6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
Grant Ekland is a dirty cop, with a checkered past that endlessly haunts him. The love of his life was murdered by a serial killer named Harold, who slaughtered a countless number of humans in the city of Toronto, Canada, before he was finally locked up and sent to a mental institution. Now many years later, Harold is set to be released back into society, and Ekland hopes for a final showdown with his arch enemy.
Starring: Barry J. Gillis, Patti Anne Crossman, Maria Delgado, Kelly Felhaber, Celia FelipeHorror | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p (upconverted)
Aspect ratio: 1.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.33:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
DVD copy
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 1.5 | |
Audio | 2.0 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
The fact that Wicked World offers a virtually Hamlet sized array of carnage before the opening credits even get started, and then moves on after those credits to a more or less immediate reveal of who’s doing all the killing may indicate that this film is probably never going to enter the annals of subtlest cinematic experiences. Wicked World was the brainchild of Barry J. Gillis, who both wrote and directed, and whose name may be familiar to certain devotees of grindhouse horror fare from his association with the kind of entertainingly gonzo effort Things. Wicked World sees Gillis as a kind of low rent auteur offering a deconstructed, probably intentionally psychedelic, take on a traditional revenge plot, with Gillis himself co-starring as the guy out for vengeance.
Note: Screenshots 1 through 5 are from the 2019 Director's Cut. Screenshots 6 through 9 are from the Original Version. I've attempted to
come close to reproducing individual frames, but there are some slight variances.
Wicked World is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of American Genre Film Archive with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.35:1. The back
cover of this release rather prominently states:
Notice! This move was shot on 16mm film and edited on tape. The transfer is taken from the original 3/4" master tapes.While not optimal, a tape interstitial might have been okay had it preserved the original look of the film source, but somewhere along the way it seems like someone has given the grain field a lobotomy (if I may mix metaphors, if appropriately given a subplot of the film). This is a pretty waxy and rubbery looking presentation in either version, though the original version has something akin to a bit of a grain field, however slight. I'd argue that densities and detail levels are marginally better in the original version as well, but that may be a case of damning with faint praise. The 2019 Director's Cut is a smeary presentation a lot of the time, though, with minimal detail levels at times.
Quite often on these niche releases of cult material the audio presentation can vastly outpace the limits of the video presentation, but unfortunately that's largely not the case with the DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 tracks provided to the two cuts of the film. Kind of surprisingly, the raucous music makes it through the gauntlet at least passably well, but dialogue in both versions is really thin and brittle sounding, boxy and reverberant to the point that it's actually hard to make out what people are saying at times.
AGFA specializes in this kind of Grade Z entertainment, and fans of this very peculiar nook and/or cranny of filmmaking may find this odd film kind of interesting, if obviously on the lo-fi side of things. Technical merits are pretty poor on this release, but as usual AGFA has assembled some interesting supplements, for those who are considering a purchase.
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