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.  

MINDWARP (1992) & BRAINSCAN SCI-FI DOUBLE FEATURE (Mill Creek Blu-ray Review)

MINDWARP (1992) & BRAINSCAN 

SCI-FI DOUBLE FEATURE 

MINDWARP (1992)
Label: Mill Creek Entertainment 
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 96 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: Steve Barnett
Cast: Bruce Campbell, Angus Scrimm, Elizabeth Kent

In the year 2037 Earth is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, nuclear war has erased the ozone layer and the few surviving members of humanity are split into three distinct groups. In an area known as the Death Zone we have the cannibalistic mutants known as Crawlers, then we have the non-mutated humans survivors known as Outworlders who survive on a diet of small animals and evade the menace of the Crawlers. The third group are privileged non-mutated humans living in protected biosphere-styled cities known as the Dreamers who spend most of their life plugged into a virtual reality simulator known as Infinisynth. It's here we meet a young woman named Judy (Marta Martin) who is unsatisfied with her virtual plugged-in life. She craves a more meaningful connection to her mother who is only too happy to live out her opera-singer fantasies inside the Infinisynth system. This virtual reality aspect the film had a strong flavor of Total Recall (1990), it's fun stuff and predicted the family disconnect of the digital age where everyone is plugged into their mobile devices, gaming systems or blogging about obscure b-movies (wink wink). Infinisynth is a pleasant enough distraction from reality, everyone else seems content to drink their green-slime protein shakes and immerse themselves in the artificial reality of it, everyone that is except for Judy. 

When Judy's mom refuses to unplug from Infinisynth the young woman infiltrates her mother's virtual dream in an attempt to wake her up with disastrous consequences, her actions anger the mysterious System operator who operates Infinisynth, resulting in Judy being exiled from the safety of the city into the radioactive wastelands where she wakes up in a shallow grave. Digging herself out she discovers a macabre collection of crucified skeletons and is soon set upon by the cannibalistic Crawlers, only to be saved by an crossbow-wielding Outworlder named Stover (Bruce Campbell, Evil Dead) who gets the better of the puss-faced mutants. After being rescued Stover shows Judy the way of the wastelands, with the pair hooking-up before being captured by more Crawlers. They're taken to an underground lair where they meet the Crawler's cult leader, a human-skin mask wearing weirdo named The Seer (Angus Scrimm, Phantasm) who plans to breed a new race of Crawlers with Judy, yikes.

Mindwarp was the first of a trio of films Fangoria magazine funded in the early 1990's, it's no great shakes but I think any Evil Dead fans out there are certainly gonna wanna check this out if just for Campbell's participation. It's definitely a more subdued performance than were used to seeing from him, no fast-talking quips or one-liners, he plays it very straight-faced. Marta Martin as our heroine Judy is alright, am attractive presence but she sort of falls into the shadow of Bruce Campbell and Angus Scrimm. the latter of whom is a very creepy presence as the priest-like leader of the Crawlers, with his dead-skin mask. 

The film is certainly no lost horror classic but it's an entertaining post-apocalyptic watch with some good gore and bloodletting throughout from the KNB FX Group. For a low-budget slice of horror we also get some fun set pieces and ideas, inside the Crawler lair there's a gnarly human meat-grinder, victims go in one end a syrupy red liquid comes out the other, and the Crawler's just love to drink up this grue. There are also mind altering leeches which Stover falls victim to only to vomit them up later, sort of channeling Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, The flick has some very fun moments of gore and bloodletting, while not a classic it's at least an interesting footnote of early 90's horror, and the participation of of Bruce Campbell and Angus Scrimm makes this well-worth seeking out.

BRAINSCAN (1994) 
Region Code: A 
Rating: R
Duration: 96 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Stereo with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 
Director: John Flynn
Cast: Edward Furlong, T. Ryder Smith, Frank Langella, Jamie Marsh, Amy Hargreaves 

Brainscan (1994) is not a film I liked all that much when I saw it in the 90's at a strange lodge that the airline put us up in after a flight was cancelled due to a severe snowstorm. The wood paneled lodge  sort of reminded be of The Great Northern Hotel from Twin Peaks, the walls lined with mounted heads of deer, but they're kitchen made a tasty burger, which I sat and ate while cruising the free premium cable channels available in my room, which is where I stumbled upon Brainscan. The sci-fi horror film is a bit of a creepy murder-mystery that incorporates horror gaming into it by way of a CD-ROM (a what?) video game called Brainscan. I'm of the opinion that these techno-thrillers from the nineties rarely hold up in my opinion, but they're usually fun on a cheese-factor level at least. The main guy here is a lonely horror-obsessed teen named Michael (Edward Furlong, Terminator 2) who when he was younger was involved in a horrific car accident that left him with a gimpy knee and took the life of his mother, which we see during a nightmare scene at the start of the film. He is left alone at his suburban home by a father who is completely absent from the film aside from a phone call, and at school he's a misfit with only one friend, the like-minded Kyle (Jamie Marsh) who shares his love of gore films and scary video games.

