A Pair of Vinegar Syndromes #2: Deathrow Gameshow.... The Only Way To Go

Released in the same DVD bundle as Code Red's Spaghetti Cinema and Six Pack #3 is the long-awaited special edition of Deathrow Gameshow, by writer/ director Mark Pirro. Known for getting 8mm horror comedies like A Polish Vampire In Burbank and Nudist Colony of the Dead distributed wide on cable and VHS, I believe Gameshow is the most mainstream and biggest budgeted of his films. It was 35mm with a theatrical run, was a big seller in the early days of VHS and I can certainly attest to the fact that it played a whole ton on late night HBO and Cinemax back in the 80s. I used to stay up all night to watch it as a kid, until I got savvy enough to tape it.

Update 1/3/15 - 1/4/20: You may've guessed this was coming after Psychos In Love yesterday, since it's the only film with a VS update that was still missing.  It might've hurt them to release this as a double-dip so quickly after fans had waited so long for Code Red's special edition.  That's certainly why I didn't jump on it right away.  But we're covering it here now, as we near the end of our update blitz.

So nostalgia definitely drove my excitement when I heard Code Red was planning a special edition for this release. It blew my mind that there would even be a special edition for this, and I couldn't wait to see if its outrageous humor would hold up as a grown-up. The basic premise is that death row inmates are given the option to appear on a network game show to win prizes in exchange for getting killed in silly games on national television. After a contestant at the beginning of the film fails to answer a trivia question to win a pardon, it's off to the guillotine - BUT, his family can still win a big cash prize if his head lands face up in the basket. It's kitsch, trashy, juvenile and loaded with enough jokes to rival a Zucker brothers film. As you can imagine, most of them are real groaners, but I have to say that some of are genuinely clever.

And yeah, there is an actual plot to the film. The host, who also happens to be a sexist heel, accidentally kills a big time mafia boss on his show. He appears on a talk show to debate the morality of his show with a beautiful feminist, and they wind up on the run from a crazed hitman played by character actor Beano. The film does a good job of keeping the predictable plot moving at a good pace, and never veering too far from the crazy game show itself, which after all is the draw of the film. It absolutely adheres to film rule #1: don't be boring. In some ways, the exaggerated cartoonish elements (for example, when the mob boss calls, the phone shakes and smoke comes out of it) remind me of early Raimi films, like Crimewave, only with more nudity. But between times changing in comedy and the audience becoming adult, the whole conceit of the show doesn't seem as delightfully demented as it did in the 80s, which once had me telling incredulous kids at school "you can't believe what I actually saw in a movie!" But it's still fun and very, very 80s, with an unforgettable theme song.

One last thing I have to address is the newer, director's cut of this film.  No deleted scenes or anything have been restored to the film, but if you listen to the audio commentary, you'll hear Pirro repeatedly identifying digital changes he made. He "Lucas'd it," he admits, pointing out how he added things like blood to the guillotine blade, and funny on-screen logos to a commercial that plays within the film. Blood and logos that the viewer never sees, because while the commentators are clearly watching this second version, we're watching the original theatrical version without those changes.  Until this latest release, you could only see the altered version if you ordered it specifically from the filmmaker's website... which is fine, since nobody wants CGI blood in their movies even when it was made like that in the first place. "Lucasing" a movie is pretty much universally acknowledged as a bad thing, and I gotta say, the added effects aren't exactly seamless.  But Pirro seems to prefer it, so for the curious, Vinegar Syndrome has finally made the special edition more accessible by including it as an extra on their release.  So now everybody wins because we can have both.

Original left, retouched version on the right.

Anyway, it took so long for Code Red to deliver the film after announcing it that I started searching around, and realized that it was included as a bonus film with another Crown International DVD release released in 2008 by BCI Eclipse, The Kidnapping Of the American President. I was expecting a junk-o VHS-sourced print, but amazingly it turned out to be a nice, anamorphic widescreen print. That DVD is now out of print, and going for outrageous prices on Amazon. I was actually able to rent it from Netflix, but now they no longer carry it. That same print turned up again in 2010, anyway, in a 12 film, 3 disc set (they're double-sided) from Rare Cult Cinema from Mill Creek Entertainment. That one's compelling as it sells for very cheap (about $6 new on Amazon, not even counting third party sellers).  It was great to have something to tide us over as Code Red's release got pushed back again and again.  But it finally came out in December 2014, and that was great have to tide us over until Vinegar Syndrome restored the film from its original negatives and released Deathrow Gameshow on blu in 2016.

