CONEHEADS (1993) (Umbrella Entertainment Blu-ray Review)

CONEHEADS (1993) 

Label: Umbrella Entertainment
Region Code: Region-FREE
Rating: PG
Duration: 86 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.77:1) 
Director: Steve Barron
Cast: Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Michelle Burke, Michael McKean, David Spade, Chris Farley, Sinbad, Michael Richards, Eddie Griffin, Phil Hartman, Adam Sandler, Jason Alexander, Dave Thomas, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris, Drew Carey, Kevin Nealon, Jan Hooks, Parker Posey, Joey Lauren Adams, Julia Sweeney, Ellen DeGeneres, Tim Meadows, Jon Lovitz, Tom Arnold

Sci-fi comedy Coneheads (1993) is based on a vintage Saturday Night Live comedy sketche that originally aired  back '77, this film saw the return of SNL-alum Dan Aykroyd (The Great Outdoors)and Jane Curtain (TV's 3rd Rock from the Sun) reprising the quirky characters they created, the bullet-headed aliens Beldar and his wife Prymaat. The aliens arrive to conquer the Earth in preparation of an imminent invasion from their home planet of Remulak, at the behest of their  supreme leader, Highmaster Mintot (Dave Thomas, Strange Brew). Soon after arriving the would-be conquers hit a bit of trouble when their spacecraft takes a direct hit from an National Guard jet fighter, resulting in them ditching their damaged ship in the East River in Manhattan. Finding themselves stranded with no way of communicating with their planet they set-up human identities, taking the on-the-nose surname of Conehead, and settling in Pyramus, N.J. where they integrate themselves into the local community, where no one seems to take notice of their pointy skulls or eccentric mannerisms.

Eventually they manage to build a device that enables them to phone home, discovering that they will be stranded on earth for several more years before a rescue ship can be dispatched to this corner of the galaxy to fetch them. In the ensuing years the couple give birth to a child named Connie (Michelle Burke, Dazed and Confused) who grows into a semi-normal if somewhat rebellious American teen. Things seem to be going well for the alien family all things considered until they end up being pursued by an overly-ambitious INS agent, Deputy Commissioner Gorman Seedling (Michael McKean, This Is Spinal Tap), and his sycophant assistant Agent Eli Turnbull (David Spade, Black Sheep), who are determined to deport the aliens back to where they came from.

Eventually the Remulaks arrive to rescue the Coneheads, just as they are about to be apprehended by INS, returning the Coneheads, along with INS agents Seedling and Turnbull, to their home-world. On Remulak Beldar is punished for his failure on Earth, having to battle a beastly creature in an arena, gladiator-style, which definitely brought to mind the Rancor scene from The Return of the Jedi (1983).

Most of the SNL-sketches that have been turned into feature-length films are mighty awful in my opinion, and if you had told me back in '93 when I caught this gem in the cinema that it would turn out to be one of the better of the bunch I surely would have scoffed incredulously at you. I liked the film back when I first saw it, and it's only gotten better, this thing is a blast, with credit going to both Jane Curtain and Dan Aykroyd for their portrayals of the mega-domed aliens, they're so delightfully quirky with their strange movements and their stilted overly-descriptive way they speaking, which I would credit to Aykroyd who co-wrote the script. 

The film is stuffed with situational hijinks and sight gags that give the film a vignette-style with the INS agents coming off as buffoonish careerists, plus we get a blossoming romance between Connie and horny teenager Ronnie Bradford, played by the late comedy legend Chris Farley (Black Sheep), but we do get a good bit of world building by way of some impressive alien-world stuff that happens in the third act of the film that in hindsight is fairly impressive considering the overall silliness of it.

The film is peppered with a bunch of fun cameos, a veritable who's-who of  SNL-alum including the late Phil Hartman (TV's News Radio), Adam Sandler (Punch Drunk Love), Laraine Newman (Witchboard 2: The Devil's Doorway), Garrett Morris (The Stuff), Kevin Nealon (Grandma's Boy), Jan Hooks (Batman Returns), Julia Sweeney (Stuart Little), Tim Meadows (The Ladies Man), and Jon Lovitz (Rat Race), plus early film roles for Parker Posey (Dazed & Confused), Joey Lauren Adams (Chasing Amy), Sinbad (Jingle All the Way) Ellen DeGeneres (TV's Ellen), Drew Carey, and Seinfeld's Michael Richardson and Jason Alexander. If you love spotting fun cameos this film is absolutely lousy with them! 

