I was astounded to see that this was getting a blu-ray release and am even more astounded by the quality of the transfer. I've always perceived this as a really ugly movie (and not just in terms of story/FX/dubbing) but seeing it in full-aspect digital clarity for the first time, it's actually quite artful. Many scenes were shot in low light and bathed in blue hues that bled horribly in the old video transfer (which was directly duped for the old DVD releases). It looks like a completely different movie on blu-ray, where the colors and lighting are even. Surprisingly, the sound is a lot clearer too (the video was garbled and bassy).
And something that I didn't anticipate is a 14 minute reel of deleted/extended scenes. They're duped from a bouncy VHS with Asian (or possibly Tamil) subtitles, but there are some funny moments and a brief explanatory "Lord of the Dogs" speech. None of this footage makes the film any more coherent (as the director claims), but it's not like removing it did anything to quicken the pace.
As for the 40 minute "Lord of the Dogs" documentary, the filmmakers have a lot of interesting things to say, though they say it in Italian (the whole thing's subtitled). It's a shame that they didn't get input from any of the actors... and it's kind of weird that they didn't wrangle Alice, considering he likes to joke about what a turkey the film is, and how he only starred on the proviso that it would never be released outside of Spain.
There are also 3 trailers (the first is in HD, the others from video), a gallery of stills/art, and a reversible cover (one side's the American video art, the other's the foreign art featured here on imdb).
All in all, this is a nicely done and thoroughly unexpected release of another bizarre film from the folks behind "Troll 2." I never realized who the filmmakers were before, but now the random senselessness of the movie suddenly makes sense.
reply
share