For people who never got a chance to read this as a child, BFG stands for “Big Friendly Giant” and is about the giant of the title meeting and befriending a young child and saving Britain from evil giants that lived just to eat children.

The movie was beautiful. It looked great in theaters and it looks great on this Blu-ray as well. Spielberg is a master when it comes to the look of his films and The BFG is no different. This is an immaculate looking film, from the location shooting to the CGI work, everything looks amazing.

The animation work on the BFG himself is especially impressive. Mark Rylance stars as the giant, and while he looks like a giant animated creature, the expressions and movements are just perfect. Honestly, Rylance playing the motion-captured character is the best performance in the movie. He is just perfect in this role.

Ruby Barnhill plays the young girl Sophie, and while she is not bad in the role, she comes across as a bit too precocious for the character to work as well as it should. Despite this, she plays a great foil to the BFG in the movie and their scenes together are always fun.

At the end of the day, The BFG is a movie that looks beautiful and has good to great performances, but it is also a movie that seems a little shallow by the end. It is almost like all the work went into how the movie looks but not so much as to the actual depth of the story.

Things happen and there is a resolution. Never once do any of the characters really feel like they are in danger, especially once Sophie and the BFG return to England. The stakes are just not high enough to invest too much fear into the character’s safety.

Despite that, the movie is charming and magical and is a nice movie in an era where everything wants to be edgy. This is a fun movie to watch with the kids without worrying about traumatic lingering after effects. It never reaches the level of E.T., but it is a nice movie to have alongside those earlier Spielberg efforts.

The BFG Blu-ray Special Features

The big question is whether or not to buy The BFG on Blu-ray. The movie looks amazing, but in today’s streaming world, there needs to be more than that to buy a physical copy. First of all, if a person gets the Disney digital copy, the special features are included. That means it all comes down whether a person wants the physical copy or not, but the special features make it worth it to buy.

The biggest special feature on the Blu-ray is the 27-minute feature called Bringing the BFG to Life. This is a video diary from the making of the movie, introduced by Ruby Barnhill herself. It includes interviews with the daughter of Roald Dahl, as well as cast and crew members.

This feature really goes into depth on the making of the movie, from pre-production through completing the film. It is also nice to see Spielberg back doing what he is best at, working with his imagination. This is a great feature and well worth the watch.

Up next, The Big Friendly Giant and Me is an animated short that tells the story of The BFG and his friendship with the little boy that Sophie learned about in the movie. This clocks in at under two minutes.

Gobblefunk: The Wonderful Words of The BFG is a three-minute look at the special language created for The BFG and is the lesser of all the special features. Giants 101 is a five-minute look at the creation of the giants in the movie and is pretty entertaining and I am curious why this wasn’t included in the longer feature on The BFG Blu-ray.

Finally, the last special feature is a six-minute tribute to Melissa Mathison, the screenwriter of both E.T. and The BFG. The feature has interviews with Mathison, Steven Spielberg, Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy, and others who worked with her on the movie. The crew celebrated her last birthday with Melissa on the set with no idea that she was going to pass away before The BFG was released.

The post BFG Blu-Ray Review appeared first on Renegade Cinema.

There might not be another television series like Into the Badlands. The series starts off with a man riding a motorcycle but then ending up in a battle with Nomads in the country with a sword as his weapon. The only weapons used in this battle are handheld weapons because guns are illegal in a futuristic society that has reverted back into Feudal Empires.

Sunny is a Clipper, who is a trained soldier and killer, and he has killed 404 people when the television series begins. He works for a Baron named Quinn, who heads the Opium trade – basically making him the drug lord in the future. There is a strong jealousy from Quinn’s son Ryder towards Sunny, as Quinn almost looks at Sunny as the favored son. The Baron also has multiple wives and the family unit here is one that is Shakespearean in nature, with betrayals carrying the story.

The Baron also has multiple wives and the family unit here is one that is Shakespearean in nature, with betrayals carrying the story. There is also a Civil War brewing between Quinn and another Baron who is known only as The Widow. If this war breaks out, it will cause a huge war between the seven Barons that rule the Badlands in the post-apocalyptic America.

Sunny has also fallen in love with a woman, which is forbidden for any Clipper, and when she ends up pregnant, Sunny realizes he has something to fight for outside of his sworn duties to Quinn. When a boy that Sunny saved named M.K. turns out to have very powerful, and dark, mystical powers that he can’t control, everything starts to unravel.

