PET SEMATARY TWO (1992) (Scream Factory Blu-ray Review)

PET SEMATARY TWO (1992)
Collector's Edition  

Label: Scream Factory
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 100 Minutes 
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 & 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)  
Director: Mary Lambert
Cast: Edward Furlong, Anthony Edwards, Clancy Brown, Jared Rushton

While visiting his b-movie scream-queen mom (Darlanne Fluegel, Slaughter of the Innocents) on the set of her latest movie  young Jeff (Edward Furlong, T2: Judgment Day) witnesses her horrific death by electrocution. In the aftermath Jeff and his veterinarian father Chase (Anthony Edwards, Revenge of the Nerds) move back to her hometown of Ludlow, Maine to deal with their grief, with Chase opening a veterinarian clinic. 

They soon meet the town's sheriff Gus (Clancy Brown, Highlander) and his stepson Drew (Jason McGuire) along with their dog Zowie, who they bring into the clinic when Gus's rabbits bite it on the nose. In a creepy move Gus makes sure to mention that he and Jeff's now-dead mom were quite an item back in highschool, "the whole nine yards". 

At school Jeff becomes the target of bullies lead by Clyde (Jared Rushton, Big), which he kind of asks for when he brings a kitten to school with him, leading to them running off with the cart. After that altercation he becomes friends with Drew, and we learn that Drew's stepdad Gus is a real piece of shit, bullying  the kid at home about his weight and being overly strict, going so far as to shoot his dog Zowie when she yet again gets into the rabbit kennel.

This is when the familiar nightmare of Pet Sematary begins, with Drew convincing Jeff to accompany him to the forbidden native american burial ground, and just like Church the cat in the first film, Zowie returns the next day with a mean disposition. They take the re-animated dog to see Chase at the clinic to stitch-up the open wound left by the gunshot, but he's a bit confused as the dog has no heartbeat but is somehow still alive, actually he doesn't seem all that surprised strangely. 

Gus's continued torment of Drew results in Zowie ripping out his throat at the cemetery, killing him, so Drew and Jeff, as teens not wanting to get into trouble, take him to the Indian burial ground, and he returns changed, but in a strange twist is seemingly less mean than before he died in some regards, and more volatile in others. This changed Gus ends up saving Jeff from a beating at the hands  of the bully but he then kill's Clyde by destroying the teen's face with the revved-up back wheel of a motorcycle, a kill which happily brought to mind 80's slasher Happy Birthday To Me (1981), but with more gore, complete with the victim's scarf being sucked into the running wheel! 

As where the first film had a lot of atmosphere and dread about it, this sequel does not, perhaps owing a bit to the fact that it was shot in Georgia and not in Maine, though they try hard to make you think it's the same place, there's even a mailbox on the side of the road with the name "Creed" on it, there's something about it that fails to conjure the same sense of eeriness. I will say that they do good work replicating the look of the pet sematary and the native american burial ground, though inexplicably missing is the ever-present danger of speeding semi-trucks that plagues the family in the first film. 

The film thinly recycles a lot of the elements of the previous film but adds a weird music video aesthetic, especially the heavily filtered nightmare sequences, that fail to capture the potential for dread and atmosphere, instead it seems content just to make things stranger, and strange it is. Clancy Brown is delightfully chewing up the scenery as the re-animated Gus, cracking awful puns with a thick, not-very-good, Maine accent, being mean for the sake of being mean, cracking jokes about digging up the corpse of Jeff's mom to fuck her, when he's not actually raping Drew's mom. 

Edward Furlong was coming off the huge blockbuster success of T2 and is top-billed, but it's Drew that initiates the nightmare by resurrecting his dog, and then soon after his stepfather. It's not till much later that Furlong's character gets the idea that he can bring back his dead mother, but he seems more of a secondary character here than the star. Other than hysterically screaming "mom!" at the top of his lungs at the start of the film when his mom get's electro-fried he fades a bit into the background with a low-key performance, he's the least interesting character.

It's a bit odd to me that director Mary Lambert returned for the sequel yet it feels so tonally different to the previous film, it's just a weaker film overall, but it has a weird energy that I still can sink my teeth into. A lot of that is coming straight from the over-the-top turn from Clancy Brown who keeps things demented as the resurrected Gus, it's just too bad the rest of the film is not as interesting what he's doing, but that's also why I sort of love this film, it's wackiness amuses me, but it's still a pretty bad sequel, but at least it's an entertaining watch.       

