A Fresh Stab At Code Red's Just Before Dawn

One of Code Red's earlier forays into blu-ray, from their second batch after Redeemer and Voices From Beyond), we have the eerie man vs. nature vs. slasher film Just Before Dawn. The film not only makes its HD debut here, but also includes a second, extended cut that runs about ten minutes longer. We're still on the single-layer disc stage at this point in Code Red's blu-ray legacy, unfortunately, but now we've proper menus with selectable options. It's tempting to say you can throw away any previous editions once you've got this one in your mitts, but unfortunately it's missing all the great extras from Shriek Show's previous 2-disc special edition.

Update 3/9/15 - 5/16/19: Four years later, and Code Red has come out with a new special edition of Just Before Dawn.  We've moved on from the single- to the dual-layer disc stage, which is nice since there are two versions of the movie on these discs, with promised clean-up on the extended cut, plus all new special features.  Sounds good; let's see.
This is another in a short line of compelling Deliverance-inspired slasher movies, a la The Final Terror, Rituals or more recently the Wrong Turn films, where they essentially say, "what if we made the first half of Deliverance the whole movie?" Maybe that sounds hacky, but it's a damned effective idea and has resulted in some quite compelling horror films, including this one. A large part of what works about this film as well as the others I've named is that beautiful, exotic locations become an integral and dangerous part of the story. Being way out in the forests somewhere, they've got amazing, natural production values.

So an idyllic location and a haunting theme by Brad Fiedel (Terminator), effectively raise up what is otherwise a fairly generic slasher film to greater heights. A group of typical horror movie kids go off to camp and explore a very remote area of land one of them has inherited. George Kennedy stars as the film's bankable name and also a ranger who tries to warn them off, and must later try to find them while there's any left to rescue. Most of his scenes are by himself and the plot could probably be told just as well without his character, but he does help to keep the plates spinning. What he knows and the campers slowly discover, is that the woods is also inhabited by a family that's gone a little weird in their isolation; and one of them seems to have grown homicidal.
So like I said, the film's got the location and the music as definite pros. In the cons, you've got some slightly hokey acting, although everybody's fine for the most part, and the difficulty of trying to represent a group of people who live outside of society without them coming off as just silly. Most movies fail, and while this film makes a pretty earnest attempt, I'm not sure they succeed either. However, they make the wise choice of giving them as little screen time as possible, instead spending it with the much more relatable and plausible campers.

The last thing to really tip the scale in the right direction is some really effective scare scenes. Clever moments with lighting and camera angles really make scenes work much better than similar scenes in other slashers. I won't spoil the ending, but it's a real crowd pleaser for horror fans, no question. So overall, while I don't see this pulling in mainstream audiences even if you did convince them to give Just Before Dawn a shot, anyone who has a predilection for 80s slasher films will definitely enjoy this a lot.
And which version of the film is the one to watch? Well, there have been multiple cuts of this film, actually, and it's been pretty confusing for fans to keep track of. You basically had two VHS versions, one which was cut and one which was generally considered to be uncut that ran 91 minutes. Then you had the Shriek Show DVD, which was almost uncut at 90 minutes, but had a few brief trims, and a German disc, which restored the biggest trim to the Shriek Show disc (but not the others). And finally a UK DVD which was more heavy cut but also featured a bunch of footage not seen in any previous version, even the original "uncut" VHS, running about 100 minutes. Well, Code Red has thankfully cut through all of that excess and made our decision much easier by giving us the two best cuts, including one never before released.
I think it's safe to say nobody watching a serious horror movie wants to watch it with any of the violence censored, so Code Red gives both "uncut" versions. We have the version everybody used to consider uncut from that old VHS, and we have a super extended version with everything in it, all the trimmed gore and all the extra scenes from that UK release, that runs 103 minutes. And for my money, that latter version really is the definitive version to watch. While the extra footage doesn't include anymore scary or shocking moments, it does contain bits that really should just never have been cut in the first place. The main arc of the film is Deborah Benson's slow transformation throughout this film, and the extended dialogue really fleshes that out. Perhaps even more importantly, or at least less subtly: the cuts, which were clearly designed to just speed up the pace, make the film awkward and less sensible.