The boy comes from a home beyond the Badlands that Sunny has always dreamed about. When Sunny sees M.K., he realizes that he wants to find a way out of the Badlands for him and the woman he loves. This is even more apparent when Sunny realizes that Quinn is not a man that he wants to follow anymore. These events set up the loose plot that takes up this first season of six episodes of Into the Badlands.

Buy ‘Into the Badlands’ on Blu-Ray From Amazon.com

It’s like a John Woo movie with no guns and is very similar to films like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Hero. However, this movie takes place in a future that is just as much Mad Max as it is wushu.

Daniel Wu is at the top of his game as Sunny, probably the best Clipper in this world. He proves himself throughout the first season of Into the Badlands as a master when it comes to his martial arts work and is a great charismatic presence on the screen as well.

Wu leads a solid cast that includes veterans like Stephen Lang, Lance Henriksen, Emily Beecham, and Martin Csokas as well as young talents like Sarah Bolger, Ally Ioannides, and 15-year-old Aramis Knight as M.K.

The camerawork is top notch and the martial arts choreography is also incredibly well done. While the actual plot of the first six seasons of Into the Badlands is pretty shallow, the entire fight choreography, cinematography, and action scenes really help to overshadow the idea that this is Shakespeare-light.

The season ends with a huge cliffhanger and that makes the news that AMC renewed Into the Badlands for a second season good news. Despite its flaws, Into the Badlands is a refreshing bit of storytelling and worth a look if you like martial arts and wushu.

Into the Badlands Special Features

It takes a lot to get people to buy physical copies of TV shows today, mostly because Netflix, Hulu, and more make it easy to just stream the shows as part of the subscription price. However, there are still people such as myself that want to own the DVD or Blu-ray versions of the movies. However, it is important for the release to have some great special features to make it worth the money.

Into the Badlands doesn’t skimp on the number of special features offered on the Blu-ray edition of the Season 1 release.

• Inside Into the Badlands
• Anatomy of a Fight
• Building the World of Into the Badlands
• The Characters Of Into the Badlands: The Barons
• The Characters Of Into the Badlands: The Clippers
• The Master: Into the Badlands Fight Camp Episode 1
• Creating Real Kung Fu: Into the Badlands Fight Camp Episode 2
• Bringing It All Together: Into the Badlands Fight Camp Episode 3
• Into the Badlands Digital Comic

The first special features on the Blu-ray are the Inside Into the Badlands features. I’m going to skip those for now and talk about them later when discussing the digital copy special features. Just know for now that they are the only special features that exist on both the Blu-ray and the digital copy.

Up next is a series of features called Anatomy of a Fight. There is one of these for every episode of the season. This is exactly what it claims to be, with about three minutes each episode where the cast, choreographer, and director talks about how they achieved the huge fights in each episode.

After that, the next Into the Badlands special feature is Building the World of Into the Badlands. This is a three-minute feature that talks about how they built the world of the series and what they were thinking of when choosing what to include in this society. The best quote is that this is a “fantasy world that is familiar” and Steampunk was an inspiration.

The next two features focus on the characters. with the first talking about the Barons and the second about the Clippers. The Barons feature focuses on Quinn and his family and on the Widow. The Clippers feature is about the hierarchy of the Clippers and about Sunny’s position as a Regent, one of the most respected men in the realm of Clippers. They also focus on Tilda and M.K. This feature also talks about Veil and her role as a doctor for the Clippers.

The next batch of special features comes with the Fight Camp specials. These are about eight minutes in total and runs three episodes showing the choreography and fight training for the Inside the Badlands television series.

Finally, there is an Into the Badlands digital comic that runs about 23 minutes in length. This comic is basically a re-telling of the first episode of the season in the digital comic format.

Into the Badlands Digital Copy

I really have to give the Into the Badlands Blu-ray/Digital HD combo some major credit. One of the things that I hate the most about digital copies is that they usually just present the movie and not the special features. While a lot of people don’t care about special features, I don’t see the purpose in getting a digital copy without them because of how many times you would need to watch it in order to make up for the difference in the rental price.

However, with Into the Badlands, there are some great special features included with the digital copy. Outside of the six episodes of Into the Badlands Season 1, there are also seven special features.

First up is a look at the series, which is just over three minutes of interviews and footage while everyone talks about making the series. Then, there is a special “inside the episode” feature for each episode of the series. They aren’t huge features, but they are extras that you won’t get by just streaming the series online.

Each of these features basically breaks down the major plot point of each episode and describes why it is so important to the series. The show creators and actors each talk about the major scenes with important clips to show the action as it moves forward. Honestly, it also works as a great Cliffs Notes for anyone who is curious about the series.

The post Into the Badlands Blu-Ray Review appeared first on Renegade Cinema.

Hell, I named my son Ashley – and yes, the name was based on Bruce Campbell’s character in the Evil Dead trilogy.

That isn’t to say that I didn’t also love Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness and I even had the privilege a few years back to cover Evil Dead: The Musical when it came to Oklahoma over Halloween in 2010 (check out that review here). However, when I heard that Ash vs. Evil Dead was coming to television, Bruce Campbell was returning as Ash, and it was on a premium cable network, I got really excited.

Once I finished Ash vs. Evil Dead Season 1, I was really excited about not only the future of the show, but also the future of genre television on Starz. If Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is even half as great as Ash vs. Evil Dead, Starz might soon match up with AMC for geek-friendly genre television.

Basically, Ash vs. Evil Dead starts out years after the events of Army of Darkness (the S-Mart ending) and Ash is still working in retail. Brilliantly, Sam Raimi has gone out of his way to make Ash even more pathetic (or real, if you want to look at it that way) by starting off the first episode with Ash squeezing into a man-girdle and showing that he wears dentures. He is also still a complete f-up, and it was getting stoned one night that convinced him it was a good idea to read from the Necronomican one more time with the girl he brought back to the trailer park he lived in.

As always, Ash is the reason for the problems and Ash is the one who has to fix them.

Along the way, he joins forces with two of his former co-workers in Pablo (Ray Santiago) and Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo) as he sets out to find a way to send the Deadittes back into the Necronomican and stop them once and for all. Meanwhile, he has a cop who has encountered the Deadittes named Amanda (Jill Marie Jones) setting out to arrest Ash for the dead bodies that are piling up and a mysterious woman named Ruby (Lucy Lawless), who knows a lot about the evil at foot, although her intentions are less than noble.

What results is blood and gore that makes the splatstick horror-comedy that Sam Raimi perfected work so well. Thanks to Strarz, the Evil Dead team was able to be as disgusting and over-the-top as Evil Dead fans have grown to expect, and thanks to the premium network, their hands were untied when it came to going as far as they needed without having to sink to the levels of network television, or even basic cable.

Ash vs. Evil Dead was everything a fan of the Evil Dead trilogy could have ever dreamed of getting on television and so much more. Ash got his boomstick and one-liners and fans got all the gore and splatistic fun they ever could have expected. This was a true winner and if it lasts the five seasons that Rob Tapert believes it could, Evil Dead fans will have a lot of groovy fun to still look forward to.

Blu-Ray Special Features

The Ash vs. Evil Dead Season 1 Blu-ray is stacked. Upon first look, there are some basic features on the second disc of the set. There is a 15-minute documentary about the first season that pretty much flies by. Most of it has Rob Tapert talking about various episodes in the first season and what he thought was highlights, including looking at the story, call-backs to the original movies, anecdotes, and more. There is also a short two-minute feature where Bruce Campbell explains how to kill a Deaditte, and then there is an even shorter 1:27 feature with Bruce Campbell’s best lines from the season.

If that was all there was, it would be disappointing.

However, anyone who has followed the Evil Dead trilogy and their way too numerous double dips, triple dips, and more, realize that the best part of the DVD and Blu-ray releases are the commentary tracks. The Ash vs. Evil Dead Season 1 Blu-ray is no different. The best commentary track comes on the first episode, because that includes Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi, Rob Tapert, and Bruce Campbell. It is always fun to hear Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell on the same commentary track and they don’t disappoint here. It was also fun to hear Raimi say that he had no idea Evil Dead had such a loyal fan base, and it was Campbell who kept everyone in the loop when it comes to fan demand.

That was the only episode with Sam Raimi, which was disappointing, however Bruce Campbell is on every episode’s commentary tracks. Joining him for various episodes are actors Dana Delorenzo, Ray Santiago, Jill Marie Jones, and Lucy Lawless, with Rob Tapert also appearing on Episode 2 as well. Honestly, listening to Bruce Campbell talk about anything is worth the money and having him on every episode here is worth the price of the physical Blu-ray edition of Ash vs. Evil Dead Season 1.