Audio/Video: Pet Sematary Two (1991) arrives on Blu-ray from Scream Factory, licensed from Paramount, with a new 4K scan of the original camera negative framed in 1.85:1 widescreen in 1080p HD. The source is in fantastic shape with no blemishes whatsoever, with the grain structure being resolved naturally. The limited color palette is strong throughout with inky black levels and solid shadow detail. We also get natural looking skin tones of both of the natural and the re-animated variety, with good depth and clarity, offering some nice gruesome gore in the close-up shots of carnage. 

Audio on the disc comes by way of both English DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo and 5.1 surround with optional English subtitles. Dialogue is always direct and clean sounding with the Mark Governor (Mindwarp) score having good placement in the mix. The tasty grunge-era songs from L7, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Nymphs among others also has some nice power behind them. The 5.1 does a good job of spreading the atmospherics and some directional action into the surrounds, with the 2.0 having some effective panning stereo effects. 

Scream Factory, by way of Justin Beahm and Reverend Entertainment, pack-in the extras for this Collector's Edition, and this is the exactly the sort of bad film that makes me look forward to the extras, I always want to know more about WTF happened! The film get s a brand new commentary with Director Mary Lambert, which to be honest I have not gotten around to yet, but I am looking forward to checking it out soon. Interviews start-up with Edward Furlong who shows up for a 14-min chat clutching his cigarette lighter the whole time, discussing being cast in T2 at a Pasadena Boy's Club, and how his aunt and uncle worried it might be child porn! He also talks about learning to channel his real-life tensions through acting, his love of horror films and being excited to do Pet Sematary Two from the get-go. Says he was kind in awe of co-star Jared Rushton who had already co-starred in Big with Tom Hanks, and shooting in Georgia, which he says was a bit of a bore. There's also talk of working with the trained animal, and the gruesome special FX used on the film, as well as being asked to do some questionable fire stunt work and how much he hated the syrupy fake blood. 

My favorite element of the whole film is the demented performance from Clancy Brown, and thankfully he's interviewed for 21-min, speaking on how he got caught up in theater before landing an acting gig in Bad Boys, Extreme Prejudice and other early films. He a bit too kindly describes Pet Sematary Two as being way more self aware and subversive than it's predecessor, going as far to say it probably should have been titled something else, even though it has the same "gag" in it. Brown as usual is very candid about everything, laughing about the film and how fun his character was to play, saying he pushed the envelope and Mary Lambert never seemed to pull him back from that instinct so he went all out, even getting into his own backstory and rationalization he created for it. He then goes onto speak about working with the kids on the film, including Furlong, who he says he worried a bit about, but that he was a good kid on set and pulled through okay, and admiring what a classic beauty Lisa Waltz was. He finished up with a $1000 bet he made on this film doing better than Innocent Blood with make-up FX legend Steve Johnson, who worked on both films, and touching on a few of the FX shots - including the potato truck accident, before finishing up the interview by busting out his Mr. Krabs voice from Spongebob Squarepants for shits and giggles.
  

Jason McGuire shows up for 24-mins talking about his suburban middle class childhood, growing up in Georgia, his love of films, and his mom enrolling him in some acting classes, which lead to being cast in Pet Sematary Two. He gets into his experiences on set and working with Furlong and the rest of the cast including, including  Anthony 
Edwards, Lisa Waltz and Clancy Brown, the latter of whom introduced him to sushi, changing his life! McGuire touched on his favorite scene and working with the animals, and surreality of  his filming his death scene and his short-lived film career post PS2, with small roles in Forrest Gump and  Leap of Faith, before sputtering out after a growth spurt. It's an interesting interview from the perspective of a kid who didn't go onto do all that much, but who certainly looks back at the experience fondly and without any regret, noting that the film is a bit of a guilty pleasure looking back at it. 

Make-up FX guy Steve Johnson gets a 16-min interviews, opening up with the fact that Stephen King had dropped his name from the project early on. Ge recalls that the film was around the time that he was striking out on his own away from Richard Edlund and his crew, with this film along with Innocent Blood and Freaks coming at about the same time and how that was a bit of a strain, having to fly around the country to work on the project simultaneously. Of course he gets into the good stuff, the gore-gags in the film, speaking of how creating a full-on animatronic dog is actually difficult, because we are so familiar with the lovable furballs that it's hard to fake their movement convincingly. He gets into creating the exploding head and how they shot the motorcycle face-lift.   