1) 2010 Mill Creek DVD; 2) 2014 Code Red DVD; 3) 2016 VS DC DVD;
4) 2016 VS DVD; 5) 2016 VS DC BD; 6) 2016 VS BD.

So the Code Red and Mill Creek DVDs are virtually, but not 100%, identical.  Both have a lot of digital noise and are ever so slightly pinched and pillarboxed to 1.75:1, clearly utilizing the same master; but CR's colors are a smidgen richer.  Code Red had the edge already, anyway, because there is one clear difference between the two prints. After the closing credits, the film comes back with one more shot - a stinger.  Well, the Code Red's stinger is complete, but the Mill Creek one only shows a fraction, before chopping the actor's line mid-sentence, and cutting to the Mill Creek logo.

Of course, VS's restoration has far more than an edge.  The film is now matted to 1.85:1, and yet manages to unveil more information along all four sides.  The colors have been corrected and are cooler and more distinct (for example, the secretary's blouse is truly white).  Small detail is much clearer (we can finally read those post-it notes all over the walls), and a nasty collection of compression artifacts that've grown all over previous editions like mold has finally been cleared away.  Oh, and finally I have to point out that the Vinegar Syndrome's release is a DVD/ blu-ray combo pack; and they've continued their strange tradition of making their DVD actually open matte at 1.78:1, revealing even more vertical information than the blu.

And how about that director's cut (DC)?  Well, it fixes the DVDs' pinched aspect ratio slightly to 1.79:1, leaving just a single sliver of a vertical matte, but also zooms in on the picture ever so slightly.  It has slightly duller colors, with a bit more of a dusky red hue over the image.  The image is even softer with some unfortunate edge enhancement or something muddying the image, like this is a copy of a copy (which it probably is).  But the real problem is that it botches the frame rate, regularly double-printing some frames while interlacing - then correcting - others, creating ghosting effects and giving motion and panning a stilted jittery effect.  Putting aside any question of whether the film is improved or hampered by the creative changes made to the film, it's objectively the worst transfer of them all.

Every version just includes a simple mono track in 2.0, but it's now in lossless DTS-HD on the blu (though it's still lossy on the director's cut).  Vinegar Syndrome has also included optional English subtitles for the very first time.

But where Code Red really triumphed was in the extras. None of those old BCI or Mill Creek editions have any extras at all, not even a trailer. But Code Red has the trailer (plus the usual CR bonus trailers), and a whole lot more. First of all, the film has a very informative and engaging audio commentary by Pirro, stars John McCafferty & Robyn Blythe and co-writer Alan Gries, who mostly works as moderator. It's very upbeat, but not afraid to get critical and never lulls. Then, there's a great retrospective documentary called Revisiting Deathrow Gameshow, which features all the lead actors (except, unfortunately, Beano), lots of the crew and even the former VP of Crown International Pictures. It's over half an hour long and is a very fun look back on the shooting. And finally there's an old self-made documentary film by Pirro called Mimi Motion Picture Making from 1994. It's a 49-minute retrospective on Pirro's career discussing all of his films (including a segment on Deathrow Gameshow) with even more interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. All together, it's a wonderful retrospective you're sure to enjoy even if you didn't particularly care for the movie itself.

And Vinegar Syndrome?  They've carried over almost all of the wonderful Code Red stuff, except Mimi Motion Picture Making seems to have been just too much to fit onto a single disc.  That's because they've used that space to instead include two of Pirro's early short films.  Buns, from 1978, is a silly horror spoof about a maniac who only kills people who eat hamburgers, and stars Pirro himself and McCafferty in a smaller role.  And 1979's The Spy Who Did It Better is a 45-minute James Bond parody with McCafferty in the lead role, where the director has unfortunately added some more of his digital revisions.  These are distracting but never intrusive enough to spoil the fun.  VS also adds a brief director's introduction, TV spot, photo gallery, and includes reversible artwork.