The post Ash vs. Evil Dead Season 1 Blu-Ray Review appeared first on Renegade Cinema.

The episode starts off with Simba talking to his daughter Kiara, who will one day become Queen of the Pride Lands. This is perfectly fine with Kion, who is happy to play with his friends. However, one day he develops the Roar of the Elders and learns that he is the lion that will become the new leader of the Lion Guard.

From this point, the episode has him choose his friends to become the Lion Guard, although none of them are lions. This displeases Simba, who believes that they should be lions to be strong enough to protect the Circle of Life.

The friends are Bunga the honey badger (brave), Beshte the hippo (strong), Fuli the cheetah (fast), and Ono the egret (keen). It isn’t until this group saves gazelles from the attacking hyenas and then saves Kiara from the gazelle charge, that Simba realizes that his son was right in his choices.

The entire episode is about friendship and proving that trust is more important than anything, and any species can prove to be brave and powerful. There are also some nice cameos, such as Mufasa, who appears in the clouds to give his grandson advice, Rafiki, the shaman who still advices Simba, and the duo of Timon and Pumbaa, who happen to be the adopted uncles of Bunga.

The episode is great and a nice start to the series, which is a very entertaining follow-up to one of Disney’s greatest animated movies. The voice cast is good, with big names like Rob Lowe voicing Simba, Gabrielle Union voicing Nala, and a great voice cast as the Lion Guard. It is also nice to hear James Earl Jones when he voices Mufasa.

The biggest problem with this DVD is that it is only one episode, and that is just 44 minutes. There is also a music video by Beau Black, as he sings the theme song. That is it and that makes this a very hard DVD to recommend. It is a great episode, but when Jake and the Neverland Pirates offers numerous bonus episodes on all its DVDs, this one seems lacking.

Learn More about The Lion Guard at the official Disney website.

The post Disney’s The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar Review appeared first on Renegade Cinema.

Wright said it was a mutual decision, but the thought was that Marvel wasn’t interested in someone as brilliantly creative as Wright making a movie that didn’t conform to the other movies in the universe. Peyton Reed had a nice background, working on Mr. Show with Bob and David and Upright Citizens Brigade. That gave him geek cred, but his movies included Yes Man, The Break-Up, and Bring it On. What was he doing making a big budget Marvel movie?

Luckily, those worries were for naught. Reed did just fine on Ant-Man, making a heist movie that had just the perfect amount of humor and some incredible special effects when it came to shrinking and made a pint sized superhero fighting seem real and made Ant-Man a very dangerous character.

The movie opened perfectly, putting Ant-Man squarely in the world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), who in the comics was the original Ant-Man and a founder of The Avengers, stormed in to meet with S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives, including Howard Stark, Peggy Carter, and Mitchell Carson. He immediately quits when he learned that S.H.I.E.L.D. planned on using his shrinking technology to make weapons. After punching Carson, he leaves and the movie cuts to present day.

The Ant-Man movie does not cast Hank Pym as the superhero. By this time, Pym is an older man who has suffered the side-effects of using the shrinking tech too much while helping the U.S. battle enemies for S.H.I.E.L.D. over the years. This Ant-Man is Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), a convict who was just released from prison after embezzling money from a company and giving it to customers they had been screwing over for years. Sadly, Lang can’t even get a job at an ice cream parlor and ends up stealing Pym’s battle suit.

There are plenty of twists and turns that lead Lang to wearing the armor to help save Pym’s company, and the world in general, from a scientist named Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) and Carson, who actually works for Hydra. There are fun points here, such as when Lang trains using the suit and tech. There is also a personal note with the jealousy of Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), Pym’s daughter at not using the tech herself as well as her anger at her father for abandoning her when her mother, Jan van Dyne (The Wasp) died when she was a child.

However, where this movie really knocks it out of the park, it is with the humor. From the training to the sidekicks, Luis (Michael Pena), Dave (T.I. Harris) and Kurt (David Dastmalchian). These three are who sets up the entire heist into Pym’s old labs, which Cross now controls. Rudd has always been very funny, and he is on top form in this movie, very funny, but also very heroic in an unassuming way. HIs battle with a certain member of the Avengers is a clear misunderstanding, but one of the more entertaining moments in the movie.