Last up is composer Mark Governor who begins with his ear love of music, working for Roger Corman and learning many different trades with him, before eventually working with Lambert on Pet Sematary Two and how he created the grunge-tinged score, noting how fans continues interest in his score for the film lead to it being released. The last of the extras is a 2-min trailer for the film.

The single-disc release arrives in a standard keepcase with a dual-sided sleeve of artwork with the awful original artwork on the a-side and a much cooler new illustration from artist Laz Marquez on the flip featuring the re-animated dog in the film. This film has always had shit floating-heads artwork for both theatrical and home video, so it's nice to see it get an upgrade even if it makes it look like a were wold movie, and it's quite an improvement, the same new artwork is featured on the limited edition slipcover (O-card) and on the disc itself.  

Special Features:
- NEW 4K scan of the original camera negative approved by director Mary Lambert
- NEW Audio Commentary with director Mary Lambert
- NEW Young and Brooding - an interview with actor Edward Furlong (13 min) HD 
- NEW Playing Over the Top – an interview with actor Clancy Brown (21 min) HD
- NEW My First Film – an interview with actor Jason McGuire (21 min) HD
- NEW A Thousand Dollar Bet – an interview with special makeup effects creator Steve Johnson (16 min) HD 
- NEW Orchestrated Grunge – an interview with composer Mark Governor (29 min) HD 
- Theatrical Trailer (2 min)

Pet Sematary Two is a bit of a guilty pleasure, lacking the atmosphere of the original, but with plenty of cheesy music video strangeness that keeps it at least entertaining. It's Clancy Brown that brings it on home with his insane energy and over-the-top lunacy throughout, he keeps me coming back for more of this truly awful sequel year after year. Thankfully Scream Factory put together a great looking release with some quality extras that should appeal to both true fans or curious bad-movie rubberneckers, making this a desirable release for genre fans.  

THE BRIDE (1985) (Scream Factory Blu-ray Review)

THE BRIDE (1985) 

Label: Scream Factory
Region Code: A
Rating: PG-13
Duration: 118 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Stereo with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1)
Director: Franc Roddam
Cast: Sting, Beals, Geraldine Page, Clancy Brown, Anthony Higgins, David Rappaport

The Bride (1985) open up in a very Hammer horror sort of way with Baron Charles Frankenstein (Sting, Dune) in his castle tower lab on a dark and stormy night, he's mad at work creating a female counterpart for his first spare body parts creation, the Monster (Clancy Brown, Highlander). Colored liquids are bubbling around the lab, electricity is crackling in the air, there's a corpse wrapped in bandages suspended into the storm, you know, the usual Frankenstein stuff. With the crack of lighting the body comes to life and we're introduced to Eva (Jennifer Beals, Vampire's Kiss), Frankenstein's newest creation has none of the unsightly scars of predecessor, it seems that Dr. Frankenstein has learned a few new tricks since creating the original monster. However, when Eva's introduced to her intended mate she recoils in horror at his disfigured  visage, and then the  rejected monster goes into a rage and destroys the lab, setting it on fire with the roof collapsing. 

The resulting fire destroys the laboratory and kills Frankenstein's lab assistants, and in the aftermath the monster is incorrectly assumed dead as well. The doctor sets about teaching the gorgeous Eva how things work in proper English society, his goal is to mold her into the ultimate woman, man's equal in every way. Meanwhile the monster roams the countryside where he meets a kind dwarf named Rinaldo (David Rappaport, Time Bandits), after the monster saves the dwarf from bullying at the hands of mean-spirited children he gives the hulking man a proper name, Viktor, and begins to teach the simpleton the ways of the world in ways that Frankenstein never did. Together they travel to Budapest to join a travelling circus operated by crooked scumbag who would rather have the ignorant Viktor to himself without the watchful/protective eye of Rinaldo.

As the film plays out we follow Frankenstein's efforts to manicure his latest creation, refining her manors and introducing her to polite society, with a few missteps along the way, like when she screams in fright at a cat during a social function, believing it to be a little lion! Her introduction into public society almost immediately puts her in the sights of Captain Josef Schoden (Cary Elwes, The Princess Bride), an arrogant Lothario who has designs on relieving her of her innocence, igniting her passions and skewing the relationship with Frankenstein who begins to turn creepy towards his creation. 

