Now, this is hardly the first time this particular Lovecraft story has been brought to the silver screen. AIP's Die, Monster, Die! started us off in 1965, but it's a pretty loose adaptation that basically pastes the skin of Lovecraft's story over the typical, gothic horror story skeleton AIP and their peers had produced a hundred times before. Then, I kinda love 1987's The Curse, but it's not exactly what I'd call faithful or, you know, intelligent. 2008's Colour From the Dark is an interesting, scrappy take on the subject, but doesn't rise to the professional quality of a film you're going to want to revisit beyond your first watch. And 2010's The Color Out of Space (a.k.a. Die Farbe) is clearly the most devoted to Lovecraft, but its limited budget really compromises the final product. Whether this fifth venture is finally the ideal combination of filmmaker and subject matter, or if they just paid enough attention to learn from their predecessors' mistakes, I'm happy to declare what we have here to be the best Color Out of Space to date.
Because, hey, I'm not the hugest Richard Stanley fan in the world. Dust Devil is good, sure, but Hardware feels like a ton of style desperately slapped onto a nothing story with a dud of a leading man. And I'm far from convinced there was ever a good version of The Island of Dr. Moreau in the cards regardless of studio interference. So his track record hardly pushed me into the theater with starry "he can do no wrong" eyes. But he really strikes the right balance of restraint and going all out with the source material. It remains a human story that understands and grapples with Lovecraft's intentions, while still throwing all the wild imagery and monstrosity in our faces that any horror fan could want. And does it have to rely on CGI? Sure, but it's effective and well used, tempered with plenty of make-up, rubber monsters, striking locations and even miniatures to keep us grounded. Stanley has made his best film yet, and I'm now thoroughly excited for his take on The Dunwich Horror.
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2020 RLJ BD top; 2020 RLJ UHD bottom. |
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2020 RLJ BD left; 2020 RLJ UHD right. |
Oh, and both discs include the film's 5.1 audio track in DTS-HD with optional English and Spanish subtitles. No fancy Atmos mixes or anything, but hey, it's bold and lossless.
As for extras, I wouldn't call this release a special edition, but we do get a few nice features, starting with a short, but surprisingly in-depth 20-minute 'making of' featurette that talks to the producers, feature's Stanley's video diary, B-roll footage, soundbites from the cast, visual effects comparisons and a look at the crew's time in Portugal (where this was shot). It doesn't even shy away from talking about Richard Stanley's legendary Dr. Moreau disaster. There's a collection of deleted scenes which broaden the world of the film a little bit, and a photo gallery touring the shooting locations. We don't get this film's trailer, just a couple bonus trailers that play on start-up.
So okay, it's not the ultimate release we could all imagine in our minds: HDR, Atmos, audio commentaries... but it's still a pretty sweet film with a pretty sweet release. Most films' discs should be so disappointing. I wish I could get Marriage Story on UHD with no HDR and only a couple of extras.
*Okay, there are French and German UHDs of Parasite, but they're not English-friendly, so we're still stuck with 1080p at best.
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