Sea Beast (aka Troglodyte) + Backwoods (2008/RHI Telefilms/Genius DVDs)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C     Extras: D     Telefilms: C-/D

 

 

RHI is back with more bad Horror genre sub-B-level features and both are pretty bad, but one is somehow worse than the other, or is it one is barely not a bomb?  Backwoods is the lesser of the two, in yet another weak rehash of Texas Chain Saw Massacre that expects us to care about the fate of Haylie Duff when the whole mess is designed to get you to root for the killers.  The real victim of this one is anyone who views it.

 

Sea Beast was originally called Troglodyte, but that was too complex a word for the intended audience and to complex versus any concept in the entire script for this goofy outing that has the latest of a thousand releases to reference the classic poster for Jaws (1975) and the only amusing twist for the title killer is that it can go on land and become invisible.  Seems any original ideas were invisible too.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on both is weak in detail, depth and even color, with Beast having bad digital effects to boot.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 on both badly stretches out sound obviously not designed for such and besides the bad recording quality, the mix/soundfield is too much towards the front speakers.  And neither have any extras and we can see why.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo