Deep
Water (2026/Magenta Light
Blu-ray)/Don't Play With
Fire (1979*/**)/Eraser
4K (1996/Warner 4K Ultra
HD Blu-ray)/NCIS: Tony &
Ziva: Season One
(2025/CBS/Paramount DVD)/Sugar
Cookies (1973/Troma
Blu-ray*)/VD
(1972/**both Cult Epics Blu-ray/*all MVD)
4K
Ultra HD Picture: B Picture: B-/B-/X/C/B-/B- Sound:
B/C+/B/C+/C+/C+ Extras: D/C-/C-/C-/C/C- Main Programs: C/C-
(D for censored & English cuts)/C-/C-/C+/C-
Here's
a mix of bad, lame, odd and bizarre releases, including a few trying
to be political, but....
Renny
Harlin's Deep
Water
(2026, but finished 2024) is the action director's almost sequel to
Bait
(2012) but NOT Deep
Blue Sea
(1999) showing how he has managed to wallow at the shallow end of
genre filmmaking top the point everything looks and feels the same,
with little feeling at all if any to boot. Arron Eckhart and Ben
Kingsley got tricked into signing on for this one and even they
cannot stop from drowning in the bad screenplay.
This
'stuck in a' movie has the survivors of a plane wreck trapped in the
title locale, joined by all kinds of killer (digital) sharks. Who
will live? Who will die? Who will fall asleep or laugh when they
are not supposed to? As far as I'm concerned, I was so bored, if
this film was lost deep in any water, it is so forgettable, I doubt
anyone would remember or care. Why Harlin keeps getting hired after
making so many bad films and bombs is beyond me, but this is more
evidence of how NOT to direct and make films. Skip it!
There
are no extras, but that's no surprise either.
Tsui
Hark's Don't
Play With Fire
(1979, aka Dangerous
Encounters Of The First Kind)
is the action director's graphic, extremely angry attempt to make a
drama with political overtones, but is a total, absolute mess. The
film deals with three guys who kill someone with their car when
fleeing a crime scene (they decide to bomb a movie theater?) but a
gal witnesses this and starts blackmailing them to do what she wants
them to do. They follow, but things get worse and worse for them in
the process.
Made
out of frustration with what was going on in Hong Kong at the time,
but instead, we get animal mutilations, animal killings and dead
animals all over the place, going along with all the violence and
bloodshed in between all that. However, the graphic scenes involving
the animals are often extreme, graphic, sadistic, do zero to forward
the narrative (or what there is of it,) and to say the film wallows
in all this is a huge understatement. What were the makers thinking,
walling in this garbage, especially when they apparently were trying
to say something?
This
also kills any character development and unless you have some massive
off-camera knowledge about the film and real life history connected
to it, you are never going to get anything out of it politically and
even after that, you STILL will be hard pressed to find much. The
English-dub cut is a disaster and the 'official' version has
redundant filler reshoots. The footage censored had nothing to do
with any of the animal concerns and only the footage that was cut and
only survived on VHS tape even begins to get this film to show some
kind of direction, yet the animal footage stayed in tact. What a
wreck!
Extras
across the Blu-ray set include
on Disc 1...
Uncensored
International version
Audio
Commentary by Frankie Balboa and Brandon Streussnig
Interview
with actor Paul Che
Interview
with actor Albert Au
Interview
with screenwriter Szeto Cheuk On
Interview
with assistant director O Sing Pui
Trailers
Disc
2
Banned
Chinese version (2K/SD)
English
dubbed version (SD)
Original
Theatrical Trailer
Other
Bonus Extras
Reversible
sleeve w/original Poster art
and
new slipcase art design by Tony Stella.
Charles
Russell's
Eraser
4K
(1996) was a terrible commercial and critical disappointment that
helped to end Arnold Schwarzenegger's reign (along with Last
Action Hero
and Batman
& Robin)
as a top box office draw. This half-based bore has him as
essentially the title character, who makes data and the existence of
people entering the Witness Protection Program possible. However, a
deadly superweapon shows up that disrupts everything and now he has
to stop that. Can he do it?
Vanessa
Williams and James Coburn show up, but even they cannot help this
lame, tired, formulaic screenplay, including some bad digital animals
that were dated and looked bad when the film first came out.
Director Russell has been making mostly B-movies and bad TV of late,
but still delivered duds like this, Bless
the Child
and the especially horrid The
Scorpion King.
He started with films like The
Mask,
the third Nightmare
On Elm Street
and Blob
remake in 1988, then what little promise he had went down the drain.
Too bad he erased that!
Extras
include Digital Movie Code, while the disc adds two weak featurettes:
Reinventing The Modern Action
Hero - The Evolution Of Arnold and '90s
Action Thriller Reimagined.
You
can read more about the forgettable 2022 Eraser
Reborn
sequel via our Blu-ray coverage at this link:
https://fulvuedrive-in.com/review/16161/Baby+Assassins+(2021/Well+Go+Blu-ray)/Chocky:+Th
NCIS:
Tony & Ziva: Season One
(2025) is the latest and most bizarre spin off of the once-beloved
franchise that is on such automatic pilot, it could make AI blush.
This time, the latter lady of the title (Cote de Pablo) was
considered dead from a previous 'event' but somehow survived and now
has her own show. The fact they brought back a dead character and
decided to use human named for the latest spin-off shows how strange
this has all become, more so since David McCallum died from the
original series, the man who singularly gave the debut show the boost
it needed in the first place.
Just
enough of a hit that a second season is coming, we've covered most
versions of the show and you can start with this link to track our
coverage of the various versions on various formats over the years:
https://fulvuedrive-in.com/review/16674/NCIS:+The+Twenty-Second+Season+(2024+-+2025/C
This
one droned on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on
and on. Everyone looks, talks, acts and sounds like each other and
every previous version that its hard to tell what they are trying to
do here that is new or different or interesting, especially since
they fail miserably at that last one. Unless you are a megafan of
some sort, this 'taking place overseas' variant is dull and better
passed on.
Extras
include Deleted Scenes, a Gag Reel and three Making Of featurettes.
Theodore
Gershuny's
Sugar
Cookies
(1973) has been issued yet again on Blu-ray, but we are catching it
this time. You can read more about the film and our older DVD
coverage of that release at this link:
https://fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4156/Sugar+Cookies+(1973/Troma
A
sick pornographer tricks a model into killing herself, unleashing a
vengeful friend he did not count on. As high-concept exploitive that
sounds and is, there are still more good moments here than you might
expect, but it is still an exploitation film and makes no apologies
for it. A product of the counterculture for sure, it is nothing as
compare to how wacky Lloyd Kaufmann and Troma would get. Worth a
look for those who are curious, only put up with this presentation
until they (maybe?) get to doing a 4K version if the original camera
materials are up to it.
Extras
repeat those from the DVD.
Vim
Verstappen's VD
(1972) is the film the director made in between Blue
Movie
(1971) and Dakota
(1974,) both reviewed elsewhere on this site,) two of his best films.
This attempt to do a modern version of Fall
Of The House Of Usher
meets The
Magnificent Ambersons
with some sex and perversion just never adds up or melds together
well. A family name Von Doorn has a cattle slaughter house that has
become a factory because they say the 'leftovers' from the cattle are
being used by an outside company to create birth control pills and
led to great profits.
However, something is not adding up as
we meet a young man who has only recently discovered he is the long
lost son of the patriarch of the family, so now he is set for life.
Or is he? Then there are twists and turns that are not always
convincing, some developments that fall flat and this false sense of
the sinister that starts with music in the opening scene that is too
oversimplified to be taken seriously. The attempt to communicate the
'sinister' in a shallow way continues with the repeated motif of
seeing a cattle slaughtered, et al, that is as dumb as it is
repetitive and totally unconvincing.
The
actors have fared better in other films Verstappen made with them and
needless to say the title (the capital letters of the company the
family owns that fits their last blame) is supposed to communicate
some kind of disease (not just sexual) is deep inside the company.
Wow is this lame, then add the animal mutilation and it is just flat
out fails on all levels. Only see it if you are VERY curious.
Extras
include a
Feature Length Audio Commentary by film historian Peter Verstraten
Festival
of Love (1969) a short film by Wim Verstappen (30 min)
Photo
Gallery
Scorpio
Films Trailers
New
artwork design by Juan Estaban R.
Reversible
sleeve with original Dutch poster art
and
a Slipcase.
Now
for playback
performance. The 2160p HEVC/H.265, 2.35 X 1, Dolby Vision/HDR (10;
Ultra HD Premium)-enhanced Ultra High Definition image on Eraser
4K
has some good shots here and there, but just as many are softer than
they should be and the already bad digitals work has aged very, very
badly. The lossless Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 mixdown for older
systems) tries to boost the old 5.1 digital soundmaster a bit but
exposes the sonic limits and limits of the bad mixing, mastering and
recording of the original theatrical sound master. The combination
offers no demo moments and is more boring than expected.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image on Deep Water is
not always great, has more softness than a recent production should
have, including too much digital visual work and is as inconsistent
as it is forgettable. At least the
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix is more consistent, but
there's nothing special here either.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image in Don't
Play With Fire is on the
soft side and has good color at its best, but also has a few other
issues and we do not include places in the director's cut where only
old VHS footage survived. The Cantonese DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0
Stereo lossless mix can be boxy and have inconsistencies, so only
expect so much from the old audio, which is sometimes just plain
mono.
The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer can on Sugar
can show the age of the materials used, but maybe it should have been
in its 1.33 X 1 aspect ratio from the DVD or available both ways.
Could it have looked better block style? Who knows, but this is an
improvement from the old DVD, as is the still shockingly lossy
Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono presentation. A nice upgrade for fans with
better color, but only by so much.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on VD
can sometimes show the age of the materials used, but some shots are
meant to be soft, through others clearly not. Color is a highlight
when we don't have to look at mutilation and its consistent with
other Verstappen Blu-ray releases
from Cult Epics (though all the others looked at least a bit better
than this.) The original
theatrical monophonic sound is here in both DTS-HD MA (Master Audio)
2.0 Mono and PCM 2.0 Mono lossless mixes, but both show their age and
are barley different from each other.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on NCIS: Tony & Ziva:
Season One is from the newest production here, yet it is the
softest and not just because it is in the oldest format. The lack of
form and better or different visuals do not help, worried more about
being cookie-cutter and matching the other versions of the show than
anything else. The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 is a little better, but
nothing great here either and its flat character-wise throughout.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