Naturally, Vinegar Syndrome's is the decisive, definitive edition.  One thing the Rare Cult Cinema pack does have going for it, though, is that it also includes Pirro's My Mom's a Werewolf, which he wrote but didn't direct.  It's a fun flick, too, so that plus the price may make it a nice, cheap pick up for the casual viewer.  And dedicated fans may still want to track down the Code Red edition for the exclusive documentary.  But for most people, the VS is all you'll need.

A Pair of Vinegar Syndromes #1: Psychos In Love

Psychos In Love is a weird little film, even within the cult horror genre that's essentially made up of weird little films. I'm not sure I can recommend it, but it's got a definite charm, is at least occasionally genuinely funny, and it has its fans. It's an 80s slasher, which are back in vogue at the moment, and it does make good in all the fundamental departments (i.e. body count). But it's really playing for laughs, right on the line between horror comedy and flat-out parody. Think Pieces meets Eating Raoul (both films even utilize a frying pan as a murder weapon), but even more low budget. Like, right on the edge of home movies.

Update 6/8/16 - 1/4/20: Yeah, this is still our updating marathon, but I've got a couple of Vinegar Syndrome blu-rays that have just been screaming to get added to these pages.  So we're doubling up!  And first to the plate, as you can see, is Psychos In Love, released as a 2017 DVD/BD combo pack.  As you can imagine, VS's 2k restoration renders the old DVDs pretty obsolete, though there might still be reasons to hang onto them as well...

Co-writer Carmine Capobianco is Joe, your average, livin' single in the 80s slasher who gets ladies naked and then does them away. Yes, the gratuitous topless shots are as plentiful as the fake blood. Anyway, his life's in a bit of a rut until he runs into Kate (Debi Thibeault), a young, psycho killer who seduces and murders guys. They're a match made in Heaven! They share in their favorite homicidal pastime, their mutual hatred of grapes, and they even sing the movie's theme song together. Things get super silly: characters get hit in the head with the boom mic, the fourth wall gets broken and lines like "an ounce of prevention is worth a manicure" are bandied about. It's the kind of movie where the film's only Asian character wears a karate uniform in every scene. Anyway. everything's going great until a third mass-murdering maniac (Eric Lutes) stumbles into their little love nest and wants a piece of the action. But nobody likes a third wheel... especially when he's an out of control cannibalistic plumber!

Now, don't say DVDExotica never shows you the rare, little known DVDs. Because I have three editions of Psychos In Love for you today: the latest Vinegar Syndrome combopack, the 2009 Shriek Show release, and the earlier 2005 limited edition sold exclusively by co-writer/ director Gorman Bechard himself! Yeah. long before Psychos In Love was available on DVD in any capacity, Bechard started posting pre-orders on EBay. He was working with the German label CMV Laservision to release a special edition over there, and they were going to allot him 300 discs he could sell himself (mine is #144). This became a real labor of faith that these DVDs would arrive... I believe it was a year or two from when the pre-orders went up to when the discs actually arrived, in custom artwork, signed and hand-numbered by Bechard. So it's a pretty neat collectible, but eventually that version did come out in Germany [pictured right], and I believe the content of the disc is the same.

And that's good, because if you're a serious fan, you might feel the need to import it. While Shriek Show carried over all the extras from the CMV disc to their US release - and even added more - they left off one big thing: only CMV's disc includes the film's alternate rough cut.

a shot only in the rough cut.

Casual viewers can certainly rest easy without it. Most of the noticeable distinctions are technical: it's rougher quality footage without most of the music or sound, and no credits or title cards except for the hand-written title card over [pictured left]. And most of the differences in content aren't very substantive. A lot of the shots have extra frames at the end and the sequence of some scenes is switched around. For example, both Joe and Kate are introduced by showing us three of their murders apiece. But the order in which we see each set is different in the rough and final edits. So not exactly essential viewing; but if you stick with it, there are unique shots, moments and alternate takes that are only in the rough cut. The most notable is a whole comedy bit right near the end involving Grape Nuts cereal and a much longer scene of Lutes eating a severed hand.

