THE SPINE OF NIGHT (2021)
Label: Acorn Media International
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Cert. 18
Duration: 94 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1)
Director: Philip Gelatt
Voice Cast: Richard E Grant, Lucy Lawless, Patton Oswalt, Joe Manganiello, Larry Fessenden
The animated Shudder Exclusive The Spine of Night (2021) is an adult-oriented, ultra-violent dark fantasy horror epic made by Philip Gelatt, the writer behind Love, Death & Robots, and short-filmmaker Morgan Galen King. Two wonderfully nerdy dudes who obviously grew up obsessed with dark fantasy stuff like Conan, The Beastmaster and the animated films like the Rankin/Bass production of The Hobbit, Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings, Fire & Ice, Wizards, and most definitely Heavy Metal.
In it a mostly nude woman named Tzod (Lucy Lawless, Xena: Warrior Princess) has climbed to the top of a snowy mountain to a cave that sort of looks like Skeletor's Castle from the He-Man cartoons, inside she she encounters The Guardian (Richard Grant, Withnail & I) who holds vigil over an ancient magic. She tells him of how she was once a priestess, a queen who lead a group of primitive people that lived in the ancient warps of Bastahl. The story then reverts to a flashback to those times, centuries ago, Tzod wearing a scarf of blue flowers called The Bloom, an ancient flower with cosmic powers. A tyrant king Lord Pyrantin (comedian Patton Oswalt) whose lands border the swamp sends his soldiers, lead Mongrel (Joe Manganiello, True Blood), to massacre her people and bring the "swamp-witch" back in chains. Imprisoned she uses the Bloom's blue-flame magic to hideously burn the Lord, managing to escape with he help of a scholar Ghal-Sur (Jordan Douglas Smith), before being betrayed by him, with the scholar stealing her Bloom for his own corrupt purpose.
The story then switches to the continuing story of Ghal-Sur years later, he has used the power of the Bloom for evil, given unnaturally long life due to it's magic. He rules over the land with an iron fist, his soldiers marching across the lands and crushing resistance, until he is thwarted by a trio of winged assassins who dare stand up against his tyrannical sorcery. Later, the Guardian himself relays a story to Tzod of how the it was the Gods created man, and how man after being scorned by the Gods for so long eventually turned against them, and how that lead to the Bloom, with the story coming full circle with how he came to be The Guardian. The style of animation changes dramatically during The Guardian's tale, it's minimalist design is dramatic and stylized, I loved the psychedelic nature of it - I could have watched a whole film in this style.
The rotoscoped animation harkens back to the Bakshi films and the anthology film Heavy Metal, both of which are obvious influences on this film, and I say that with a lot of love. It took me right back to seeing those films back in the day, filling my mind with thoughts of mysticism, medieval brutality and cosmic horror. The rotoscoped animation style is a bit flat and doesn't have much dimension to it, but I got used to it pretty quickly and was just into it from that point on. The backgrounds looks amazing, they're finely detailed and capture the epic dark fantasy of yore, and we also get some cool digital effects from time to time. It's got a bit of everything I love about this sort of dark fantasy, we get black magic, cosmic horror, buckets of blood, gore-galore, ancient evil, winged-assassins, and steampunk airships that drop fiery death from above. The brutality on display is sometimes overpowering, the iron medieval weaponry severing limbs, decapitating, and gruesomely bifurcating with blood all over the place, it's quite a gore-hound treat. The Spine of Night is a love-letter to the dark fantasy films we grew up on, it's the sort of thing we all imagined when we were playing sword & sorcery games in the backyard with wooden sticks with our friends, and that's just so cool to me, these guys knocked it out of the park.
Audio/Video: The Spine of Night (2021) arrives on region-free Blu-ray from Acorn Media International in 1080p HD widescreen (1.78:1) slightly cropped from the original 1.85:1. Colors looks fantastic, bold and well-saturated, the slightly muted colors enhancing moments of vivid blue and blood-reds that emerge. The rotoscope animation is a bit on the flat side, there's no depth to them, but they loos great against the oftentimes intricately made backgrounds. Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with optional English subtitles, the voice-cast sounds terrific and the scope of the sound field is at times impressively dynamic, nicely capturing the fantasy elements as well as the fantastic score from Peter Scartabello (Bunnyman).
Extras start of with the 30-min The Making of The Spine of Night that gives a nicely in-depth look at the making of the independent animated film, which was a seven-year ;abor of love. We get some nice backstory about fantasy super-nerds writer/director Philip Gelattand Morgan Galen King, their love of fantasy films, how the film was shot in an old mill that doubled as their live-action studio. This includes loads of cool behind-the-scenes shots of the live-action being films, the rotoscoping process, character designs, footage from earlier short films, and loads more. It really gives you the sense of community that went into making this and the passions behind it. We also get two earlier short films, Exordium (2013) and Mongrel (2012), which feature characters and concepts from the main feature. The single-disc release arrives in an oversized keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork.
Special Features:
- The Making of The Spine of Night (30 min)
- Short Films: Mongrel (2012) (3 min) & Exordium (8 min) 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1), DTS-HD MA 2.0
- Trailers: Psycho Goreman (2 min), Archenemy (2 min), Mandy (2 min)
Screenshots from the Acorn Media International Blu-ray:
Extras:
