Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Graves, The

Collapse
X
Collapse
  •  
    Ian Jane
    Administrator

  • Graves, The

    Click image for larger version

Name:	cover.jpg
Views:	1
Size:	64.0 KB
ID:	385121

    Released by: Anchor Bay UK

    Released on: May 31, 2010.
    Director: Brian Pulido

    Cast: Clare Grant, Julian Murray, Amanda Whyss, Bill Moseley, Tony Todd
    Year: 2009
    Purchase From Amazon


    The Movie:


    Comic book fans from the nineties will have no trouble remembering Brian Pulido - but in case they do, his latest movie, The Graves, reminds us in an early scene that takes place inside Atomic Comics that he was the guy who created Lady Death and a few other 'bad girl' types by shooting one of the lead characters in front of a rack of said comics. But yeah, with that blatant bit of self promotion out of the way, the movie is about these two sisters, Megan (Clare Grant) and Abbey Graves (Jillian Murray), who are out for one last good time before Meg moves to New York City to go to school. After they're done tooling around at the comic store they head to a club, kick a guy in the nuts, and c heck out a band called Calabrese (introduced by none other than…. Brian Pulido). Abbey is videotaping as much of this as she can - after all, it's their last hurrah.


    The next day the two hit the road and wind up at a dinner where a weird priest (Tony Todd) is hanging out with a girl named Becca who mysteriously vomits on the table. The waitress, not really all that phased by this, tells the two girls they should go check out their local tourist attraction, the Skull City Mine, located just a few miles away. Intrigued by the idea of a ghost town, the girls take this advice and soon meet the hostess, a woman with brown teeth calling herself Mama. They pay the admission fee, head into the deserted buildings and soon find themselves being chased by a guy with a beard brandishing a hammer. He makes short work of a few other victims before Meg manages to dispose of him and flag down some help from a passerby in a truck (Bill Moseley). Well, he's not what he seems either, and before you know it bodies are dropping, flies at showing up and sucking the souls out of corpses, and lots of CGI blood effects destroy an interesting premise, a great location, and give a reasonably effective cast little to do but run around the desert and yell.


    Brian Pulido is doing his best to channel Robert Rodriguez here, from the twangy-punkabilly soundtrack to the opening credits sequence right down to his production company's name (Mischief Maker studios? Really? You couldn't have come up with a less obvious swipe?) but ultimately doesn't do a very good job of it. The plot is riddled with logic gaps and scenes that are meant to be scary fall flat - a prime example being a scene where Meg gets 'possessed' by whatever it is that is in the area and starts to growl and snap like a dog. It's not scary, it's just really goofy.


    Pulido has assembled a capable enough cast but hasn't bothered to give them much to work with. Tony Todd is only in the film for about ten minutes and while he's not a bad choice to play a deranged preacher, he's a little too heavy on the fire and brimstone angle. Jillian Murray and especially Clare Grant are plenty easy on the eyes and sex it up a bit early on but aren't given much more of an opportunity to do any more than that, though Grant spends a lot of time hunched over with her cleavage exposed. That counts for something. The script tries to forge an emotional attachment between the two sisters early on and partially succeeds only to more or less forget about it once it all hits the fan. Bill Moseley, very capable of taking roles and really making them his own, can't be bothered to do much more here than we've seen him do what seems like a hundred times over the last few years of his straight to video career. Falling somewhere between Chop Top from Texas Chainsaw 2 and his Otis character from The Devil's Rejects, his character here is nothing new.


    This is a low budget horror movie though, right? Could Pulido save it by tossing in copious amounts of sex and violence to distract us from the fact that the script is terrible and the production values not all that interesting? He could have, but he doesn't. There are a few splatter effects here and there but almost all of them are done with bad CGI and as such the fail to convince. There's no nudity either. So no, there's not enough sex and violence or T&A to really distract us, and instead, it has to depend on the film's non-existent tension. The result is a film both boring and messy and therefore not worth your time. At least the mine setting looked cool.


    Video/Audio/Extras:


    The Graves is presented on DVD in a good 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. With most of the film taking place in the desert and during the day time, the colors tend to run a little bit on the hot side but in the context of the movie, it actually works quite well that way. The image is well defined with nice detail and there are no problems with print damage, mpeg compression artifacts or pesky edge enhancement. Some shimmering is evident here and there but it's not a constant problem. Black levels are generally quite strong as well, and this is, generally, a well encoded disc even if the source material is pretty erratic.


    The primary audio option for the feature is an English language Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound track. Most of the activity comes from the front of the sound mix here, with the surrounds used fairly sparingly and only really springing to life during the scenes where the flies descend upon the corpses and to spread out the sound mix a bit. Regardless, the mix is pretty much problem free, though it shows its low budget roots in spots. Dialogue is easy to understand and the levels are well balanced. As you'd expect for a brand spankin' new production there aren't any problems with hiss or distortion to complain about - you just can't help but wonder if it could have had more rear channel activity and stronger bass. An alternate language Dolby Digital 2.0 track is included, but there are no subtitles offered.