By the end, Ant-Man succeeded despite everything set up to cause it to fail. That is a huge success for Marvel, Peyton Reed, and Paul Rudd. It is also proof that Marvel can make great movies, even out of heroes that don’t seem like they should work on the big screen. It is proof that the upcoming Marvel movies featuring unknown mainstream characters like Capt. Marvel, Black Panther, and Dr. Strange are in the right hands.

Special Features

First, the digital download is missing the commentary track with Peyton Reed and Paul Rudd that is on the Blu-ray, so if that is important to you, get the Blu-ray and the digital download comes with it. As for the digital version, there are still some nice features.

For those who have never used the digital downloads, you can watch the movies on platforms like VUDU, but if you want to see the bonus features, you have to use Disney Movies Anywhere. Included here is a three-minute feature at the look at Marvel’s Phase 3, including Kevin Feige explaining that the reason that Ant-Man was in Phase 2 was because they wanted every member of the original Avengers members introduced before moving to Phase 3 (Ant-Man, Wasp, Iron Man, Capt. America, Thor, Hulk). Don’t watch this before the movie, because it spoils a big surprise from the movie.

They also preview Captain America: Civil War, which will bring back Ant-Man. Then, they talk about Dr. Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy 2 on this feature.

Up next is a 14-minute feature about the making of Ant-Man. This has interviews with the cast and crew and talks about the comics, casting, characters, and plot from the movie. There is also an eight minute feature about the tech used to develop the new technology and techniques used to show the shrinking in the movie. There is also a three-minute gag reel, and four fake WHIH news casts from the world of the Marvel movies. Finally, there are 16 deleted scenes.

The post Ant-Man Digital Download Review appeared first on Renegade Cinema.

We start off with an audio commentary track that features the co-directors of the movie (John Musker and Ron Clements) and producer Amy Pell. This is a nice listen to get a good idea of the history and the making of the movie. There is a second audio commentary track as well that is much more fun and is really great if you love animation. The second one has Jafar animator Andreas Deja, Iago animator Will Finn, Genie animator Eric Goldberg, and Aladdin animator Glean Keane.

The biggest feature on the Aladdin Blu-ray is a feature length documentary which is actually longer than the movie itself. Checking in at 110 minutes, A Diamond in the Rough: The Making of Aladdin takes fans through the entire making of the movie with historian Leonard Maltin as the host. The doc is broke up into easy to digest segments so a person can take their time working through it if they want or just sit down and enjoy it all at once.

For fans of the songs, there is 14 minutes worth of deleted songs (“You Can Count on Me” by Aladdin, “Humiliate the Boy” by Jafar, “Why Me” by Jafar, and “Proud of Your Boy” sung by Aladdin). These are separate from the six minutes of deleted scenes. There is also six minutes of music videos from the movie, featuring “A Whole New World” by Regina Belle and Peabo Bryson, “A Whole New World” by Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson, and “Proud of Your Boy” by Clay Aiken.

Moving on, if you are wondering if you should get the DVD or Blu-ray, here is a look at what the Blu-ray has that the basic edition does not.

There are nine minutes of Genie outtakes, which is huge fun for the fans of the late Robin Williams, and for little kids who just loved the antics of the Genie. There is also a four-minute look at explaining the Genie’s puns, which many kids today won’t get. That is a throw-away feature, but I thought it was fun.

There is a 19 minute feature called Aladdin: Creating Broadway Magic, which sees Darren Criss (Glee) take fans on a backstage look at the Broadway adaptation.

Finally, there is a five minute look at the movie’s Easter eggs and a six minute special feature with the directors looking back on making the movie.

With all that said, the Blu-ray version of Aladdin is what you want. Even if you don’t care about the special features on the Blu-ray. The look and sound makes it just a huge upgrade over the original release. The effects look amazing and Aladdin has never looked better. Even bigger than that, the sound is just masterful, at DTS 7.1 sound scape and that alone makes this version one that anyone with half a decent stereo system would want as an upgrade.

At the end of the day, Aladdin is just as fun and great as you remember it being and this new edition is worth the double-dip for any fan of the movie.

The post Aladdin Diamond Edition Blu-ray Review appeared first on Renegade Cinema.

