Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Dry Blood follows Brian Barnes (Clint Carney), a struggling drug addict who decides to get clean by going to stay in his remote holiday home, essentially forcing himself to give everything up, cold turkey. As Brian enters withdrawal, he starts being plagued by ghosts – presumably all the result of his hallucinating mind – particularly once he’s joined by another character who doesn’t see any of them.

Sadly, that’s the extent of the film’s plot. It takes 20 minutes before anything remotely spooky happens to anyone and a further 40 before the ghosts behave even remotely malevolently. Even then, the film never seems to want you to think that these might be real ghosts as opposed to the fruits of Brian’s drugged-up mind, so it’s still difficult to care about anything – especially given how often the film enjoys pulling the old “that was all just a dream” trick.

As you’d expect, the nature of the ghosts becomes more ambiguous as the film progresses, but the results are less of a clever attempt to mess with the viewer’s head or convey a filmic portrait of drug-addled mania and more just bafflingly incomprehensible. Ultimately, the darker the film gets, the more unintentionally funny it becomes and you’re eventually left feeling little more than you’ve wasted your time.

Had the film been presented just as an “Inception-esque” movie, designed to make you question the very nature of reality, it could potentially have at least worked as a nice character piece, but even then it would likely have fallen flat because the characters are all either completely two-dimensional or so bland and uninteresting that they barely qualify as characters at all.

The most interesting character is an unnamed policeman portrayed by Kelton Jones. Despite being one of the film’s major players, he’s so cartoonishly and unjustifiably antagonistic towards Barnes that you keep waiting for the twist-reveal that the ghosts are all real, that the cop knows all about them and that he’s simply keeping a close watch over our protagonist so that he can try to protect him… but the twist never comes.

Given the film’s seemingly very modest budget, the cast aren’t too bad and, of particular note, the special effects are actually pretty great. Although a lot of the practical work is undermined by horrible digital effects used to bolster them – often leaving you feeling more like you’re watching a Snapchat filter than a ghost story – the film contains one or two haunting images and some of the gore effects towards the end are downright fantastic. If you’re hoping for a film that can offer you anything more, look elsewhere.

DRY BLOOD / CERT: UNRATED / DIRECTOR: KELTON JONES / SCREENPLAY: CLINT CARNEY / STARRING: CLINT CARNEY, JAYMIE VALENTINE, KELTON JONES / RELEASE DATE: 15TH JANUARY

Beyond White Space is predominantly set aboard a deep-space fishing vessel. Fish in space? Yes… because the film has one hell of a premise: it’s about a crew of intergalactic whalers who’ve made a career of hunting down space dragons and killing them. The film presents a world where leviathan alien beings swim through the outer regions of the cosmos, and humanity has, as we tend to do, started harvesting them for natural resources.

The plot really kicks into gear after their ship encounters one dragon that is unusually gargantuan in size. One character poses the idea that it’s a being of Chinese legend: a dragon who guards the entranceway to Heaven. Instead of letting the film pursue this interestingly theological idea, however, ship’s captain Richard Bentley (Holly McCallany) steps in with the adamant belief that it’s the same dragon that killed his father many years ago. That’s right; this time, it’s personal – so personal in fact, that both he and his brother Owen (also a member of crew) decide to continue their mission, pursuing the beast into the depths of space, even after a group of scavengers rob them of all their supplies.

If this is starting to sound a bit like Moby Dick, that’s because that’s exactly what it is: Moby Dick in space. Sadly, whereas Moby Dick is a critical tale of obsession and revenge, Beyond White Space never makes it particularly clear if we’re supposed to be rooting for Captain Bentley or not. As the protagonist, you’d expect the film to want you to like him, and you’re seemingly supposed to be on his side when he essentially sentences his crew to death by taking them on a suicide mission in order to harass a wild animal.

