THE DARK HALF (1993) (Eureka Region B Blu-ray Review)

THE DARK HALF (1993)

Label: Eureka Entertainment

Region Code: B

Rating: Cert. 18

Duration: 121 Minutes

Audio: English LPCM 2.0 Stereo and DTS-HD MA 5.1 with Optional English subtitles 

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)

Director: George A. Romero

Cast: Timothy Hutton, Amy Madigan, Michael Rooker, Royal Dano

Directed by George A. Romero (Day of the Dead) and adapted from the Stephen King (Maximum Overdrive) novel The Dark Half (1993) opens with a young kid named Thaddeus Beaumont suffering from intense migraines and blackouts, each attack strangely being preceded by the sounds of sparrows. His parents take him into be checked out and he's diagnosed with a brain tumor and undergoes an surgery to remove it. During the procedure the doctors discover a weird anomaly, it seems that the tumor is actually a malformed fetal twin that the boy's body has absorbed into itself! 

The film moves along several decades and the young boy has grown into the adult Beaumont (Timothy Hutton, Turk 182), a published author and college writing professor, penning a series of highfalutin novels that sell like shit, but he makes a decent living with a secret side gig as a trashy thriller writer under the pseudonym "George Stark". His career as a trashy crime writer is a well-kept secret, but that's all about to change when an unscrupulous blackmailer (Robert Joy, Land of the Dead) arrives threatening to expose the Stark pseudonym to the public. The author decides to get ahead of the blackmailer by revealing the secret himself in a magazine article complete with a series of photos of him burying the corpse of alter-ego author "George Stark". 

However, once the article is published people around him start showing up dead, beginning with the photographer who took the photos for the article, followed by his agent, editor and even the blackmailer. Sheriff Alan Pangborn (Michael Rooker, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer) who is investigating the murders soon sets his sights on the author, with all evidence seemingly pointing his direction, except he has a fairly tight alibi during one of the murders. Meanwhile the author begins to think that his literary alter-ego has somehow been made flesh, and is none-too-happy about being laid to rest. He's not wrong, George Stark has materialized in the flesh, also played by Hutton in a deliciously pulpy sort of way, a greasy-haired rockabilly looking weirdo who favors a straight-razor.

This is not a film that ranks very high for me among the filmography of director George A. Romero or author Stephen King, but it is a film that I do enjoy a bit, it's an interesting rumination on Stephen King's own alter-ego Richard Bachman, a pen name he wrote a handful of books under, which I found sort of fascinating, balancing a duality, while also examining the struggle of art versus commerce, it has some great ideas floating around even if I think they're not explored or executed to a degree that was wholly satisfying. 

There's also cool supernatural elements to it that I enjoyed, particularly the idea that if Beaumont stops writing as his alter-ego the newly made flesh version of that alter-ego begins to rot, which is motive for his killings, he's after the people who literally threaten his very existence. 

It's not a perfect film my any stretch of the imagination but I dig the ideas found here and I think Timothy Hutton is fantastic in the dual-role, though if you watch the extras on this disc you will learn that very few people seemed to enjoy his method style of acting on the film while making it, but I dig the end results of his labors, even when it goes a bit off the rails.   

Audio/Video: The Dark Half (1993) arrives on Region B-locked Blu-ray from Eureka 

Entertainment in 1080p HD framed in 1.85:1 widescreen. This is the same dated HD master that was used by Scream Factory for their 2014 Blu-ray, so don't expect an A/V upgrade. The image definitely looks like it's coming from an older master, grain is not resolved all that finely, colors are a bit muted, and the darker scenes are heavy with grain. Overall it just looks dated, lacking the depth and clarity that a new 2K or 4K scan would have brought to the proceedings, but it's serviceable, just not ideal, and definitely not an upgrade over the existing Scream factory release.  

Audio on the disc come by way of English LPCM 2.0 and a DTS-HD MA 5.1 with Optional English subtitles. Both tracks are clean and free of distortion, with the dialogue and effects being well-balanced, the score from Christopher Young (Drag Me To Hell) sounding great.  

