APRIL FOOL'S DAY (1986) (Scream Factory Collector's Edition Blu-ray review)

APRIL FOOL'S DAY (1986) 

Label: Scream Factory
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 88 Minutes 
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Stereo mONO 2.0 & 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1) 
Director: Fred Walton
Cast: Deborah Foreman, Griffin O'Neal, Clayton Rohner, Jay Baker, Pat Barlow, Lloyd Berry, Deborah Goodrich, Tom Heaton, Leah Pinsent, Mike Nomad 

Not unlike a lot of slashers April Fool's Day (1986) features a group of young teen-ish looking people gathering at one location, we have Muffy St. John (Deborah Foreman, Waxwork) calling upon her college friends to come visit her family's island mansion for an April Fool's Day weekend getaway. We have nice girl Kit (Amy Steel, Friday the 13th Part 2)and her sulking boyfriend Rob (Ke Olandt, Summer School); pranksters Arch (Thom­as F. Wilson, Back to the Future) and Skip (Griffin O'Neal, The Wraith); the free-spirited 80's dude Chaz (Clayton Rohner, Destroyer), uptight prep Hal (Jay Baker), hottie Nikki (Deborah Goodrich, Remote Control) and Nan (Leah King Pisent) who is sort of the stick-in-the-mud. The group arrive on the tiny island via a ferryboat, but the pranksters shenanigans enroute cause a ferryman's to be horrifically injured, with him having to be transported by boat to the mainland to a hospital by the local sheriff. 

With that out of the way they make their way to the mansion and settle in for the night, the gatherings spirit seemingly unaffected by the disturbing accident, with Muffy pranking the group with gags that include collapsing chair, dribble glasses, trick lights, spraying faucets, and an exploding cigar. It's mostly harmless good natured stuff, but when boisterous group settles into their rooms for the evening things start to get a bit more strange, each discovering something weird, like ominous newspaper clippings, s&m gear, and a cassette tape (remember those?) of a crying baby, the latter of which is rather disturbing and in poor taste considering the young woman had just had an abortion. Later in the night prankster Skip heads to the boathouse to explore it and is attacked by an unseen assailant. In the morning his friends discover that he's missing and form a search party, with Kit spotting his corpse on a boat beneath the boathouse, but the body is nowhere to be found when they return with the rest of the group. After that the teens begin to disappear one by one, leading the others to believe that someone is stalking and killing them. 

The film is directed Fred Walton (When A Stranger Calls) and produced by Frank Mancuso Jr. (Friday the 13th Part III), it has a decent set-up and if it had followed through on the premise and pedigree this could have been a cool traditional 80's slasher, but that's not what happened. Turns out that Fred Walton was making a deconstructionist satire of slashers, playing with a set-up that feels very traditional but then turns it on it's head with a late-in-the-game revelation that has not always sat well with slasher fans. I know the first time saw it Ishouted "what? are you kidding me?" at the TV, feeling that the movie had betrayed me, and while it true that it betrayed my expectations, it's still a good bit of slasher-y fun. 

The twist which I won't spoil prevents the film from laying out the standard stalk and slash game-play, the kills are absolutely bloodless, and the set-ups are not that great, even lacking even the killer POV shots we've come to expect. That there's not much bloodshed might be my biggest beef with it, hamstrung by the mechanics of the plot. As a fan of slashers I tend to be forgiving to lapses in logic, but even I have to admit that the line of exposition that tries to button-up this film's inconsistencies is absurd, but I still love it.

For all it's slasher-wrongness I still think the film has plenty to offer slasher fans, I love the remote island setting, which is along the lines of something like The Slayer (1982), plus the ensemble cast is pretty great,. We get a good group of folks that are likable overall, even if I don't care for they way that Amy Steel (Friday the 13th Part 2) comes off as a not particularly strong, she deserved better, and when her character didn't punch another girl in the face following the shocker ending I was a bit mad, she needed to knock that girl on her ass!     

I know that this is a film that's gonna anger a few people, but if you take a step back and look at it it's still a fun slasher-y thriller with a hell of an audacious punchline. The fact that there's close to zero gore and only a touch of nudity is a negative, but it's got a great sense of humor, a fantastic cast, plenty of atmosphere and the sort of goofy hijinks that you only got in the eighties.  

Audio/Video: Scream Factory bring April Fool's Day to Blu-ray for the first time in the U.S. for their Collector's Edition. There;s no info about the transfer so I think we can probably assume this is an existing HD master provided by Paramount Pictures who they licensed the title from. The 1080p HD image is framed in 2.35:1 widescreen and looks fantastic to my eyes. Whatever the source it is in great shape without any blemishes, a few very minor white speckles but otherwise trouble-free. Grain is well-managed, clothing textures and facial close-ups offer pleasing amounts of fine grain and the colors are punchy and vivid, and the blacks are of the inky variety, it might not be a new HD master but this looks great. 

Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono and 5.1 surround with optional English subtitles. The mono track is is solid but lacks power, the surround option just has more life and oomph to it, it's well-balanced and delivers the dialogue with more precision, and the score from Charles Berstein sounds great in the mix, which is spread into the surrounds.

Extras on the disc kick off with a 49-min 2-part interview with director Fred Walton who talks not just about this film but also about When A Stranger Calls (1979) which just got a bare-bones release in the U.S. so I appreciate the expanded purview of the interview. Of course he also speaks about the film at hand.  

Actors Deborah Goodrich Royce and Clayton Rohne each show up for 17-min interviews with the former touching on the lost alternate ending of the film which was actually filmed, and recounting having to repeatedly plunge herself into some nasty water. Rohn discusses his early career and how he ended up getting into acting, as well as touching on the fun atmosphere on-set while shooting the film. 

Composer Charles Berstein (Cujo)gets a lengthy 26-min interview, I've been seeing him pop-up on a lot of new releases discussing his scores, and I never get tired of it. He speaks about his early career, how he grew up watching his mom played organ music accompaniment to silent films, and his process of scoring films, how he prefers to score alone, but stating that music editors are worth their weight in gold.   

The last of the interviews comes from cinematographer Charles Minksky who gets into growing up watching films every Saturday at the cinema, how he became a cinematographer and learned his craft through trial and error, and how he loves the feel of film running through a camera.  

Extras are buttoned up with 2-min of TV spots and a 2-min full-frame trailer for the film. Unfortunately we do not get the alternate ending of the film, which to my knowledge has never been found, in fact I think there's only one still shot of scene from that version floating around the internets, it's certainly not here. As a fan I would have loved interviews with actors Deborah Foreman, Thomas 'Bif Tanner' Wilson and scream queen Amy Steel, but that didn't happen, though probably not for lack of trying I am certain, but what we do get is a fantastic A/V presentation and over 2-hours worth of interviews, so it's a bit hard to be too sore about what we didn't get, but I am quite certain there will definitely be fans bemoaning the fact nonetheless. 

The singe-disc release comes housed in a standard keepcase with a reversible sleeve of artwork featuring the original theatrical poster and a new on-point illustration from Yannick Bouchard, which is also featured on the disc itself, and on the limited edition slipcover with the new illustration.    

Special Features: 
- NEW Horror with A Twist – an interview with director Fred Walton (47 min) 
- NEW Well of Lies – an interview with actress Deborah Goodrich Royce (17 min) 
- NEW Looking Forward to Dessert – an interview with actor Clayton Rohner (17 min) 
- NEW Bloody Unforgettable – an interview with composer Charles Bernstein (26 min) 
 - NEW The Eye of Deception – an interview with cinematographer Charles Minsky (17 min) 
- Theatrical Trailer (2 min) 
- TV Spots (2 min) 

I have been waiting since the arrival of the Blu-ray format for  this slasher gem to finally get the HD treatment, and it was worth the wait. Scream Factory's Collector's Edition gives us a solid A/V presentation and a wealth of extras, it's a winner.

MORE SCREENSHOTS FROM THE BLU-RAY 

WHEN A STRANGER CALLS (1979) & WHEN A STRANGER CALLS BACK (1993) (Second Sight Blu-ray Review)

WHEN A STRANGER CALLS (1979) & WHEN A STRANGER CALLS BACK (1993) 

Label: Second Sight Films
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: 
Audio: English PCM 1.0 Mono with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 
Director: Fred Walton
Cast: Carol Kane, Charles Durning, Rutanya Alda, Charles Durning, Tony Beckley

The original When A Stranger Calls (1970) is one of those urban legend-based films that I think every horror fan of a certain age grew up with, I certainly did, having watched in in my early teens, right around the time I started babysitting a pair of annoying kids for a friend of the family, everytime the phone would ring my heart would stop, it was always n my mind. I didn't end up babysitting the kids for very long, which turned out to be a good thing, a few weeks after I stopped watching them they burned their house down  while their granny was watching them, apparently they were playing with matches while grandma was asleep. 

The film opnes with highschool teen Jill Johnson (Carol Kane, Scrooged) babysitting the young children of Dr. Mandrakis (Carmen Argenziano, Graduation Day) and his wife (Rutanya Alda, Girls Nite Out). She finds herself alone in the house while the children are asleep upstairs, and while doing her homework begins receiving phone calls from a creepy voiced man who inquiring "have you checked on the children?". These calls goes on for a good while throughout the night, finally unnerved she rings the police who say they will trace the calls,  calling back a short while later and telling her that the calls are coming from inside the same house as her! She runs for the door just as the police arrive, and it turns out that the kids have been dead for hours, murdered by a disturbed man named Curt Duncan (Tony Beckley, The Fiend) who made his way into the home earlier in the night at some point. 