When Michael reads about the newest horror video game in the pages of Fangoria he orders the game and when the disc arrives in the mail he pops it in the virtual reality game. The game appears to connect straight to your synapse via a series of lights and sounds emitted from the video screen, it's a strange bit of sci-fi, though not as far-fetched as the gaming/stereo/TV/computer set-up this kid has in his room, it's incredibly elaborate and expensive looking set-up, and not something I think could have even existed in '95. The gaming experience however is awesome, Michael is overwhelmed by how realistic the game looks and feels, the voice of a devilish character named the Trickster instructs him to enter the home of a stranger and to stab him death, which he does, then telling him to take a souvenir from the crime scene, to which end he hacks off the victim's foot. He awakens from the simulation convinced this is the most realistic and violent video game he has ever played, but his elation is short-lived when the local news reports on a murder in his neighborhood, recognizing the crime scene as the very same place he committed the murder in the game! 

The previously unseen Trickster (T. Ryder Smith) then emerges from the TV into reality in a way that brought to mind an iconic scene from David Cronenberg's Videodrome, the villainous character resembling a vamped-up rock star, not unlike Sami Curr from Trick Or Treat (1986), who encourages the reluctant Michael to continue the game or face real-life consequences, which eventually results in Michael killing his best friend Kyle.

While all this weirdness is happening we discover that Michael has a crush on the girl next door, Kimberly (Amy Hargreaves, Blue Ruin), it's a bit of creepy, stalker-ish sort of crush as he videotapes her through her bedroom window. Meanwhile Det. Hayden (Frank Langella, Dracula) is the cop investigating the spate of murders, he starts to put the pieces together and Michael fast becomes the prime suspect. As the film plays out Michael is coerced into more deadly-gaming by the Trickster with the detective closing in on him. 

Brainscan clearly was pushing hard to create a franchise horror villain with the Trickster, trying to tap into the lucrative teen horror market, despite having a R-rating, by mixing in youth culture elements like gaming and horror, you know, for the kids. Despite this the character of Trickster is pretty cool, but Edward Furlong is his usual whiny self, he was just an annoying kid actor, and if you've read any of the interviews with the director of this flick he felt the same way about him. 

The special effects are a mix of practical and early digital, the practical stuff is good, but the digital stuff mostly doesn't hold-up. The Videodrome-esque introduction of the Trickster is pretty cool but other stuff shows the limitation of early digital FX, the same sort of stuff that has hamstring techno-horror like The Lawnmower Man from the same era. What does hold up is the make-up effects from Steve Johnston and crew did for Trickster, underneath that make-up T. Ryder Smith does a great job, wryly cracking a few jokes and generally being a fun villainous character, even if it feels like Freddy Kruger-lite, he's still a charming demonic figure.

Poor Frank Langella doesn't have a whole lot to do here, his cop character is largely underplayed, riffing with his partner at times, having some interaction with the gamer-kid, but it's a thankless role without much to chew on. I did like Amy Hargreaves as the girl-next-door, she seemed like a real sweetie, but Jamie Marsh is absolutely annoying as the stereotypically dippy horror/metal fan, which as a metal-fan from way back I found insulting.

While Brainscan (1994) is not some lost gem of 90's horror it is a movie that has grown on me a tiny little bit with time. Watching it now it's a bit of 976-EVIL by way of Trick Or Treat, better than the former and not as fun as the latter, replacing the satanic rocker and metal music with the Kruger-lite Trickster and a horror themed CD-ROM game. No, it's not essential 90's horror but I found it entertaining in a dated sort of way, I definitely took more of a shine to this time and think there's fun to be had here for others as well, but don't expect some great re-discovery, just a goofy good time.

Audio/Video: Both of these films have been issues previously on Blu-ray, Mindwarp received a limited edition Blu-ray in 2013 from Twilight Time and Brainscan got an extras-laden Blu-ray from Scream Factory just last year. Both films arrive on a single-disc Blu-ray from Mill Creek Entertainment framed in 1.85:1 widescreen. To my eyes both looked be sourced from the same HD masters provided to both SF and TT by rights holder Sony, but Brainscan looks to be cropped to 185:1 as where Scream Factory presented the film in 1.78:1, so it loses a sliver of information on the top and bottom. Otherwise grain levels, color saturation and density look identical.

Audio on both disc comes by way of an English DTS-HD MA 2.0 with optional English subtitles.  Brainscan has the more impressive audio of pair, highlighting the George S. Clinton (Cheech & Chong's Still Smokin') score sound good, plus we get good 90's tuneage from the Butthole Surfers, Primus, White Zombie and Tad among others. 

No extras on this release whatsoever, just the option to choose the movie and subtitles. If you're looking for bonus content I say go with the SF and TT Blu-ray releases, but know that they'll set you back $20-40 each. However, if you're fine with just picking up the films sans any extras this double-feature from MCE can be had for $12 right now and has comparable A/V presentations, making this a great way to check out these early 90's sci-fi horrors. 

MINDWARP SCREENSHOTS 

BRAINSCAN SCREENSHOTS