Eureka have done something here I really appreciate, they've licensed all the previously existing extras from the Scream Factory release including the Red shirt Pictures produced 'The Sparrows Are Flying Again!', a 37-min making-of retrospective with the late George A. Romero, special make-up FX creators Everett Burrell and John Vulich, visual FX supervisor Kevin Kutchaver, actor Robert Joy, editor Pasquale Buba. It's a great trip down memory lane with the gang, notably missing is Hutton, but fear not, pretty much everyone has something to say about his acting method and on-set behavior! 

We also get the excellent audio commentary with George A. Romero, who gives a very candid account of the film, the studio troubles, and the period between the making of this film and Bruiser. There is also 7-min of deleted scenes, and a bunch of archival
behind-the-scenes extras that include storyboards, EPK interviews and a special FX featurette, and the archival stuff is buttoned-up with the theatrical trailer and TV spot for the film. 

Onto the new stuff we get a 40-min episode of the UK television show 'Son of the Incredibly Strange Film Show' with director George A. Romero from 1989, it's kind of a completest-only sort of think in my opinion, but it was cool, not exactly essential but the host seemed passionate about his love of Romero. For the purpose of this review I was only sent a "check disc" from Eureka without any packaging extras - first world problems I know - but the retail copies includes a sleeve of reversible artwork, collector's 
booklet with new writing on the film from Simon Ward, and a limited edition slipcover for the film.   

Special Features:
- Audio commentary with Writer/Director George A. Romero
-  Episode of 'Son of the Incredibly Strange Film Show' with director George A. Romero (1989) (40 min)
- The Sparrows Are Flying Again! The Making of ‘The Dark Half’ Retrospective with George A. Romero, special make-up FX creators Everett Burrell and John Vulich, visual FX supervisor Kevin Kutchaver, actor Robert Joy, editor Pasquale Buba & more! (36 min)
- Deleted Scenes (8 min)

- Special Effects Featurette (16 min).

On the Set Featurette (9 min).

- Storyboards (2 min)

- Original EPK (7 min)

- Interviews (7 min)

- Original Storyboards (2 min)
- TV spot (1 min)
- Original Theatrical Trailer (2 min)
- Reversible sleeve
- Limited Edition Collector’s booklet with writing on the film by Simon Ward
- Limited Edition O-card Slipcase

The Dark Half (1993) is notable because it's a team-up between a pair of horror titans, George A. Romero and Stephen King, and also in that it's a bit under appreciated in my opinion, but doesn't quite live up to the themes and ideas it floats. That said, it is an interesting, if not completely successful, thriller with a cool supernatural element that still brings a smile to my face, with a good bit of gruesome bird-carnage at the end that would have made Hitchcock giddy. 

CUJO (1983) (Eureka Limited Edition Blu-ray Review)

CUJO (1983)

 Limited Edition Box Set (4000 Units)

Label: Eureka Entertainment
Region Code: B
Rating: Cert. 18
Duration: 93 Minutes 
Audio: English LPCM Mono, DTS-HD MA 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 
Director: Lewis Teague
Cast: Dee Wallace, Daniel Hugh-Kelly, Danny Pinatauro, Christopher Stone, Ed Lauter 

I do not remember loving Cujo (1983) when I first saw it on a TV-edit broadcast presentation sometime in the 80's, but the story of an adulterous but loving mother and her young son trapped in a Ford Pinto whilst under attack from a rabid St. Bernard dog is solid stuff. The problem for me then was that there was so much slow-burning melodrama leading up to the frothy finale, but watching it now many years later the film has aged very well, my opinion is a bit kinder. Now older, but certainly none the wiser, I can appreciate the domestic turmoil of ad-exec Vic (Daniel Hugh-Kelly), and his adulterous wife Donna (Dee Wallace, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial), but then there's a subplot about a kids cereal account that the ad-exec husband is working on that goes nowhere and drags what could have been a slow-burn down to a sad-crawl. 

Though I will say that the idea of a kids cereal that due to a red-dye ingredient makes kids shit bright red stool is rather funny when you think about it, especially when coupled with an an equally unfortunate bit of ad campaign verbage. There's another subplot about an abused wife of a local mechanic winning the lottery and fleeing town, an arc with no payoff really, other than to reinforce the notion that there's no one to help this mother and child later on. 

