CABIN FEVER COLLECTION (2002 - 2016)
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray Limited Edition 3D Lenticular Hardcase + Softcover Booklet
Via Vision Entertainment bring together the 2002 flesh-eating-virus horror classic from writer & director Eli Roth on 4K UHD + Blu-ray, plus the 2009 sequel and 2016 remake on Blu-ray, this cool collectible edition is limited to just 2000 units, and includes 3-D Lenticular hardcase, a 128-page softcover booklet, filled with production stills and production notes on all three films, and a fold-out movie poster for the first film.
CABIN FEVER (2002)
Label: Via Vision Entertainment
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: R
Duration: 97 Minutes 48 Seconds
Audio: Dolby Atmos (TrueHD 7.1), English DTS-HD MA 7.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: Dolby Vision HDR10 2160p Ultra HD Widescreen, 1080p HD Widescreen (2.40:1)
Director: Eli Roth
Cast: Rider Strong, Jordan Ladd, James DeBello, Cerina Vincent, Joey Kern, Arie Verveen, Giuseppe Andrews
In 2002 Eli Roth (Hostel) brought horror fans something they had not seen in a while, that was a proper return to bloody old school, splattery fun with Cabin Fever, a low-budget gory delight about a flesh-eating virus that works it's way through five annoying twenty-somethings who head out to a cabin in the woods to celebrate their recent graduation. While there they make fun of the rural locals who look like background characters from Gummo, which is always a bad idea, get stoned, drink some beers, have sex, and fall victim to a nasty flesh-eating virus that causes them to rot from the inside after a totally fucked-up encounter with an infected backwoods hermit.
The gore is absolutely delightful and holds up pretty dang well 24 years on. Notable gross-outs include an unfortunate blood-fingering, which always brings to mind "The Raft" segment of Creepshow 2 for me, a skin-peeling leg shaving, and of course the infected vomiting geysers of blood, and a dog tearing apart an unfortunate rotter who has been left alone to die in a tool shed. Let is not forget the oddball kung-fu antics of kid named Dennis who likes to yell "pancakes" before getting a bit bitey, and a deputy dipshit Winston (Giuseppe Andrews, Detroit Rock City) who adds fun flavor to the millennial splatter-fest.
Special Features:
Disc 1: 4K UHD
- Dolby Vision and HDR10 presentation of the 98-minute Unrated Director’s Cut on 4K UHD
- Audio commentary with director Eli Roth and cast members (2010)
- Audio commentary by director Eli Roth (2004)
- Audio commentary by The Guys (2004)
- Audio commentary by The Girls (2004)
- Audio commentary by The Filmmakers (2004)
- Audio commentary by actor Rider Strong (2004)
- NEW! Scratching the Surface: A Look Back - featurette (56 min)
- NEW! Establishing Shot with Eli Roth - featurette (8 min)
- Beneath the Skin: Making of Cabin Fever (29 min)
- Family Friendly Version (1 min)
- Director's Shorts: The Rotten Fruit (28 min), Pancakes! (2 min)
- Chatting On Set with Eli (12 min)
- Chatting with Eli Roth (13 min)
- Featurette with director Eli Roth (39 min)
- Deleted Scenes (5 min)
- Mad Dog (4 min)
- TV Spot (1 min)
- Theatrical Trailer (1 min)
Disc 2: Blu-ray
- 1080p High-definition presentation of the 98-minute Unrated Director’s Cut on Blu-ray
Audio commentary with director Eli Roth and cast members (2010)
- Audio commentary by director Eli Roth (2004)
- Audio commentary by The Guys (2004)
- Audio commentary by The Girls (2004)
- Audio commentary by The Filmmakers (2004)
- Audio commentary by actor Rider Strong (2004)
- Family Friendly Version (1 min)
- Beneath the Skin: The Making of Cabin Fever (29 min)
- Popcorn Taxi - Q&A with director Eli Roth
- Director's Shorts: The Rotten Fruit (27 min), Pancakes! (2 min)
- Postcards from Bunyon County Photo Gallery
- Theatrical Trailer (1 min)
CABIN FEVER 2: SPRING BREAK (2009)
Label: Via Vision Entertainment
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: R
Duration: 86 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1)
Director: Ti West
Cast: Noah Segan, Alexi Wasser, Rusty Kelley, Marc Senter, Giuseppe Andrews
In the goofier and even grosser sequel Cabin Fever 2: Spring Break (2009), directed by Ti West (Pearl), who disowned after the producers ordered reshoots and tinkered with it. The story continues just days after the end of the first film, it i's re-affirmed that the killer flesh-eating virus has made it's way into the water supply and that a local bottling plant has begun distributing contaminated bottled water to the local high school, where the students are preparing for the senior prom, unaware they’re about to have a grisly date with death.
The sequel starts off proper with one of the infected characters (Rider Strong, Pulse 3) from the previous film making a slight return, before being splattered by a school bus. We also get the return of dipshit Deputy Winston (Giuseppe Andrews, Giuseppe Makes a Movie) who arrives to investigate the gory scene of the bus accident. At the school we have senior John (Noah Segan, The Dead Girl) who is crushing hard on Cassie (Alexi Wasser, The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu), whom he wants to take to the prom, but her violent ex boyfriend Marc (Marc Senter, Starry Eyes) is making his life miserable. Meanwhile John's chunky best pal Alex (Rusty Kelley, Jackrabbit) is chasing after highschool stripper tart Liz (Regan Deal), who gives him a sloppy BJ in the school bathroom, unaware that the heinous looking canker sore on her lip, that he chooses to ignore, is a death sentence.