Beyond its core concepts, Beyond White Space sadly has little to offer. The dialogue and acting could be worse but they certainly don’t help things. One area where it does excel, however, is its special effects work. For a film of this scale and budget, the CGI is all fairly impressive, although the film really struggles to convey a sense of scale when showing us its space dragons. Scenes where they interact with humans in space suits somehow look less like a giant being interacting with a person and more like someone playing with an action figure.

When Beyond White Space presents new and innovate ideas, it works. Sadly, more often than not, the film seems content to just do a bad job of ripping off Alien.

BEYOND WHITE SPACE / CERT: UNRATED / DIRECTOR: KEN LOCSMANDI / SCREENPLAY: RYAN COLUCCI, CLAY MACLEOD CHAPMAN / STARRING: HOLT MCCALLANY, ZULAY HENAO, DAVE SHERIDAN / RELEASE DATE: 15TH JANUARY

Released on DVD for the first time by Umbrella Entertainment, Lunatics: A Love Story is a curious thing. Written and directed by Josh Becker, a pal and sometimes collaborator of Sam Raimi (who produces here), it’s essentially the story of two mentally-troubled individuals finding each other in Los Angeles. That’s its strength – the love story and the scenes shared by Ted Raimi’s Hank and Deborah Foreman’s Nancy are quirky, delightful, and full of chemistry. It’s a shame, then, that they only share the screen for a quarter of the movie, and that the other three quarters is such a mixed bag.

Hank isn’t well. Released from a stay in the hospital six months ago, he moved to Los Angeles to get away from his family and history in Michigan, with the aim of becoming a poet. He never leaves his apartment, which is covered in tin foil to insulate him from whatever is in the outside world, and frequently has nightmarish dreams where doctors (led by a maniacal Bruce Campbell) try to operate on and sedate him. Nancy is also a recent arrival in LA, eloping with her boyfriend Ray (again played by Campbell), but finding that the streets are very much not paved with gold. Convinced she curses everything she encounters, she takes to wandering the streets of a very dangerous neighbourhood.

The two stories intersect, and that’s when the magic happens, but outside this the depiction of Hank’s mental illness is a heavy-handed slapstick affair, and Nancy becomes a cypher for Becker’s weird, neo-noir vision of Los Angeles. Released in 1991, it’s very much of that period when the 1980s bled into the following decade, and the squonking jazz soundtrack and interjections of rap (from Detroit’s Most Wanted) are a distraction rather than an enhancement.

Still, Foreman is alluring, and it’s a great loss that this was her final film until 2007’s Beautiful Loser, and that she’s made nothing since. Campbell is as Campbell does, and Raimi occasionally reminds why Joxer the Mighty was such a popular recurring character on Xena: Warrior Princess (which Becker went on to work on after this).

Lunatics could very well gain a second life as a cult hit. There’s certainly enough there for that, but part of you wonders how the film could have turned out if the balance between wacky craziness (literally) and unconventional romance had been more in the latter’s favour.

LUNATICS: A LOVE STORY / CERT: M (AUSTRALIA) / DIRECTOR: JOSH BECKER / SCREENPLAY: JOSH BECKER / STARRING: TED RAIMI, DEBORAH FOREMAN, BRUCE CAMPBELL / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW (AUS)

While many will cite Dawn Of The Dead as being George A. Romero’s crowning achievement, hardcore fans often point to its follow-up Day Of The Dead as the high point of the series. Following a group of soldiers and scientists in an underground bunker in a world overrun with zombies, it’s a tense and claustrophobic slow-burner (but when it eventually goes off, it really goes off) and its themes of disintegration of community and loss of trust contain still-relevant warnings about how the main threat to society can sometimes come from within.