1) 2005 CMV DVD; 2) 2017 CMV DVD rough cut; 3) 2009 Shriek Show DVD;
4) 2017 Vinegar Syndrome DVD; 5) 2017 Vinegar Syndrome BD.

So first of all, like I said before, the rough cut is in equally rough quality. The footage is more damaged with all kinds of dirt and scratches on it. On top of that, it seems to be a greenish, murky video-tape source of that damaged print with slightly less picture information all around. And on top of that, it's interlaced to Hell. But, you know, it's essentially a bonus feature, and considering the unfinished nature of it anyway, the quality is kind of fitting.

Between the two official DVD transfers, though, I wasn't expecting such a difference. Never having directly compared them before, I'd always just assumed Shriek Show ported over the transfer made by CMV, but I see now that's not the case. Shriek Show's is sharper, clearer and more detailed, with a lot more detail being found in CMV's crushed blacks. Look at Debi's eyes in the first set of shots - you can actually see them!  It also fixes the aspect ratio a bit from 1.31:1 to 1.33:1.  And then we take another step forward with Vinegar Syndrome's release, which gives us a fresh 2k scan of the original 16mm negatives.  It's still in 1.33:1, but reveals even more picture along all four sides.  The image is a bit brighter and detail is even clearer, with naturally captured film grain, which is clumpy and grungy by comparison on the Shriek Show DVD.

Every version just offers basic, but fine considering the original film's audio quality, mono tracks (in DTS-HD on the blu). Naturally, there are also optional German subtitles on the CMV disc, as well as some German menus (curiously, the crew bios on the CMV disc are written in English). The rough cut doesn't have subtitles, so I guess the Germans were just expected to know English or lump it.  Vinegar Syndrome is the only version to include optional English subtitles.

Extras are pretty extensive. The CMV disc starts out by reuniting Gorman Bechard and Carmine Capobianco on a jovial audio commentary. It also has a vintage 'making of' featurette the guys made themselves back in '87, which doesn't take itself very seriously either. Then there's the alternate set of opening credits Wizard Video made for the original VHS release, a short film by Bechard called The Only Take, which I guess is a student film taking a light-hearted look at the shooting of a horror movie scene, a long slideshow which shows you the cast and crew in substantially higher definition than the film itself does, the aforementioned bios and the original trailer.

Shriek Show keeps all of that and adds some more stuff, including a second audio commentary by Berchard, which is a little more serious. They're distinct enough that you can listen to both without feeling like you're just hearing all the same stuff twice, although there is some overlap. And while Shriek Show doesn't have the rough cut, they do have a short collection of extended scenes, which is essentially all the missing rough stuff spliced together. Then there's about 14 minutes of highlights from a local Wisconsin stage play of Psychos In Love. Two more of Berchards short films are on here, one from 1983 and a newer one from 2003. And that's about it except for a couple bonus trailers for two more Berchard projects, a book he wrote and some other Shriek Show titles. That's a bunch of stuff, but a lot of it's pretty skippable (the 2003 short is all still photos and narration instead of moving video, so it's pretty tough to get through), so I wouldn't say those additional extras are too critical.

Psychos in Love: The Stage Play

But then the arrival of Vinegar Syndrome's release heralds in even more special features.  First of all, everything from the Shriek Show DVD is on here, new and all, except the trailers for Berchard's other projects, and of course the Shriek Show bonus trailers.  In their stead, VS adds a new director's introduction, separate camera interviews with Berchard and Capobianco, a discussion between Berchard and Capobianco and a lengthy (50 minutes) Q&A with Capobianco at a screening where he really breaks the host's balls.  They do come up with some new things to say, and it's nice to see something shot in HD finally, but as you can imagine with a bunch of commentaries and interviews talking to the same two guys, it gets repetitive.  I would've much preferred if VS had talked to Debi Thibeault or some of the supporting cast and crew members instead, though of course I appreciate that could be a lot easier said than done.  VS's release also includes a booklet with notes by Art Ettinger and Matt Desiderio, and comes in a slip cover with reversible artwork.