This disowned sequel is gory, crude, and delightfully disgusting, coming off as even more mean-spirited than the first film but also funny in the blackest sense possiblle. While I have no idea what Ti West's original cut was like I must say that I do love this sequel, quite a bit, it really goes for the gore and sleaze-factor and delivers the goods. Eventually a nefarious clean-up team arrives looking to erase the infection at all costs during the prom, so we get some fun Carrie-esque sequences once the virus starts infecting the teens, and the clean-up team begins eradicating them. The gross-out stuff is super icky, we have a disgruntled janitor pissing bloody urine into the prom punch bowl, canker sore blow-jobs, a mean-spirited sex and death episode in the pool, someone's face obliterated by blunt-force trauma, a sickening puss-riddled infected dick shot, amputation by table saw, and plenty more stomach churning practical effects. I kind of love how mean-spirited it all is, and while it's a bummer that Ti West disowned the film, I think it's still a fun watch with tons of gore. If you like 'em sleazy, bloody and super mean-spirited I think this will bring a smile to your demented mug.
Special Features:
- Gore Reel (3 min)
- Behind the Scenes Featurette (13min)
- Theatrical Trailer (2 min)
CABIN FEVER (2016)
Label: Via Vision Entertainment
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: R
Duration: 99 Minutes
Audio: English PCM 2.0 Stereo, DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.39:1)
Director: Travis Z
Cast: Dustin Ingram, Gage Golightly, Matthew Daddario, Nadine Crocker, Samuel Davis
Eli Roth's Cabin Fever (2002) was an super-gory flesh-eating virus flick, becoming an instant cult-classic, offering gore-starved gorehounds a refreshingly old school slice of splatter-horror. The movie spawned a pair of sequels by way of the mean-spirited and utterly gross Cabin Fever 2: Spring Break (2009) and another sequel by way of Cabin Fever: Patient Zero (2014). Spring Fever was directed by Ti West who disowned the movie after reshoots and producer tinkering, but I still loved it for how inappropriate and gross it was, a gory mess of a movie, and Patient Zero, while not spectacular, was at least a good gory watch.
This 2016 reboot uses the same script as the original Cabin Fever, featuring five twenty-somethings who rent a cabin in the woods to celebrate their recent graduation. There they familiarly make fun of the locals, get stoned, drink some beers, have sex and fall victim to a nasty flesh-eating virus that causes them to rot from the inside out, and being young and selfish their worst qualities emerge as they turn on each other in hopes of surviving just a little bit longer than anyone else.
Rewatching this again for the first time a few years I have warmed up to this reboot somewhat but mu biggest beef is that the dark humor is toned down, which turns the formerly splatteriffic-comedy property into a mostly humorless action horror movie of a sort, and I think I missed the black humor more than anything else.
That said, they do at least bring the gore, there's a decent amount of skin-crawling grossness and gooeyness on display, which is always appreciated. We have the familiar bloody finger-banging scene, the skin-peeling leg shaving, and multiple scenes of the infected spewing geysers of blood, and those familiar scene of body-disintegration still pack a visceral punch. Another familiar scenario involves a dog tearing apart one of the unfortunate rotters, but that happens off camera and we are only privy to the screams and the aftermath, if you're gonna remake something stupid and gross I say go all the way with it, amp it up and push the boundaries, and they just didn't do it with this reboot, it's gory but there are some scene where they pull away, when they should be hitting the gore-throttle! That being said, they do give us some great shots of the infected dogs who are starting to rot away and are acting rabid, but when they tear apart someone off screen, well, that just bothered me, this is Cabin Fever, why are we pulling away? Another plus is that the movie is attractively shot in the scope aspect ration with very nice cinematography b Elliot Rockett (The House of the Devil).
As I said before, the characters sort of just regurgitate familiar dialogue, but the comedy is toned way way down, and that didn't work for me. The most notable change is that they made Deputy Winston, previously portrayed by goofball extraordinaire Giuseppe Andrews into a woman, now played by Louise Linton (The Midnight Man), who plays it pretty dang weird, but nowhere near as memorable as Giuseppe Andrews. What they did right was fill out the movie with some rather attractive young women, we have Gage Golightly of Teen Wolf and Nadine Crocker (Some Guy Who Kills People) - the latter of whom drops her clothes in a couple of scenes, and she's very easy on the eyes. The local rednecks are not as fun this time around either, the strange kid Dennis doesn't yell "pancakes", not do we get any of his kung-fu antic, sad face.
Not an awful slice of gory horror, it's just not a great reboot, but taken on its own it offers some good gore and cheap frights that go down easy with a few beers, just like the first one, but of lesser quality.
Special Features:
- Behind the Scenes (11 min)
Audio/Video: The disc breakdown on this four-disc set is the original Cabin Fevers (2002) gets a 4K UHD/Blu-ray with Dolby Vision/Atmos upgrades, and it looks and sounds better than ever. We even get two new featurettes with Eli Roth and a wealth of archival extras, tons of 'em! The 2009 sequel and 2016 reboot appear to be the same studio masters and are on par with the current other releases of the films, and they looks and sound terrific. There are no new extras for the sequel and reboot, but they do port over all the previous existing extras from the US releases I own, which I appreciated.
The four-disc UHD/Blu-ray set arrives in an oversized black keepcase with a flipper tray housing the discs. This comes housed inside a sideloading 3-D Lenticulate Hardcase, which looks cool as hell. Tucked away inside is a massive 128-page Softcover Booklet, filled with oodles of production stills and production notes on all three films, and a large Fold-Out Movie Poster for the first film. This set is limited to just 2000 units, and is available to order director from Via Vision Entertainment HERE. This is a terrific set, I love the collectable packaging and the handsome looking transfers, especially the first film with the Dolby Vision/Atmos upgrades, and the new extras.