Umbrella’s Ultimate Edition – released for the Australian market – includes what appears to be the same print as 2013’s Shout! Factory release, which is no bad thing as the picture was far sharper and brighter than the original 2007 BR release. With any re-release of a classic film though, it’s the extras we’re most interested in, and there’s a huge amount of bonus content across this two-disc set. Unfortunately though, there’s not much new content here – these extra features (apart from potentially one, which we haven’t seen mentioned anywhere else) have been available on previous DVD/BR releases…

Making of documentary “The World’s End” is the most recent inclusion, again taken from Shout! Factory’s 2013’s BR edition. The usual interviews with the cast and crew give the lowdown on how the idea for the film and its eventual production came together, interspersed with behind the scenes photos. Romero himself is in fine form here, smiling and joking his way through his comments – all of the interviewees are very laid back, and everyone comes across well. With a running time of 85 minutes, it’s the only HD extra in this collection – everything else is presented in standard definition.

Elsewhere on disc one, the main feature includes two audio commentaries and a couple of entertaining behind the scenes mini-documentaries – one following the cast and crew, and the other focusing on the work of special effects maestro Tom Savini. The possible new addition is a 50-minute Q&A with George A. Romero from the 2008 Melbourne International Film Festival, plus there’s the usual TV spots and theatrical trailers, and an old 8-minute infomercial for the Gateway Commerce Centre, the underground facility where DOTD was filmed.

Moving on to disc two’s archive content, presented on DVD rather than Bluray, a decent selection of documentaries scrutinise the production of the film in even more detail. Arrow Video’s 40-minute “The Many Days Of The Dead” is another talking heads-style documentary which feels very similar to disc one’s “The World’s End”, and “Reflections On The Living Dead”, originally released to coincide with Night Of The Living Dead‘s 25th anniversary in 1993 and presumably included here for completion’s sake, features a round table discussion (without the table) between four of the key players behind the film. Between these and the two audio commentaries on disc one, there’s an awful lot of information to take in.

Captain Rhodes (the eccentrically-dressed Joe Pilato) takes centre stage in “Joe Of The Dead” where he seems happy to talk about himself for 50 minutes (although a little less interested in reprising some of his lines from the film), and the home video-style (ie. picture and audio quality varies wildly) “Travelogue Of The Dead” (17 minutes) in which he attends a couple of conventions in Scotland and Ireland. Rounding things off is a huge 500-picture image gallery containing all manner of behind the scenes photos, poster and video artwork, and even production documents to wade through.

As the title says, this is a fantastic attempt at creating the “Ultimate Edition” of one of the all-time greatest zombie films. Apart from the film fest interview though (and a stunning illustration on the reversible cover), there’s not really anything notable for owners of previous editions, so unless you’re a hardcore fan or just getting your Romero collection started, there aren’t a huge amount of reasons to seek this edition out.

DAY OF THE DEAD: ULTIMATE EDITION / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: GEORGE A. ROMERO / SCREENPLAY: GEORGE A. ROMERO / STARRING: LORI CARDILLE, JOE PILATO, SHERMAN HOWARD, RICHARD LIBERTY / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW (AUS)

After discovering that her fiance is cheating on her, software developer Allie Jones (Bridget Fonda) decides to take in a roommate. She chooses mousy and soft-spoken Hedra (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and the two women quickly become friends. Hedra tells Allie that she should have had a twin sister, but her twin was stillborn. Maybe this is the reason she attaches to Allie so quickly, even buying a puppy for them to look after together. But when Allie’s latest business deal goes bad and Hedra responds by stepping in and scaring the client half to death, Allie sees a side to her roommate that she never suspected… and when she gets back together with her fiancé and their puppy suddenly falls off the balcony while only Hedra was at home, is it really an accident? There’s also the small but unsettling matter of how Hedra is secretly borrowing Allie’s clothes ,and how, when she surprises Allie by taking them both to a chic hair salon, Hedra’s new style and colour is an exact duplicate of Allie’s red-headed bob. Hedra’s found a new twin sister at last, whether Allie likes it or not… and she’ll kill anybody who tries to take Allie away.