So Vinegar Syndrome's is obviously the disc to own, with the best (and only HD) transfer and the most extras. It's only missing the rough cut that most viewers can easily live without it, and a few little odds and ends.  But if you're really devoted to this film, it might be worth tracking down a CMV disc.  There are also a couple of foreign discs that have fewer extras, but matte the film down to 1.85.  I'm not sure how worthwhile that is, though, since I'm sure this film was always intended to be seen in 1.33. But it's nice to have options. And as scrappy as the film might be, I still get a little kick each time I revisit it.

That Guy Dick Miller: The DVD... and Now the Blu

That Guy Dick Miller is a documentary that campaigned on Kickstarter back in 2012. Self described as, "the first-ever, comprehensive look at the life and career of Hollywood's most famous character actor," it was one of the few genuinely compelling projects I've seen pop up and get fully funded on that site. And now it's finally arrived on DVD. Even if you didn't participate in the Kickstarter, it's generally available through sites like Amazon and Diabolik; and as they say, it's, "LOADED WITH BONUS FEATURES." Well, my copy just arrived the other day and I'm pretty excited, so let's see what we've got.

Update 6/4/15 - 1/1/20: A year and a half after complaining about how the only disappointing thing about this neat little Kickstarter doc is that it isn't on blu and, lo and behold, it's on blu!  Only in Germany; but hey, whatever works.  Subkultur now offers it as a DVD/ Blu-ray combo, fully English friendly, with (more or less) all the extras.  I never even realized until I stumbled upon it randomly earlier in the year.  Let's see if it's everything it should be.

That Guy, obviously, is about one of the most - if not the most - beloved character actors in cinema, Dick Miller. He's been in everything from Little Shop of Horrors to Gremlins, but very rarely has he been the focus, tending to play very amusing minor parts rather than the leading roles. He worked so often, you learned to first recognize him, and eventually get really excited every time he'd appear in a film and knock his scene out of the park. You'd just see him hawking books in The Howling or mopping the floor in Chopping Mall and you'd know the whole film was about to rise in quality, if only for that brief moment.

And this film does a pretty great job in capturing and relishing that. We hear from a ton of Miller's past collaborators, including Roger Corman, Joe Dante, John Sayles, Mary Woronov, Zach Galligan, Cory Feldman and plenty more. We also spend a good deal of time with Dick himself, in his home, meeting his wife, and hearing from his brothers. Now, if you're expecting something along the lines of Crumb, this isn't that. It's not a profoundly personal look at a man's life, it's a celebration of his work in film. We do get a little insight into his entertaining personality and home life (did you know he was an artist, too? we see some pretty impressive drawings he's made), but it's really about his film work. Before seeing this documentary about this film, I'd read several criticisms in this regard, but to me they're off-base. The film didn't try and fail to go there; it's just not that kind of movie. It's like complaining that Halloween isn't funny or Airplane isn't scary. You'd be right, but they're not supposed to be. You can't really blame a filmmaker for not making the film you'd rather see, if he succeeded in making the film he and others were interested in seeing. And this is a movie some of us, at least, are delighted to see.

Admittedly, though, you kind of have to already be a fan of Dick Miller to really appreciate this film. Just watching it cold with no idea who he is might seem like a moderately interesting but very meandering look at the life of a character actor, that doesn't go in deep enough to draw you in to him as a person. You really have to be interested in the interviews about all the wonderful parts he played and crazy productions he'd been on to get the full effect. Sure, the truly great documentaries will draw you in and fascinate audiences whether they cared about the subject beforehand or not.  You know, I don't think most fans of Fast, Cheap and Out of Control went into the theater out of their keen interests in topiary gardens and mole rats. This isn't that kind of film. But for people who already have their Dick Miller fanclub cards in their wallets, don't worry, this movie doesn't disappoint. It's made up of lots of great anecdotes, stories, behind-the-scenes footage, to the point where every moments a real treat. And if you're only familiar with parts of his career, i.e. certain periods, it may be eye-opening just how extensive it ran.

1) 2015 Indiecan DVD; 2) 2016 Subkultur DVD; 3) 2016 Subkultur BD.