The titular dog here starts off as a very family friendly sort of beast who one day while chasing a rabbit through the woods is bitten on the nose by a rabid bat, with the canine succumbing to the illness, driven mad  and killing his owner, who is the local mechanic in town, the one whose wife won the lottery and ran off earlier. 

Which brings us to the cheating mom's failing Ford Pinto with it's dashboard lit-up like a Christmas tree with red-warning lights, pulling up to the mechanics shop where the car conks out completely just as the rabid dog lays siege to the mother and child inside. This stuff is the saving grace of the film, somewhat erasing the slow threads of the first two-thirds of the film with the snarling, foaming-at-the-mouth dog attacking the car with a mighty fervor, trying to get in there and tear this mother and son up with it's gnashing teeth. Trapped in the car over the course of two days in the sweltering heat, the young boy and mother begin succumbing to heat exhaustion, with the increasingly desperate mom trying to fight back, ultimately having to face-off against the snot-eyed, rabid beast with a baseball bat in a last ditch effort to save her son who is on death's door.

The film is certainty flawed with random threads that go nowhere, slowing this things down to a crawl at times, but Dee Wallace turns in an electrifying performance as the terrorized mother who will do anything to save her young son, the same cannot be said for her affair with an ex played by her then husband Christopher Stone (The Howling), for a real-life couple they had zero chemistry together. The practical make-up effects used to give the dog it's bloodied, snot-eyed, and foamed-mouth rabid looks are still terrific looking, plus the animal trainers did great work bringing the usually lumbering St. Bernard breed into the realm of terror with a combination of trained dogs, a man in a suit, prosthetics and even a different breed of dog in a St. Bernard suit, to make this normally docile dog into a growling image terror.

Audio/Video: Cujo (1983) arrives on 2-disc region-B locked Blu-ray from Eureka Entertainment in 108op HD widescreen (1.85:1) looking good, though comparing it to the 2009 Liosngate Blu-ray release it does look to be the same transfer, this is not a new 2K scan of the elements. That said, the grain is well-managed for the most part, and colors are solid, but the film's dingy brown color range that doesn't really shine, but overall I still found it to be a pleasing watch in HD, it's just not dazzling the way a new scan would have allowed. Audio comes by way of of English LPCM Mono and DTS-HD MA 5.1 with optional English subtitles, dialogue is crisp and clear, with the wonderful score from Charles Bernstein (A Nightmare on Elm Street) springing to life in the mix. 

While the A/V presentation doesn't look to be a fresh scan Eureka really hot a home run with the extras here, packing in over seven hours worth of goodies to paw your way through, beginning with a brand new audio commentary from  super-fan Lee Gambin, author of 'Nope, Nothing Wrong Here: The Making of Cujo', a thorough and well-rounded exploration of the film and it's source novel. Notably Eureka do not carry-over the previous audio commentary with director Lewis Teague, so maybe hang onto those Blu-rays from Olive Films and Lionsgate for that specific extra. 

We also get a wealth of interviews, beginning with star Dee Wallace who shows up for a 40-min interview beginning with getting Cujo following the blockbuster success E.T., loving the role of a strong woman. Stating she did not read the novel and was not a fan of the original end for the young boy.  There's some conversation about the original director Peter Medak (The Changeling), and what it was like working with his replacement Lewis Teague (Cat's Eye), and also with her husband on the film. The star also speaks of how much of a toll the role was for her physically and emotionally. Wallace also speaks on the wardrobe and make-up FX, plus working with the trained dogs.

Composer Charles Bernstein gives a 35-min interview discussing his process creating the score, speaking of individual themes, describing the film as a "delicious film to score", and ending the interview by playing some of the Cujo theme at on piano at his home studio. 
   

Stuntman Gary Morgan speaks for 25-min about being a stuntman in the dog suit, he having appeared in quite a few films as an animal. Speaking about what it was like to be working in a suit, how it got old and smelly real fast, so much so that it had it's own room as no one wanted to store it in theirs. He speaks about how laid back the trained dogs were and what a challenge it was to get them appear to be viscous, using a "critter cage" to excite them, and how the rabid dog foam was actually egg whites, which the dogs would eat, and sharing some of his favorite memories from the shoot. 