Barbet Schroeder’s Single White Female arrived towards the end of the late 80s/early 90s erotic psychological thriller trend that began in 1987 with Adrian Lyne’s pot (or bunny?) boiler Fatal Attraction. Just as Fatal Attraction had scared audiences back into monogamy with its vengeful-woman-as-AIDS-metaphor, Single White Female tapped into a growing paranoia about strangers sharing our lives who may not be what we expect. It was based on John Lutz’s novel SWF Seeks Same, which itself was very loosely inspired by some deeply creepy real-life crime stories. For that reason, Single White Female should potentially have had more power than any of the other films that followed in Fatal Attraction‘s wake, but audiences had been spoiled by the time it was released in summer 1992. After all, this was the same year that had already given us the memorably nasty The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and the sex-noir blockbuster Basic Instinct. Somehow, the problems of a lone young woman dealing with an unbalanced copycat roommate just seemed passé – and that’s a shame, because Single White Female has a lot to recommend it.

Unfortunately, Umbrella’s Blu-ray is unlikely to find the film an enthusiastic new audience. The image is only a minor step up from Single White Female’s two decades old DVD incarnation, and we get none of the special features that Shout! Factory have given viewers on their almost simultaneously released US edition. The Shout! offering seems to be stronger in the image and picture/ratio departments too. It’s a shame that UK consumers have got shafted again, especially considering Single White Female is a movie that deserves some critical re-evaluation. If you’ve got a multi-region player and a hankering to add this disc to your collection, we know which version we’d recommend. 9/10 for the film (Fonda and Jason Leigh are fab), 5/10 for the disc.

Extras: none

SINGLE WHITE FEMALE / CERT: M (AUS) / DIRECTOR: BARBET SCHROEDER / SCREENPLAY: DON ROOS / STARRING: BRIDGET FONDA, JENNIFER JASON LEIGH, STEVEN WEBER / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Unless you were looking for a gag comedy anime, if you were to apply the customary “three episode test” to Mob Psycho 100, it would most likely fail. While that genre has its fans, those anticipating a Bones Inc production about a teenager with psychic powers would likely expect something more, and certainly something with explosive action and maybe a little light peril. Luckily, after its opening few episodes, the story of Shigeo “Mob” Kageyama, an average middle school kid with psychic powers, it grows from a slight comedic affair into a tense battle worthy of the best shōnen anime of any year.

First airing in Japan in the summer 2016 season, and based on a webmanga by One Punch Man’s ONE, Mob Psycho 100 made a huge splash with anime fans despite being miles away – visually, at least – from the usual Bones Inc production. The art style is jarring, and shares more in common with western animation like Rick & Morty than would accompany the usual slick action drama; stylised beyond the boundaries of human anatomy at times, it’s an acquired taste that – by the end of the series – becomes an essential component of the story.

Mob is the most passive of protagonists, and much of the action is driven by the supporting cast; his brother Ritsu, his rival Tero, a reformed evil spirit named Dimple, and Mob’s “mentor” Reigen, a con-man affecting to possess spiritual powers but who is nonetheless the moral heart of the tale. Over its twelve episodes, Mob does grow – as all good shōnen heroes should – but most of the growth is undergone by those around him, those touched by him.

This Manga Entertainment release includes both the original Japanese soundtrack – Akio Ōtsuka as Dimple is wonderful – and Funimation’s English dub, which has good work from industry veterans Kyle McCarley, Chris Niosi, and Michael Sorich, if that’s your thing. Also included is a series of six comedy shorts, Mob Psycho Mini, and a handful of other extras.

Bizarre, funny, and genuinely affecting, Mob Psycho 100 is a recommended addition to the anime collection of fans of action and the experimental – just give it more than the usual three episodes to find itself.

Extras: Mob Psycho Mini shorts, promo video, flipbook video, commericials, textless closing song, trailers

MOB PSYCHO 100 / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR: Yuzuru Tachikawa / SCREENPLAY: Hiroshi Seko / STARRING: Kyle McCarley, Chris Niosi, Michael Sorich / RELEASE DATE: 17TH December