Kansas City Star's Robert C. Trussell regarded it as "a moder­ately chilling horror outing whose main distinction is an uncommonly good perfor­mance by Charlton Heston." The syndicated review by Janet Maslin of the New York Times also was praiseworthy: "a spooky, skillfully made horror film...The Awakening will give you a good scare....for the most part the movie pays off."

The Awakening Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shout! Factory's release of The Awakening comes on a BD-50, which employs the MPEG-4 AVC encode. The film appears in its original theatrical exhibition ratio of 1.85:1. The DI emanates from a new 2K scan of the interpositive. The restored transfer isn't quite as sparkling as the recent one Shout! did for Sphinx, though it still looks very good. The prologue has coarse grain that looks scattered amidst the blue skies in the Sahara. There are more film artifacts on the print than there are on the transfer of Sphinx. Heston's ruddy complexion shows in the desert (see Screenshot #2). The opening credits display the rippling of water with Egyptian carvings shown in the background (see #19). Mike Hughes of the Gannett News Service lauded cinematographer Jack Cardiff for filming "lovely hues of gold and copper." You can see how they shine in #s 5 and 12. For an intimate scene between father and daughter, Cardiff creates halos around their shirts (see frame enlargement #s 13 and 14). Lighting for the interiors was frowned upon by one original reviewer. Writing in the New Jersey-based The Record, Robert Feldberg griped that "many of the indoor scenes are so darkly lit it's hard to see what's happening." Yet on this transfer, the candlelit dinner contains ample light to fill the characters' faces (see #s 9 and 10). Shout! has encoded the feature at an average video bitrate of 34000 kbps.

Shout! provides twelve scene selections for the 105-minute movie.

The Awakening Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shout! supplies the original DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo (1716 kbps, 24-bit) as the lone sound track. For the opening scene in the Valley of the Kings, I had some trouble discerning some of the spoken words. Dialogue and distinctness of sounds improves after the prologue. Composer Claude Bolling crafted a somewhat unusual score compared to other films that have been set in Egypt. The liner notes to Quartet Records' limited edition soundtrack album describe the music associated with the specter of Queen Tara as a four-note ostinato performed on harp while the melody is played on oboe. The booklet also notes that Bolling uses a harp-flute-oboe trio to score the scene in "Corbeck's Garden." Music sounds fine on the uncompressed stereo mix.

Optional English SDH can be switched on from the menu or during playback.

The Awakening Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Theatrical Trailer (2:14, 1080p) - an artifact-riddled trailer for The Awakening that's presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen. The image appears a little cropped. Orion's trailer gives away all the climatic story events so avoid this until after you've seen the film.

• TV Spots (1:07, upconverted to 1080p) - two TV spots promoting The Awakening. The first is film-sourced is of fair quality. The second is taken from a VHS tape.

The Awakening Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I was ready to recommend The Awakening until the third act starts to unravel and then comes off the rails. The film is ambiguous about what ultimately happens to Margaret's boyfriend. Although his fate is probably not good, the camera cuts away to an exterior long shot of the Corbeck house, leaving it inconclusive. It seems that the production executives at Orion wanted to leave the final scene at least somewhat open-ended and perhaps create room for a sequel. Mike Newell had only directed episodes for British television and The Awakening is essentially his directorial debut for the silver screen. I wish Shout! Factory had produced some new extras that would give context to what happened during and after production. It's my hypothesis that the studio moguls took the film out of Newell's hands during the editing. On the bright side, Stephanie Zimbalist is pretty and intelligent as Heston's daughter. Shout!'s recent 2K scan of film elements is solid and the lossless stereo mix is adequate. I believe The Awakening is WORTH SEEING but I'm not going to recommend a purchase unless you've watched it at least once and consider the film worth owning.