For example, there's one scene where the campers follow the sound of singing to find a girl in the distance and call out to her, "hello down there!"  And one of the guy shouts. "I say: do you live around here!" Now, when I originally saw the film, the non-extended version, I always chalked it up to a little moment of bad acting, just a weird unnatural way to say the line. But now having seen the 103 minute version, there's a couple lines between the ones I quoted. The guy asks "do you live around here?" and another camper shouts, "you sing beautifully!" The girl looks at them but doesn't respond, and NOW, with the subject having been changed and the girl not responding, it makes sense that he says the line, "I say: do you live around here" like that. So on it's own, you wouldn't look at that deleted scene and think, "gee, I'm sure sorry I missed that moment where the guy repeats himself and his friend shouts 'you sing beautifully!'" But what it does is turn a slight, jarring flaw in the film into a smooth, natural moment. And the six or seven seconds you shave off the running time definitely isn't worth that awkward hiccup in the movie, that just makes you think less of it. Maybe if you have a short attention span you'd disagree, but even in its longest incarnation, the film really doesn't drag. If anything, the whole film works as a bit of a slow burn no matter which version you're watching, and the longer cut makes that the most effective.
1) 2005 SS DVD; 2) 2015 CR BD extended; 3) 2015 CR BD edited;
4) 2019 CD BD extended; 5) 2019 CR BD edited.
Unfortunately, the longest version of the film is not the best looking, transfer-wise. Code Red's new blu-ray of the "uncut" 91 minute version was absolutely the best this film has ever looked. But they had to use a more beat up print to get the fully uncut 103 minute version. So if you want to see the film looking its best, you've got to watch the 91 minute version, though at least that cut's still an improvement over Shriek Show's 90 minute version. But the best cut looks noticeably poorer. It has the inherent advantage of being in HD, but that's about it. It's the softest, probably in part because it's clearly zoomed in and lacking information on the bottom and right side compared to the other cuts, despite all four of Code Red's transfers being exactly 1.78:1 (Shriek Show's is slightly window-boxed to closer to 1.85:1). The extended cut is also worn, with flecks and scratches on it. It's not as bad as some of Code Red's most infamous "grindhouse prints" they've released, but it's a lot worse than the other versions.

If Shriek Show's transfer were in HD, it might give Code Red's a real run for its money, certainly trampling the extended cut. But it's not, so Code Red's 91 minute cut is handily the best the film has ever looked, with the smoothest, most lifelike image. Look at the clearing in the trees over Deborah (the standing blonde)'s shoulder. In both the Shriek Show DVD and the 103 minute cut, it's a burst of bright light. But in the 91 minute cut, you can see all the leaves in branches that've been flared out of the other two. Shriek Show and Code Red also have a bit of a difference in coloring, but that's more open to personal preference. Grain is natural on both of Code Red's transfers, though, because the issue with the extended cut is the source material, not the scan.  So you could say the extended cut is a fine presentation of a print that just happens to be in substantially lower quality than the internegative they used for the shorter edit.
1) 2005 SS DVD; 2) 2015 CR BD extended; 3) 2015 CR BD edited;
4) 2019 CD BD extended; 5) 2019 CR BD edited.
So how is the new and improved extended cut in 2019?  Well, some clean-up has definitely been done, but it's still the same rough source.  Looking at the gang setting up camp here, we're still zoomed in with the colors washed and contrast blown out, and that same green chemical line is still running up through Jamie Rose.  But look at the additional chemical damage around Ralph Seymour's head - it's gone.  Similar flecks and spots in the upper left-hand corner of the first set of shots have also clearly been swept up.  And yes, the extra dual-layer space does smarten up the compression.  So hey, progress has been made; it's a step in the right direction.  I don't know if it's a substantial enough restoration to really alter the viewer's experience, though.  You're still watching a rough print.  But given the choice between the two, yeah, hey, I'll take the new one, thanks.

Also, the shorter edit's been tweaked a bit - this time in the color department.  Look up at the first set of shots again and you'll notice Mike Kellin's skin tones are a little less red, and a bit more on the orange side.  The grass is a shade darker while the brights are lighter on his sleeve.  And in the second set, the pinks, reds and oranges are all a bit brighter.  It's not an obvious change, but it does give a little more pop and separation of the characters from their backgrounds.  It's a pretty subjective call, but I think it's a smidgen better on the 2019 than the 2015.