Outside of some vintage footage from Miller's various works, the majority of the film is in 1.78:1, anamorphic, and was clearly shot in HD.  Older footage naturally varies (as you can tell from the first set of shots), but the new stuff shot for this film looks great.  Interestingly, the DVDs are not equivalent in terms of PQ.  They're all using the same basic master, but the Subkultur DVD is definitely softer than the Indiescan... it looks intentional.  Maybe it's just over compression or something, but it looks like they chose to denoise it.  Anyway, thankfully, that's only on the DVD, and the blu-ray disc surpasses both DVDs in terms of sharpness and resolution just as it should.  The writing on Miller's short, for example, is easiest to read on the blu and it's cheerfully free of the artifacting that surrounds the lettering on the 2015 DVD.  That artifacting is smoothed away on the 2016 DVD, which is why it appears the softness is deliberate.  But again, that's all academic thanks to the blu-ray.

Both releases give us the choice between 2.0 and 5.1 audio mixes, as well as optional English subtitles.  On the blu, both tracks are lossless in DTS-HD.  And Subkultur, as you might expect, also include optional German subtitles on the film and special features.

Because, of course, if you only stream or download it, you don't get any of the extras. There's a bunch here, but most are pretty short, and range from 5-8 minutes. Those include outtakes, which are amusing and contain a couple of bits not in the movie. Robert Forster tells a great joke. There's an interview with Rick Baker, which is short enough you figure they could've squeezed it into the film; but it's just as good here. And there are two "home movies" shot by Miller's wife on the set of some of his old Corman pictures. They're shot without sound, so they're more than a little dry; but fans of Big Bad Mama should still appreciate the glimpses behind the camera of that film. Of course there's also the trailer.

Then, on the Indiescan DVD, we get a collection of four trailers for some early Miller films and a photo gallery that had a little difficulty playing properly (the on-screen instructions said to hit the "next chapter" button to advance between photos, but it always skipped me to the end of the gallery).  The Subkultur disc has everything in the first paragraph but not those, instead offering us the original Kickstarter pitch video, with the director on-camera talking about his vision for the project.  The Subkultur also comes in a slipcover, which the Indiscan doesn't.  So there are slight differences in the release extras, but it's pretty minor either way.

The main extra on both versions, however, is almost an hour long. It's a series of interviews and audience Q&As held before screenings. The sound quality isn't always 100% (especially on the first one), but they've all been nicely edited to give us just the good bits. First Leonard Maltin interviews the director of this doc (Elijah Drenner, who previously made American Grindhouse), along with Dick Miller and his wife. And at first it seemed like that was going to be the whole thing, which would've been fine, but then it cuts to a second little panel, with Dick Miller, Rick Baker and Ernest Dickerson (who directed Miller in Demon Knight), and finally a third with Dick and Roger Corman, who has a terrific recounting of filming The Terror with Dick, Jack Nicholson and Boris Karloff. And because they're edited, these segments don't get too repetitive or slow.

So a few advance reviews had me worried, but now that I've got it, I'm happy to be able to recommend this to any Miller fan.  And now we don't even have to settle for DVD, which makes it all the more satisfying.  And yes, both the DVD and blu are all region. 

Forgiving Fox for Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Here's a bit of a bummer.  Can You Ever Forgive Me?, currently up for three Oscars, and nominee and/ or winner of two Golden Globes, three BAFTAs, two Screen Actors' Guilds, etc has had its blu-ray release pulled, and pre-orders cancelled, to only come out today on DVD.  As a Nicole Holofcener (who wrote the screenplay), though, I'm starting to get used to this, as we saw last year's Every Secret Thing also wound up going DVD-only, and her latest directorial effort, The Land of Steady Habits, is being indefinitely held hostage from physical media by Netflix.  Plus, it's Fox, who notoriously cancelled The Simpsons' annual releases to push traffic to their website and routinely release their programs as DVD-only (like The Gifted), often MOD DVDR-only (like Louie), if at all.  So it's par for the course in 2019.  But I was hoping all the critical praise and Oscar buzz yield us an exception, but no. On the plus side, though, a DVD is still better than nothing, and this one's actually a bit of a special edition.

Update 2/19/19 - 1/1/20: DVDExotica wasn't the only site to voice our disappointment that this film went DVD-only, and the backlash was enough to make Fox do the right thing and release the blu-ray after all.  So now we have the DVD/ blu-ray we always should've had in the first place.  Annoying to have to double-dip, but it sure beats the standard def-only reality we were facing.  It may've been the last good deed Fox did before being gobbled up by Disney.