    The commentaries that were included on the U.S. release have been omitted from this British issue, but the other extras are here starting with the first of the four featurettes which is a six minute piece called From Plan To Actual that includes the requisite behind the scenes footage as we see how Pulido again cribs from Rodriguez by shooting his storyboards on video before moving on to finished product. It does appear to be a technique that works fairly well. The second featurette is a one minute blurb called Spot The Gnome in which Pulido lets us know we can try and find a gnome hidden in different parts of the movie if we want to (I didn't) while the third featurette, Behind The Screams, is a twenty-one minute piece that is a basic making of segment that includes cast and crew interviews and more behind the scenes and location footage. The last featurette is Sound Designing The Graves which is a five minute bit about how the sound design work was created for the film. There's also five minutes worth of Audition Footage included on the disc as well.

    Rounding out the extras are a trailer for the feature, a music video by the band Calabrese featured in the movie, a short sport called No Regrets Tattoo that is bit where Pulido and some of his pals get tattoos done (this wasn't on the U.S. release), menus and chapter stops.


    The Final Word:

    The Graves gets an 'A for effort' but simply fails to entertain, amuse or scare. The end result is a tiresome movie that borrows too much from other, better films and which fails to really ever reach beyond boring despite a great location and a few interesting cast members. Anchor Bay UK's DVD looks and sounds about as good as it probably can and it's good some decent, but that's not enough to save this one. Skip it.
      Posting comments is disabled.

    Latest Articles

    Collapse

    • Hot Spur (Severin Films) Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Severin Films
      Released on: April 30th, 2024.
      Director: Lee Frost
      Cast: Joseph Mascolo, Virginia Goodman, John Alderman
      Year: 1969
      Purchase From Amazon

      Hot Spur – Movie Review:

      Director Lee Frost and Producer Bob Cresse's film, Hot Spur, opens in Texas in 1869 with a scene where a pair of cowboys wanders into a bar where they call over a pretty Mexican waitress and coerce her into dancing for them. She obliges, but
      ...
      03-22-2024, 11:53 AM
    • Death Squad (Mondo Macabro) Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Mondo Macabro
      Released on: April 9th, 2024.
      Director: Max Pecas
      Cast: Thierry de Carbonnières, Jean-Marc Maurel, Denis Karvil, Lillemour Jonsson
      Year: 1985
      Purchase From Amazon

      Death Squad – Movie Review:

      Also known as Brigade Of Death, French sleaze auteur Max Pecas’ 1985 film, Death Squad, opens with a night time scene outside of Paris in the Bois de Boulogne Forest where cars pass by a small gang of transsexual
      ...
      03-22-2024, 11:46 AM
    • Roommates (Quality X) Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Quality X
      Released on: February 28th, 2024.
      Director: Chuck Vincent
      Cast: Samantha Fox, Vernoica Hart, Kelly Nichols, Jerry Butler, Jamie Gillis
      Year: 1982
      Purchase From Amazon

      Roommates – Movie Review:

      Directed by Chuck Vincent and released in 1982, Roommates opens with a scene where a young woman named Joan Harmon (Veronica Hart) gets a hotel room with an older man named Ken (Don Peterson, credited as Phil Smith),
      ...
      03-15-2024, 01:10 PM
    • Night Of The Blood Monster (Blue Underground) UHD/Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Blue Underground
      Released on: March 26th, 2024.
      Director: Jess Franco
      Cast: Christopher Lee, Maria Rohm, Dennis Price
      Year: 1970
      Purchase From Amazon

      Night Of The Blood Monster – Movie Review:

      Directed by Jess Franco, The Bloody Judge (or, Night Of The Blood Monster, as it is going by on this new release from Blue Underground) isn't quite the salacious exercise in Eurotrash you might expect it to be, and while it
      ...
      03-15-2024, 01:07 PM
    • Phase IV (Vinegar Syndrome) UHD/Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Vinegar Syndrome
      Released on: March 26th, 2024.
      Director: Saul Bass
      Cast: Nigel Davenport, Michael Murphy, Lynne Frederick, Alan Gifford, Robert Henderson, Helen Horton
      Year: 1974
      Purchase From Amazon

      Phase IV – Movie Review:

      Saul Bass’ 1974 sci-fi/thriller Phase IV is an interesting blend of nature run amuck stereotypes and Natural Geographic style nature footage mixed into one delicious cocktail of suspense and
      ...
      03-15-2024, 01:02 PM
    • The Bounty Hunter Trilogy (Radiance Films) Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Radiance Films
      Released on: March 26th, 2024.
      Director: Shigehiro Ozawa, Eiichi Kudo
      Cast: Tomisaburo Wakayama, Minoru Ôki, Arashi Kanjuro, Bin Amatsu, Chiezo Kataoka
      Year: 1969-1972
      Purchase From Amazon

      The Bounty Hunter Trilogy – Movie Review:

      Radiance Films gathers together the three films in Toie Studios’ Bounty Hunter Trilogy, starring the inimitable Tomisaburo Wakayama. Here’s how the three movies in this
      ...
      03-13-2024, 11:30 AM
    Working...
    X