Stunt woman Jean Coulter (Jaws 2) speaks about getting the role, working with director Lewis Teague and star Dee Wallace. Going into working with the dogs, saying they mostly worked with one main dog, and how one was particularly mean. The most horrific story is of how playing with the dog nearly resulted in her losing her nose, which was left hanging by a thread of skin, and how doctor's were able to reattach it! She gives a lot of credit to stuntman Gary Morgan who was working in the dog suit, and talking about some other film gigs where director's had crazy demands for her.   

Casting director Marcia Ross speaks about her early career working on a pair of Walter Hill (Hard Times) films, going into the auditions for Cujo, including how Billy Jacoby (Bloody Birthday) auditioned for the role of the main kid, but being a bit too old for the part. 

Special effects designer Robert Clark talks for 13-min about working with Karl Lewis Miller to fit the dogs costume, including a Labrador that wore a St. Bernard costume! He also discusses creating prosthetic special effects, including the jaws of the dog and casting the head, and making a reference to his work on the dachshunds in rat costumes, killer rat film Deadly Eyes (1982)! 

Dog trainer Teresa Miller shows up for a 28-min interview recalling Cujo, which her father worked on when she was 17. Describing her father training the four dogs for months before filming, and how strange having been around them felt afterward when she saw the film and how viscous they were made to act. She also discusses her father suggesting the producers use Doberman's instead of low-energy St. Bernards in the film, finally resorting to putting a Labrador in a St. Bernard suit to achieve some of the on-screen action.     

Extras on disc one are buttoned-up with Laurent Bouzereau's 43-min making-of doc 'Dog Days: The Making of Cujo' (2007), which is still a terrific watch, featuring interviews with some people not interviewed on the new extras, including director Lewis Teague, cinematographer Jan de Bont (Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker) actor Danny Pintauro, late Producer Robert Singer and Editor Neil Travis. We also get a trailer and TV spots for the film. 

Exclusive to the limited edition release is a bonus Blu-ray disc containing a Q&A with star Dee Wallace moderated by Lee Gambin, this was filmed at Cinemaniacs & Monster Fest 2015. Wallace fields questions about her career. Also on the bonus disc is a 28-min interview with critic and author Kim Newman seated on that familiar looking couch in his mother's basement discussing the numerous Stephen King film adaptations. I'm a fan of Newman's writings and film musings, so hearing him ramble on here about King adaptations and the career of director Lewis Teague was a pleasure. 

This limited edition set also includes a 60-page booklet with new writing on the film by Lee Gambin, author Scott Harrison, and Craig Ian Mann; illustrated with archival imagery from the film’s production. Plus you will get a cool-looking hardbound slipcover with artwork by Graham Humphreys and a reversible art option from illustrator Justin Osbourn. 

The extras assembled for this are terrific, the only thing missing here would be a definitive new 4K scan of the film which would have made this already definitive release even more definitive. 
  

Special Features: 
- New and exclusive feature length audio commentary by Lee Gambin, author of Nope, Nothing Wrong Here: The Making of Cujo
- New interview with Dee Wallace (40 mins)HD
- New interview with composer Charles Bernstein (35 mins)HD
- New interview with stuntman Gary Morgan (25 mins)HD
- New interview with stuntwoman Jean Coulter (21 mins)
- New interview with casting director Marcia Ross (20 mins) HD
- New interview with visual effects artist Kathie Lawrence (13 mins) HD
- New interview with special effects designer Robert Clark (12 mins)HD
- New interview with dog trainer Teresa Miller (28 mins) HD
- Dog Days: The Making of Cujo – archival documentary on the film’s production (43 mins) 
- Original Trailer(2 min) HD 
- TV Spot #1 (1 min) HD 
- TV Spot #2 (1 min) HD 

Disc Two - Limited Edition Only
- Q&A with Dee Wallace from “Cinemaniacs & Monster Fest 2015”, moderated by Lee Gambin (101 mins)HD 
- New interview with critic and author Kim Newman (28 mins) HD

Cujo is a film that has gotten better with age for me, the melodrama and loose story elements still sap it of it's thunder to a degree, but the final leg of the film with the formerly docile dog succumbing to it's rabid ways and the harrowing survival story of the mothers and son is still powerful stuff. The new 2-disc limited edition Blu-ray is stacked with hours of extras that are sure to please fans of the film.