...Also, I didn't feel it was worth bumping up to the front page, but as part of our on-going New Year's update push, I've also added the blu-ray version of Rifftrax's Live show of The House On Haunted Hill.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? is the true story of author Lee Israel, who started building a sweet little cottage industry of forged letters ostensibly by famous writers when her own career was stalling out.  Fun fact: Holofcener was originally set to direct this film herself, with Julianne Moore in the lead, but that version fell through.  I was initially pretty disappointed, but now that I've seen how well this version turned out, and how absolutely perfect Melissa McCarthy is in the starring role, I'm over it.  And this isn't just a flimsy flick bolstering up its famous lead performances, like Vice, where you're just kind of there to gawk at Christian Bale's transformation into Dick Cheney.  This is a really touching yet consistently funny movie that manages to find a truly moving, relatable heart in Israel's tale.  The celebrated supporting cast of Richard E. Grant (Twelfth Night, Withnail & I), Anna Deavere Smith and SNL's original Jane Curtin is just the icing on the cake.  And yes, once again McCarthy has stuck her husband in her movie, but he's actually quite good in this... it's only when she let's him write and direct them that they get into trouble (see: Tammy, The Boss and Life Of the Party).

1) 2019 initial Fox DVD; 2) 2019 combo-pack Fox DVD; 3) 2019 Fox BD.

It's a 2019 big studio release of a new, shot-on-digital film, so they shouldn't get too much wrong here and thankfully they don't.  The DVD is anamorphic 2.38:1, free of interlacing, and presumably a direct port of the filmmakers' DCP slapped onto disc.  It was just unfortunate to only get it compressed to SD.  So the DVD's soft and fine detail looks mushy with evident artifacting when you get in close.  Black levels are also a little light, which I'll give the benefit of the doubt is an artistic choice, but that does contribute to the murky feel of the picture.  And when I say "the DVD," I mean either, because the one in the combo pack seems to be an exact duplicate, right down to the label, of the one sold separately.  But the blu-ray, of course, is a genuine improvement.  It fixes the aspect ratio to 2.40:1 (same framing; the DVDs are just slightly vertically squeezed), and is naturally a lot sharper and clearer.  The black levels are the same, but they no longer look like a flaw when everything isn't overly softened.

The audio is a strong Dolby 5.1 mix (which is now lossless thanks to the upgrade to DTS-HD on the blu), with a secondary descriptive audio track for the hard of hearing.  There are also optional English subtitles, as well as Spanish and French subs, and Spanish and French subs.

To be honest, once the blu got cancelled, I was expecting barebones, but no, we got a bunch of stuff, both on the original release and carried over onto the blu.  First and foremost, there's an audio commentary by the director and McCarthy.  It's definitely one of those gushing, every single person and thing they see is "the best; I love it" deals.  But they're very enthusiastic, never pause or run out of things to say, and do share a lot of solid behind-the-scenes info you'd never know otherwise.  Then there are deleted scenes (also with optional commentary), these range from an outtake to one which is really like a whole subplot that got removed in a solid chunk.  Then there are four promotional featurettes, which are very minimal.  Only one manages to cross the two minute mark, and they're all full of clips from the film.  But they do also at least give us on-camera interview soundbites from the cast and crew, plus some B-roll glimpses - worth the quick watch so long as you don't go in expecting any kind of substantive 'making of' doc.  Then there's also two stills galleries, including one of Israel's actual forged letters, the trailer, and a bunch of bonus trailers that annoyingly play on start-up.

So it's not quite a loaded special edition, with the kind of serious, in-depth interviews you expect from the very best releases, but it's a pretty solid package.  I think it's safe to assume at least some people behind this disc were initially imaging a higher profile release, and this was all prepared with a proper blu-ray in mind.  After all, pre-orders were taken and then cancelled, as opposed to never reaching that stage at all.  But then some executive got cold feet, just like with the film's theatrical release, which got a lot of initial festival attention, then the domestic release got pushed back and eventually came out quiet and very limited.  My family was certainly on the lookout, waiting to see this throughout 2018 but never could because it didn't open anywhere near us.  And eventually... we got it.  Thanks, Fox, and R.I.P.