Forward seven years later and Jill is now married with a pair of her own children, unaware that lunatic Duncan escaped from the asylum he was sent to years earlier. But former cop turned private eye John Clifford (Charles Durning, The Dark Night of the Scarecrow) who worked the original case is now on the trail of the escaped lunatic. This middle third of the film is slow-burning with Durning tracking the homicidal loony through the city, the film had such an electrifying and genuinely creepy opening 20-min that this part of the film slows it down considerably, it's not ruinous but I always find it a bit of a slog.

While I find that it's slowed down I do enjoy the cast here, Beckley is very good as the disturbed man, in fact he portrays the character in such a pathetic sort way that you kind of feel bad for him, he gives the character some humanity. Though you never doubt that he's a madman, just barely able to contain his homicidal madness, at one point following a woman named Tracy (Colleen Dewhurst, The Dead Zone) home from a bar where he's just received a beat down from the bar patrons after harassing her. He manages to creep his way into her home, and she just barely manages to get him out, not realizing what a threat he posed until Durning turns up on her doorstep the next day and lays it out for her, Dewhurst turns in a fine performance as a woman past her prime, lonely, but not that lonely. 

Things do pick up in the final third with Duncan inexecplaiably tracking down Jill to a restaurant where she is dining with her husband while her kids are home with a babysitter. He calls her at the restaurant and sending chills down her spine with the familiar phrase "have you checked on the kids", leading to a wonderfully suspenseful finale that nearly lives up to the first 20-min of the film. The film drags a bit in the middle but the beginning and end are fantastic, making this slice of suspense a classic thriller with some real nail-biting moments.  

The cast is great, the lensing is solid, the score is creepy, and it's well directed by Fred Walton, who also directed the maligned but awesome 80's slasher April Fools Day (1986), which is also sorely in need of a proper Blu-ray release.

Second Sight have also included the direct-to-cable TV sequel to the film, When A Stranger Calls Back (1993), which reunited director Walton with stars Durning and Cane who reprise their roles, adding a new babysitter to the mix by way of teen Julie (Jill Schoelen, Popcorn) who while babysitting a pair of kids receives a knock at the door from a man who says his car broke down nearby, it plays out much the same way as the first film, with the same results for the poor kids, and moving forward five years when Julie is a student at a local college, still traumatized by her experience years earlier, and now with someone stalking her. Enter Jill Johnson (Carol Kane) who is now a counselor at the same college as Julie, who calls in Durning's character to assist with the case. This was my first time watch of the sequel, for a direct-to-cable TV sequel is was well-done, mirroring the original but adding some new twists and turn, very glad second Sight saw fit to include it on this set. 

Audio/Video: When A Stranger Calls (1979) arrives on region-free Blu-ray from Second Sight Films presented in 1080p HD, framed in 1.85:1, looking very filmic. The new scan of the film elements showcases plenty of natural looking grain that hasn't been DNR scrubbed or tinkered with unduly. The colors are solid and saturated, blacks are deep and shadowy,  and we get some modest fine detail in facial close-ups and with clothing textures throughout. When A Stranger Calls Back (1992) is presented in the original full frame aspect ratio in 1080p HD, audio is 2.0 PCM with optional English subtitles. 

Audio comes by way of an PCM Mono track that is clean and well-balanced, the creepy score from Dana Kaproff (Empire of the Ants) springs to life nicely in the mix with nice depth and fidelity. Optional English subtitles are provided.

Extras on the disc include new interviews with director Fred Walton, actors Carol Kane and Rutanya Alda, and composer Dana Kaproff, plus the original 22-min film that inspired the film. 

We were only sent a "check disc" for the purpose of this review so I have no comment on packaging, booklet or the soundtrack CD that accompanies retail version of the release. 

Special Features: 
- The Sitter - Short Film (22 min) HD 
- The sequel ‘When a Stranger Calls Back' HD
- New int. with director Fred Walton (17 min)
- New Int. with actor Carol Kane (17 min) 
- New int. with actor Rutanya Alda (5 min) 
- New int. with composer Dana Kaproff (8 min) 

Limited Edition Contents:
- CD Soundtrack
- 40-page perfect bound booklet with new essay by Kevin Lyons
- Reversible poster with new and original artwork
- Rigid slipcase packaging

When A Stranger Calls (1979) gets a first-rate presentation from Second Sight Films, who were also kind enough to include the cable TV produced sequel, plus a handful of quality extras. Fans of suspenseful thrillers and creepy home invader films should absolutely dig into this nail-biting double-feature.