Coneheads is a nineties comedy that I that has aged quite well all things considered, not having revisited it in a few years I was pleasantly surprised how much I loved it, it's not quite on par with SNL spin-off The Blues Brothers (1980) but on a personal level I would easily put it well above Wayne's World (1992).   

Audio/Video: Coneheads (1993) arrives on region-free Blu-ray from Umbrella Entertainment in 1080p HD framed in 1.77:1 widescreen. The HD image looks solid, colors are nicely saturated, skin tones look natural, and black levels are pleasing. However, it looks like an older existing HD scan, the grain is a bit thick and clumpy looking in areas, it's not as finely resolved as a new scan would have afforded, but still a worthy upgrade over the nearly 20 year-old DVD from Paramount. 

The English DTS-HD MA 5.1 on the disc offers crisp and clean dialogue reproduction with no issues with hiss or distortion, but it's not the most surround active mix. The David Newman (Heathers) score benefits the most, from the lossless surround mix but we do get some decent stereo panning effects throughout, there are no subtitles on this release. 

Unfortunately we get no extras for Coneheads, this is a bare-bones affair, no even start-up menu. I am holding out hope that someone like Shout! Factory might pick this up for a U.S. release and offer a few extras for it, but for now this Umbrella release is the only hi-def game in town. 

The single-disc Blu-ray comes housed in an over-sized keepcase with a sleeve of reversible artwork featuring the original movie poster artwork, the reverse side features the same artwork without the the unsightly rating label, with the disc featuring the same key art as the sleeve. Notably, this is labeled as a region B-locked, but it played just fine on my region A player, making this an attractive proposition for fans in North America where we still have no Blu-ray release.  

Coneheads (1993) was not a film that was loved when it first arrived in cinema, but it definitely went on to develop a healthy cult-following in the years since, and for good reason, glad to see it finally get a region-free Blu-ray release, even if it is bare-bones. 

MORE SCREENSHOTS FROM THE BLU-RAY 

SHAKES THE CLOWN (1991) (Mill Creek Blu-ray Review)

SHAKES THE CLOWN (1991)

Label: Mill Creek Entertainment 
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 87 Minutes 
Audio: English LPCM 2.0 Stereo with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1) 
Director: Bobcat Goldthwait
Cast: Bobcat Goldthwait, Julie Brown, Kathy Griffin, Paul Dooley, Adam Sandler, Robin Williams, Sydney Lassick, LaWanda Page, Tim Kazurinsky 

Shakes The Clown (1991), written, directed and starring Bobcat Goldthwait exploits of an alcoholic clown named Shakes (Goldthwait), which is an appropriate name for a  beer-soaked clown, right? The film opens with him waking up the morning after a one-night stand with a clown groupie (played by Florence Henderson, TV's Brady Bunch), he's passed out on the floor in front of the toilet when the woman's kid takes a leak, missing the bowl, and pissing straight onto Shakes head, waking him from his drunken slumber. This sad scene pretty much sets the pace and tone for the movie, the down and out life of a burned-out clown with a taste for booze. His long suffering, an amusingly lispy, girlfriend Judy (Julie Brown, Bloody Birthday) has had just about enough of his boozing a cheating ways, bolstered by her girlfriend, played by comedienne Kathy Griffin (Pulp Fiction), who insists Judy needs to dump his drunk clown-faced ass. 

It's not just his personal life that's suffering because of his chronic drinking, his clown-career suffers, too, when his agent Mr. Cheese (Paul Dooley, Sixteen Candles) finds it hard to book him new gigs at kids parties, because he rummages through their parent's cupboards looking for liquor. He has a pair of friends, Dink, played by Adam Sandler (The Wedding Singer)in his first movie role, and Stenchy, played by Blake Clark (the voice of slinky the dog in the Toy Story films) who join him on his adventures around Palukaville, USA. 

