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 

MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN (1992) (Scream Factory Blu-ray Review)

MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN (1992) 

Label: Scream Factory
Region Code: A
Rating: PG-13
Duration: 99 Minutes 
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1) 
Director: John Carpenter 
Cast: Chevy Chase, Daryl Hannah, Sam Neill, Michael McKean, Stephen Tobolowsky

When this 90's take on the invisible man originally went to the cinema I was already a huge of director John Carpenter (Prince of Darkness) and the comedies of Chevy Chase (Spies Like Us), so I was primed for what these two had in store for me when I bought my ticket at the local cineplex. Now, that was a long time ago (25 years!) but I remember being rather disappointed by what I saw at the time, it lacked the edge I expected from the director of The Thing, but it also was largely absent the comedy stylings I was expecting from the star, so as a fan of both it was not a great time at the movies for teenage me. I've seen it a few times on home video in the years since and have warmed to it slightly, but my initial assessment is still valid.

Of course now I know that Carpenter was a director for hire on this one, which I didn't know then, stepping in for Ivan Reitman  (Ghostbusters) who left the film due to disagreements with star Chevy Chase, whom from what I've read is a nightmare to work with, but I still love his movies. I could absolutely see Ivan Reitman directing a funnier version of this movie, and I am assuming the problems he and Chevy encountered had to do with the star wanting to play the role more serious and not his usual pratfall self, and that's where I a bit let down by this one, either this had to have more of a dark edge or more broad comedy, and that's where the Carpenter/Chase team-up is a bit puzzling for me. 

Here we have stock analyst Nick Halloway (Chevy Chase) whom while runs into an old friend named George (Michael McKean, Spinal Tap) who introduces Nick to his visiting friend, knockout single-lady Alice (Daryl Hannah, Blade Runner), the two hit it off over and dinner and drinks, and even get some make-out time, but when Nick pushes in for more she rebuffs him, so he drinks-up the rest of the night and is severly hung-over in the morning. He winds up at a lab where he is sitting in on a shareholder's meeting, but finds he too hungover to be useful, so he finds a quiet place in the building for a quick nap, unwittingly triggering a lab accident along the way, with the end result being that he is caught up in a strange meltdown/accident that turns the entire building and himself invisible! 

A shady CIA spook named Jenkins (Sam Neil, Possession) arrives on the scene and soon discovers Nick's condition, realizing what a valuable spy/assassin asset he would be the spook sets about capturing him, but Nick wants no part of it, he just want to be himself again.  

Chevy Chase is going for a more serious tone her with some moments of humor, but no straight-up comedy, I didn't hate his performance, I just think the dual-tonality of the film makes for a somewhat unsatisfying watch overall. Something that always irks me is the voice-over narration from Chase, probably meant to give this a noir-feel, but it always makes me think of the Fletch films and takes me right out of the story. It doesn't help that he and Daryl Hannah have zero chemistry together onscreen, which makes it hard to believe in their whirlwind romance, the whole affair is given such short shrift it feels like it should have been left on the cutting room floor altogether in my opinion. More interesting is villainous CIA spook Jenkins played by Sam Neil, the sinister government operative attempting tracking down the invisible man, he plays bag guys so well, and Carpenter must have liked him a lot as he brought him back a few years later for the starring role In The Mouth Of Madness (1995).

There's a lot of side characters that show up for fun and games in bit roles, we have Michael KcKean as Nick's frenemy, his gossipy wife (Patricia Heaton), a droll wanna-be love interest for Alice (Gregory Paul Martin) and the always fun Stephen Tobolowsky (Groundhog's Day) as Jenkin's CIA supervisor who doesn't seem quit e a cutthroat as his subordinate, though it becomes clear who really has the power in that working relationship early on.

As an invisible man movie we get plenty of special effects throughout, we were at an early stage for digital special effects at the time, and some of them don't hold up all that well with optical effects that seem pretty dated, but there's also some decent practical effects and some digital ones that are cool. If you've ever wondered what it would look like to see an invisible man digest food, hurl and smokes a cigarette this movie answers all those questions for you. Scenes of the invisible man in the rain and running through water don't hold-up all that well, but a few scenes of him being made-up with make-up and the problems that arise from that aren't too bad. There's some fun footage of all the stuff Chase had to do to achieve some of the effects in the film, it's interesting stuff, it just doesn't translate tot he screen twenty five years later with a lot of success in my opinion, not awful, just dated.

Audio/Video: Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992) arrives on Blu-ray with a new 2K scan of an archival interpositive performed by Warner Bros., the new transfer looks good, offering more detail and brighter colors than the previous Warner DVD, black levels look solid and grain levels are nicely managed. Fine detail is decent offering some deepened facial features and clothing textures, some of the optical effects don't fare so well, but overall this is a solid HD presentation. 

Audio comes by way of an English DTS-HD MA Stereo 2.0 track, it's well-balanced and sounds good without any hiss or distortion, optional English subtitles are provided. No Carpenter score on this one, but we do get one from Shirley Walker (the Willard remake), it sounds good though I didn't find any it particularly memorable. 

Scream Factory offer no new extras for this non Collector's Edition release, but they do port over what looks to be all the extras from the previous DVD version, this being some behind-the-scenes footage, outtakes, a brief F/X featurette and vintage EPK interviews.

The single-disc release comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a s20sided sleeve of artwork, the main sleeve featuring the familiar key art used on the DVD with the the title and tagline moved around - note that I couldn't find an image of the new cover art, what's pictured above the review is an older promotional image. The reverse side isn't an artwork option, just an image from the film and what looks to be a promotional shot of Daryl Hannah and Chevy Chase with information about the transfer. The disc itself features the same key art as the sleeve. 

Special Features: 
- NEW 2K scan of the original film elements
- How to Become Invisible: The Dawn of Digital F/X (4 min) 
- Vintage interviews with director John Carpenter, actors Chevy Chase and Daryl Hannah (5 min) 
- Behind the Scenes footage (5 min) 
- Outtakes (3 min) 
- Theatrical Trailer (2 min) 
- TV Spots (4 min) 

As both a fan of the comedies of Chevy Chase and films of John Carpenter I am very pleased to have this slice of 90's sci-fi on Blu-ray, but I do wish we would had gotten some new extras, there's gotta be some great stories about the making of this one. The film get a bad rap, I like it, I don't love it, but it's an interesting take on the invisible man mythos, and it's cool that Carpenter got a chance to do an invisible man movie.