The first episode on the DVD is called “The Enchiridion” and shows how Finn the Human and Jake the Dog were able to come into possession of the Enchiridion. The second episode is called “In Your Footsteps” and shows how a bear tricks Finn into giving him the Enchiridion, which he then delivers to an ominous villain. I assumed that the rest of the DVD would follow these adventures, but that was the last we see of the Enchiridion on this DVD.

In actuality, the Enchiridion had a longer history on the series and this DVD could have followed the book to the Snail, which is who the Bear brought it to, who was possessed by The Lich, to Finn’s battle with The Lich, the retrieval by The Ice King and its return to Fionna. However, this DVD doesn’t care about any of the stories about the Enchiridion outside of the first two and then it just ambles through 14 more episodes.

However, if you don’t care about a running story going through the DVD, and don’t have the seasons on DVD already, the Adventure Time: The Enchiridion DVD has some really fun stories compiled on the DVD. Highlights include Henchman, where Finn realizes that Vampire Queen Marceline isn’t really evil, and Root Beer Guy, which is a nice story that barely focuses on Finn and Jake at all.

At the end of the day, true fans of Adventure Time probably have no reason to own the Adventure Time: The Enchiridion DVD, as all these episodes are on the individual season DVDs. But for casual fans who just want to drop a few bucks for some fun episodes, this is a nice buy with some fun and quirky episodes.

There are no special features on the Adventure Time: The Enchiridion DVD.

The post Adventure Time: The Enchiridion DVD Review appeared first on Renegade Cinema.

Cast: Kristin Chenoweth, Alfred Molina, Alan Cumming, Peter Stormare, Maya Rudolph & Evan Rachel Wood

Movie Review

‘Strange Magic’, the latest brain spill from George Lucas, jumps on the bandwagon of animated flicks which cast aside the notion of original music and instead pull pop songs from years past to the past winners of ‘American Idol’. This flick is a confused messed from the get go, with a PG rating, a mash-up of adult themes, elementary dialogue and a seemingly sketchy message to young girls.

For what age the writers had truly intended this is anyone’s guess, but within the first 15 minutes I found myself wondering if living in one of the U.S. States that offered legal recreational cannabis would make this movie more tolerable.

The cast is star studded, to say the least, but even the pipes of Kristin Chenoweth could not save bad dialogue, dubious plot and poor editing. I will give credit where credit is due, the animation itself was top notch.

Though I do agree with the movie’s tagline, “Everybody deserves to be loved”, I don’t believe every movie does. To sum it up, ‘Strange Magic’ is pretty/awful.

Special Features

The DVD version of Strange Magic only comes with two special features. The first is called Magical Mash Up and includes outakes, tests and songs. The second feature is a short meet the cast and filmmakers called Creating the Magic, which is pretty much just a promotional piece about making the movie. Neither really add much to the purchase.

The post Strange Magic DVD Review appeared first on Renegade Cinema.

It’s been a year since Angela had her run at Camp Rolling Hills, and the yurn to head into the great outdoors is a call too strong to ignore. So, she runs over a young girl on her way to camp with a garbage truck and assumes her place with a terrible wig. That single sentence may be the greatest description of a plot ever. From there on she becomes part of a social experiment of sorts, as we have a bunch of rich & poor kids mingled together out in the wilderness. As usual, people fall short of Angela’s strict moral code and have to pay.

A lot of the effects are cut short here, because as the 80’s wore on, the MPAA was on a real tear and censoring all horror movies to the point of them being TV friendly. Even still, this has one of the most brutal kills ever, as Angela places a person in a hole, neck deep, and proceeds to run over her head with a lawn-mower. Cripes.

In the end, Pamela Springsteen is still as great as ever, but this film does lack a lot of the magic from the first two. It’s still a decent entry, just not as great as it’s predecessors. I will say that it’s absolutely head & shoulders above Return to Sleepaway Camp, which is without a doubt one of the worst movies ever made.

Video: Just as part two, this comes in 1080p high-def widescreen (1.78:1), and looks just as great. They really did a fantastic job of making these releases shine.

Audio: The DTS-HD Master Audio Mono is perfect, with zero complaints.

Audio Commentary w/ Michael A. Simpson [Director] and Fritz Gordon [Writer]: Just as good as they were on part 2as they treat the film and the fans who listen to this with respect.