Meanwhile Viktor is growing emotionally, with the help of Rinaldo he becomes a functional person, earning a living at the circus and developing a deep friendship with his pint-sized mentor, humorously drinking beer (and nursing a hangover) for the first time, even developing his comic timing as part of Rinaldo's trapeze act. Clancy Brown is wonderful underneath all the make-up and prosthetics, he gets across the stilted emotion of the character, he gets to the heart of the Frankenstein creature, in a lot of ways this is my favorite non-Karloff version of Frankenstein' Monster, very few films outside the original Frankenstein have made me care about the creature or given him pathos, this movie did that for me. It also helps that Rappaport is so damn charming as the diminutive Rinaldo, offering humor and depth in equal amounts, genuinely caring for his new friend, they watch out for one another, until tragedy and betrayal tear them apart. 

I thought Sting was pretty good as Dr. Frankenstein, he has the proper English coldness the character requires, the hubris you'd expect of a mad doctor, it's all there. The only real oddball element for me is Jennifer Beals as Eva, the proverbial bride of this piece. Sting is good in the role but the chemistry between them is off, it pales to that of Brown and Rappaport on-screen. You have Sting's mad doctor playing God, but he gets angry when his child rebels against him, there should be some alchemy there, but at times they feel worlds apart when they're in the same scene together. There's no denying that Beale has plenty of physical allure and charm, a surprising amount of it on display for a PG-13 film, she's a gorgeous lady, but she feels miscast as the bride. 

This is a film that I have not watched since I was a kid watching it on WPIX when I lived in New York, thirty years later there was a lot I'd forgotten about the film. For starters the underdeveloped psychic connection between Viktor and Eva, it's so undeveloped it's no wonder I'd forgotten about it, it's barely there. Then the film wraps up like the director's mom walked into the room and caught him wanking his rod, it just closes up shop and rolls credits way too fast, it's sort of stunning. I cannot say this is a high recommendation, but it's an interesting update of The Bride of Frankenstein, just nowhere near the same league as the original, but far from the worst Frankenstein adaptation I've ever seen, Clancy Brown and David Rappaport together make this worth a watch. 

Audio/Video: The Bride (1985) arrives on Blu-ray from Scream Factory with a solid looking presentation, presented in 1080p HD 1.78:1 widescreen the image has a nice sheen of grain, blacks are deep and inky and skin tones look natural within the confines of the lighting of the film. The image is often bathed in  blue and purple lighting, the fine detail really comes through and shows off some of the period detail and decor, this is a great looking release. Audio comes by way of an English DTS-HD MA audio with optional English subtitles. Dialogue is always crisp and well defines, the score from composer Maurice Jame (Dreamscape) has some nice presence in the mix too. 

Onto the extras we get a some great new extras beginning with a commentary with Director Franc Roddam, plus we get a half-hour interview with him as well. The real good stuff though is a 2-part interview with Clancy Brown who plays the monster, he speaks about getting the role, the extensive make-up work, working with David Rappaport in addition to sting, detailing how the extensive time in the make-up chair detracted from some quality rehearsal time, leading to some stunted action-sequences and Sting injuring himself slightly on set. It's a great interview with Clancy going deep with his recollection of the film, including the character's motivations and his opinion on the film, this 40-min interview is worth the price of admission alone.

The single-disc release comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a 2-sided sleeve of artwork, the a-side is the original movie poster and the b-side features not a reversible artwork option but an image from the film.  The disc itself features an excerpt of the same key artwork.  

Special Features: 
- NEW Audio Commentary With Director Franc Roddam
- NEW Interview With Director Franc Roddam (22 min) 
- NEW Interview With Actor Clancy Brown Pt. 1 (22 min) 
- NEW Interview With Actor Clancy Brown Pt. 2 (18 min) 
- TV Spot (1 min)

The Bride (1985) is an interesting variation of The Bride of Frankenstein, if you're down for something different but not necessarily classic this is a decent watch, aside from some poor chemistry and the dismally rushed conclusion. The Scream Factory Blu-ray looks and sounds absolutely fantastic, and the new extras are solid, if you're a fan of the film or just of Clancy Brown in general I'd say this is a must-buy for the A/V and extras. For all others it's probably not an essential purchase, but if you're curious it helps that this is a technically solid release.