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Released by: Shout! Factory
Released on: April 12th, 2016.
Director: Robert Kirk/Gerard Kilkoine
Cast: Anthony Perkins, Lyle Alzado
Year: 1988/1989
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The Movies:
Two cult classics from the MGM vaults starring Anthony Perkins on Blu-ray for the first time.
The Destroyer:
First up is Robert Kirk's 1988 film, The Destroyer (or Shadow Of Death if the title card on the print used for this release is to be believed), which begins when a mass murderer named Ivan Moser (Lyle Alzado) avoids death due to a freak power surge and, when a riot breaks out, seemingly escapes from the prison. At least, his corpse was never found.
Months later, an actress named Sharon Fox (Lannie Garrett) lands the part in a low budget movie being shot at the same prison that was the scene of such chaos earlier in the picture. The film's director, Robert Edwards (Anthony Perkins), thinks the location is great but Sharon, she's not so sure. It's kind of creepy the way that run down old prisons can be. She wonders if there isn't more to this place than just concrete walls and steel bars. Sharon's stunt double, Susan (Deborah Foreman), is also freaked out by all of this but the film's screenwriter, resident Romeo David (Clayton Rohner), is keen to dig around the place. Why? He's figuring he can dig up some dirt on the man in charge, a warden named Karsh (Pat Mahoney). After all, there are still a lot of unanswered questions about the riot and the deaths that it caused.
As the production gets underway, Karsh makes it pretty clear that he wants Edwards and his crew out of there. But that's not going to happen. It seems that someone, maybe Moser himself, has got a thing for Susan and he's more than happy to have her around - but is Moser really dead? And what's up with that electric chair? Somebody should have looked into that before all of this started.
The Destroyer works best when Alzado is running around on screen being big and goofy in an attempt to be scary. He's not scary. He's just big and goofy. Maybe in real life if Lyle Alzado was chasing you around it would be cause for concern but when you're watching him chase other people, fictional characters at that, it's hard to get too worked up about it. But again, he is big, and he is goofy, and there's a novelty to that aspect of the movie that is senseless to ignore. Lyle Alzado is just fun to watch.
The rest of the cast? Well, Perkins was always a pretty reliable actor and he's also fun to watch here. His director is a bit of a scumbag, not to be trusted and up to no good. If he gets a movie made, well so much the better but he's hardly noble. Perkins plays the part well. He's an asset to the film for sure. Deborah Foreman and Lannie Garrett are fun to look at but their characters aren't all that interesting. They do they best with what they have to work with.
There are some pretty cool makeup effects here and the prison setting is great, if sorely underused. The movie goes at a pretty good pace but the plot occasionally loses track of things. Still, this is fun. Particularly if you have an inexplicable affinity for watching big, goofy Lyle Alzado running around trying to be scary.
Edge Of Sanity:
The second film is quite a bit better, at least as far as 'serious movies' are concerned. Directed by Gerard Kilkoine in 1989 for producer Harry Alan Towers, Edge Of Sanity opens with a scene that introduces us to a young Henry Jekyll and explains in no uncertain terms why he'll grow up to have… issues. And grow up he does (at which point he's played by Anthony Perkins), after attending medical school and setting up practice as a doctor in London. Here he seems to live a comfortable life along with his pretty wife Elizabeth (Glynis Barber), but appearances, as we all know, can be deceiving.
Henry's life starts to unravel once he starts experimenting with alternatives to pain relief, specifically through the use of cocaine - and who better to test it on than himself? Of course, once that gets mixed, accidently, with another chemical he doesn't just get high but in fact transforms Jekyll's alter ego, Jack Hyde. As the story goes, Hyde is everything that Jekyll is not - suave, cool, confident. He quickly befriends a ne'er-do-well named Johnny (Ben Cole) who introduces him to the pleasures of the flesh available at a brothel run by Madame Flora (Jill Melford) but once the whores in her employ indulge in what Hyde's weaker persona sees as blasphemy, he leaves. Instead, Hyde finds Susannah (Sarah Maur-Thorp), a beautiful prostitute who inspires in him memories of his childhood, the kind of memories that tie into that opening scene.
And then the prostitutes that populate London's east end, where Jekyll has set up shop, start turning up dead.
This one deserves a bigger audience than it seems to get. Perkins is great in the dual role, he gets to do the meeker, milder thing with Jekyll and then go over the top as Hyde, both traits he's shown he can do well as an actor. His accent might be a bit dodgy in spots but the script plays to his strengths and gives him plenty of screen time while the makeup effects employed to transform him into his darker self are effective and eerie. There's a lot of great set design here as well, some very impressive use of color and some effective locations employed throughout the movie (most of it was shot in Hungary). As such, we get lots of atmosphere and a lot of very cool looking eye candy scattered about the film.
The story does an interesting job of adapting the Jack The Ripper mythos and turning it into a take on the Jekyll And Hyde legend while at the same time bringing it into what was, at the time it was made, the modern day. Fast paced and sleazy enough to hold our attention throughout, this one plays with some oddball themes and ideas in how the events from Jekyll's past probably shaped him - it never fleshes this out into anything all that substantial but watching it try is still plenty entertaining. It's a bit dated in its style, very much a product of the eighties, but there's a lot of flash on display here.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Both films are presented in widescreen transfers presented in AVC encoded 1080p high definition with the first feature framed at 1.78.1 and the second a 1.85.1. Although there is a disclaimer at the beginning of The Destroyer basically saying they did the best with what they had to work with, it actually looks pretty good. It's a bit soft in spots but the encoding is decent so that when all that smoke and all that darkness hits the screen, the compression is held in check. Colors look soft in few spots but are fine most of the time and detail, while never reference quality, is just fine. Edge Of Sanity looks quite a bit better, with much stronger, bright colors and considerably stronger detail and texture. Skin tones look really good here too, and those close up shots of Perkins unravelling, they're pretty intense!
The English language DTS-HD 2.0 Stereo audio tracks on the disc sound pretty good. Dialogue stays clean, clear and nicely balanced and the scores have pretty good depth to them. There are no issues with any hiss or distortion, things sound just fine here. Optional subtitles are provided for both features in English.
Extras are limited to menus, chapter selection for each feature, and an original theatrical trailer for each film.
The Final Word:
Scream Factory's Blu-ray release of The Destroyer/Edge Of Sanity may not be a feature packed special edition but for niche titles like these two, well, the presentation is a good one. Both films are a lot of fun, with the Destroyer working as a B-level eighties fun fest and Edge Of Sanity holding up well as a seriously effective horror picture. Perkins fans should snap this up post haste!
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