Shakes is up for the job as the host of a kiddie TV show, as the current host Peppy the Clown (Sydney Lassick, The Unseen) is retiring, but his rival Binky (a pre-Spongebob Squarepants Tom Kenny) is also up for the role, and Tom Kenny steals every scene he's in as the coke-snorting, ball-punching evil clown of the movie, his voice is instantly recognizable. The main gist of the movie involves Shakes being framed for the murder of his agent Mr. Cheese, by Binky, and there's not a whole lot more to it than that. The movie is simplistic but good, sarcastic fun, and I dig the way the characters don't really acknowledge that their in clown make-up, it's just their way of life. The clowns also have rivalries with mimes, and rodeo clowns, so we have a Warriors type gang thing going on in the background, and sometimes in the fore.  

The movie is loaded with cameos, aside from everyone I've already mentioned we have the late-great Robin Williams (World's Greatest Dad) as a mime instructor, and LaWanda Page (Mausoleum) as a foul-mouthed barfly clown, cracking dirty jokes, like this little nugget, "I got one of them peanut butter pussies: it's brown, smooth and easy to spread". My second favorite quote is Dooley as Mr. Cheese who walks in on Binky and friends snorting lines of coke, screaming "You clowns are on dope!", good stuff. The movie lags a bit from time to time, it can be slow, but it's just so demented and sarcastic, it just makes me laugh. I often hear this compared to Bad Santa and in tone that's not too far off the mark.  

Audio/Video: Shakes the Clown (1991) arrives on Blu-ray from Mill Creek Entertainment in 1080p HD, framed in 1.78:1 widescreen - looking solid but not perfect. There's a nice looking grain field, but at times it looks noisy in certain scenes, blacks aren't the deepest, but colors look nicely bright and saturated, the clown make-up and costumes look great in HD. There's not a lot of depth but the clarity is nice and the fine detail is plentiful. Audio wise we get an uncompressed English LPCM 2.0 stereo track, it does the job, well-balanced and clean, dialogue is crisp, and the tasty music cues from Muddy Waters, NRBQ, and composer Thomas Wright Scott (of The Blues Brothers) sounds very good. Optional English subtitles are provided. 

There's only one extras but as Mill Creek are not known for having new extras in their releases it's worth pointing out, we have a brand new audio commentary with Bobcat Goldthwait, Julie Brown, and Tom Kenny, which is a lot of fun. The trio reminisce about the making of the movie, working with the various cast, with Bobcat speaking about working with the Brady Bunch's Florence Henderson, who was apparently fond of blue humor, chitlin circuit comedienne LaWanda Page, Adam Sandler in in his first role, and the fallout Bobcat received from clowns following the scathing film, which he says was more an indictment of stand-up comics at the time, also pointing out that Milton Berle does not actually appear in one of the opening scenes, despite the familiar face, it's actually his friend Martin Charles Warner. It's a fun track and fans of the film should have a blast joining the trio for their memories about making the movie. 

This release comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a one-sided sleeve of artwork, pretty standard release from Mill Creek, but this time around they go a step beyond and offer up an O-ring (slipcase) with pretty much the same artwork but with a white background instead of yellow. That they've also included a new audio commentary with stars Bobcat Goldthwait, Julie Brown, and Tom Kenny is something special. Mill Creek have a vast and varied catalog of titles, everything from b-movie schlock to Hollywood blockbusters, I would absolutely love to see them go above and beyond and actually create and/or license new extras for their genre titles, it really does make them more desirable. They've also announced their first Steelbook with the upcoming Blu-ray release of 90's supernatural thriller Flatliners (1990)- keep it up Mill Creek!   

Special Features: 
- New Audio Commentary with Bobcat Goldthwait, Julie Brown, and Tom Kenny.

Shakes the Clown (1991) gets  fun Blu-ray release from Mill Creek, I am pleased they sprung for the commentary track and the slipcase, otherwise it's bare-bones, but hopefully they're starting off small and we see more newly-produced extras from them in the future. This is a fun, sarcastic, drunk-clown movie, and one deserving of some space in your movie collection, if you enjoy the other movies that Bobcat directed, or Bad Santa, there's a good chance you're gonna love this slice of black humored clown comedy.