A Tale Of Two Sequels – Part Two: There are a ton of interviews here, including the Director Michael A. Simpson, actors Mark Oliver and Kim Wall, as well as the Cinematographer Bill Mills. I like this one more than the one about part II, because they get in depth about the problems with the MPAA at the time, who weren’t happy with a portion of the kills, including, obviously, the lawnmower death.

Behind The Scenes Footage With Director Michael A. Simpson:
This follows the opening portion with the garbage truck.

Workprint Of The Longer Cut: You would have to be the superfan of superfans to watch this. The quality is horrendous. It looks like someone shot this with a broken 16MM camera, then played it on a wall, recorded that with a VHS, blew up the VHS tape, and then uploaded it to YouTube. We get more scenes of gore, but with missing dialogue, sound effects, and music, it’s not worth it. I’m happy they included this for the sake of offering all things available, but yikes, the quality terrible.

Deleted Gore Scenes: This simply takes all the extra gore shots that were cut from the workprint and presents them, but still in their God-awful quality.

Tony Lives: This is a quick film of Tony from the movie as he’s repeatedly asked questions.

Still Gallery

Home Video Promo Trailer

Over-All: If you’re a Sleepaway Camp fan, then this is an absolute no brainer. Scream/Shout! Factory went out of their way here to present you with everything you could possibly ever want in regards to these films. As I said previously, horror fans are not considered in high-regard by major studios, so it’s insanely refreshing to see a place stick up for us and give us quality releases of the films we’ve all grown up loving. If you’ve never seen these films before but dig 80’s horror, then I have zero qualms with telling you to save the rental and simply buy these right away. Both movies are a lot of fun, and the supplements are seemingly endless. A damn fine job.

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A group of teenagers (including a young David Caruso) drive out for a weekend at the lake.  They of course ignore the warnings from a local gas station owner Joe Taylor (Jack Palance) and continue their trip.  Unsurprisingly, this turns out to be a bad idea and they are soon attacked by an alien (played by the original Predator Kevin Peter Hall) who kills his prey by throwing venomous jellyfish like creatures shaped like Frisbees (naturally).  They try to get some help from the locals but no one believes them apart from Taylor and Fred Dobbs (Martin Landau), a Vietnam veteran suffering from PTSD (who ends up doing more harm than good).

This will probably come as a surprise to no one but Palance and Landau are easily the best parts of the film.  By regular movie standards they both give solid performances, so by the much lower B-movie standards they’re incredible and make Without Warning much more entertaining than it has any right to be.  Palance gives us the tough bad ass performance usually seen in his movies and like many performances he gave before and after this film, he’s the coolest character in the film by far.  As for Landau, he gives a more interesting performance as an emotionally and mentally unstable ex-soldier and actually does such a good job with it, it’s easy to forget that a little over a decade later he would be yelling expletives at Boris Karloff.

As for the production values, they’re actually pretty impressive given the limited budget.  Sure, the evil jellyfish Frisbee creatures can sometimes be seen hanging by strings but I’m willing to let this slide since even blockbusters have been guilty of this problem on occasion.  It also helps that there was some first class talent behind the scenes.  Rick Baker lends a hand creating the alien costume and Dean Cundey (whose future credits would include all three Back to the Future films, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Jurassic Park, and Apollo 13) agreeing to be the cinematographer despite his career beginning to take off after working on Halloween a couple of years before.  We also have special makeup effects artist Greg Cannom (who would go on to win three Oscars) in one of his earlier works.

I wasn’t expecting a whole lot going in but thanks to some nice performances from Palance and Landau as well a talented crew, I was pleasantly surprised by the end result. Without Warning isn’t a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination but all things considered, it’s a surprisingly well made film.     

Special Features

The most notable feature is of course the audio commentary from producer/director Greydon Clark, though that can be very hit and miss at times.  He gives us some interesting tidbits like half of the film’s $150,000 budget going to Palance and Landau’s salaries, another 19,000 was given to Baker to construct the alien costume (all money well spent in my opinion) and that this was actually the film the got David Caruso into SAG (you’re entitled to your own opinion as to whether or not that’s a good thing).  The problem is that there are several times where Clark will run out of stuff to say, leaving the commentary with so much dead air, that I thought I was experiencing sound problems more than once.

Apart from that, there’s some interviews with Cundey, Cannom, co-writer/co-producer Daniel Grodnik,  and actors Chris Nelson and Tarah Nutter.  There’s also a theatrical trailer and a still gallery to round things out.

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