All versions preserve the original mono track, uncompressed on the blus, though a bit noisy on the extended version.  The DVD also throws in a 5.1 mix.  One nice advantage of Code Red's new 2019 edition is that they've added subtitles (albeit to the shorter version only) that neither of the previous discs had.
But now let's get to what was a real shortcoming on Code Red's initial disc: the extras. The Code Red blu gives you two theatrical trailers for the film, which is at least better than nothing. But the Shriek Show set has not only those two trailers but an audio commentary by director Jeff Lieberman, and it's a pretty good one. And what's more, there's a 67 minute long documentary which interviews a whole bunch of the people involved, including Lieberman, producer David Sheldon, the writer Mark Arywitz, and stars Chris Lemmon (yes, Jack Lemmon's son), Jamie Rose and John Hunsacker who played the killer. Oh, and there's also a really interesting section where they talk to Brad Fiedel. So it's really a fantastic special edition that's worth holding onto - or going out of your way to pick up - just for the extras. There's also a photo gallery and a bunch of bonus Shriek Show trailers.
But now Code Red's come back with a special edition of its own.  First of all, they carry over the documentary from the Shriek Show DVD, though it's somewhat shorter here, clocking in at just over 50 minutes, because for whatever reason (at a guess, licensing fee?), they've cut all of Lieberman's interview segments.  And unfortunately, in that hasty editing process, they threw off the sync.  This isn't the first time Code Red's had a syncing problem recently, which makes me wonder if anybody's bothering to watch their releases for QC before selling them.  But anyway, it gets a bit out of sync pretty quick, and then slowly gets further out as the feature progresses, eventually getting to the point where we're not even hearing the same sentence the people are speaking.  So if you've got your old Shriek Show DVD, don't throw it out.

You'd want to hang onto it anyway, since the audio commentary has not been carried over.  But the better news is that Code Red has created a bunch of new special features, and the syncing and everything is all good with those.  We get four new, on-camera interviews which roughly follow a consistent formula of talking about the film for the first half, and going over the rest of their career in the second.  We already heard from David Sheldon, Chris Lemmon and Jamie Rose in the Shriek Show doc, but there's definitely some new content to be found in the fresh interviews.  Sheldon and Lemmon's interviews are roughly a half hour each.  Then we also get an on-camera interview with star Gregg Henry, who's never been on a Just Before Dawn disc before, so that's a real treat.  There's also an amusing intro to the film, where Henry and Rose meet The Banana Man, plus a bunch of Code Red bonus trailers.  This edition also comes in (one hell of an ugly) slipcover, with reversible artwork.  The official JBD trailers, despite being listed on the box and having been on the previous Code Red blu, have been dropped - another little reason to keep your Shriek Show discs.
So at the end of the day, a lot has changed and very little has changed.  The ideal JBD experience is still the Shriek Show DVD for the extras, and the Code Red blu for the film itself.  The 91 minute cut's transfer still looks the best, while the 103 minute cut still has the best version of the content.  And by including both cuts, Code Red still gives fans both options.  What's changed is that we've added some fun new extras to the pot and some slightly improved transfers with this 2019 edition.  Code Red 2019 is definitely now the best edition even with its botched presentation of the Shriek Show doc.  Whether it's enough of a step forward to warrant paying for a double-dip is up to you, but the new blu pretty well renders the old one obsolete, even if it doesn't manage to take the old DVD down with it.

5 comments:

  1. 88 films blu is probably the best release now due to the special features.

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    1. Yup, agreed. Although I'd still recommend getting the Shriek Show DVD, which has much more compelling special features, and combine it with the blu for the ultimate special edition.

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  2. Just Before Dawn was filmed in Oregon in 1980, right around the time Mount Saint Helen's was erupting in Washington state. The Oregon scenery is gorgeous.
    This movie has effective music. The male characters in the movie act like cowardly children while the female character is the only one with courage to fight the killer. It's obviously influenced by Deliverance, as are many other wilderness movies, and to an extent, also influenced by Lord of the Flies. The wilderness is beautiful, but it's scary and dangerous, with its mosquitoes, ticks, spiders, scorpions, snakes, centipedes, intense cold, intense heat, lightning, bears, big cats, unclean, polluted water, and lakes and rivers which can drown a person. Movies such as Just Before Dawn focuses more on the danger from humans in the wilderness. It's saying that humans are the most dangerous and scariest things to encounter in the wilderness. It's a well made movie.

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  3. The 90 min 'uncut' version is the better version. The extended version of 'Just Before Dawn- is a novelty which reminded me of the extended version of the great, highly entertaining sci fi Alien rip off film 'Creature' in terms of its quality of the inserted scenes. Integral cuts are very hit and miss! 'Re-Animator' was a fine release however.

    By the way the theatrical version of Creature is a nice quality release and is fun to watch!

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  4. And apparently there's was also a hybrid 94 min cut DVD release incorporating both the theatrical and extended versions!

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