Saturday, May 23

Some quick thoughts on Shadow: Dead Riot (2006) on Blu-ray


Yep, I know I'm just fucking asking for it, aren't I? Without even seeing it, I knew I wouldn't care for it, but I went for it anyway. In my defense, I wanted to how Shriek Show handled one of their debut Blu-rays (the other Flesh for the Beast) and this edition can oddly be found cheaper than the DVD editions.

Anyway, Tony Todd's a rasta Candyman inmate resurrected by blood with a legion of undead to reap havoc upon his former prison now habituated by a few women and even fewer staff. It's up to a young Michelle Obama look-a-like (Carla Greene) to end it being fueled by injections of Todd's own mystical blood.

This flick only solidified my indifference towards WIP material. Watching frumpy women shower, lesbian advances by guards, and a prison doc sex up inmates gets real boring after about ten minutes into an hour of such action shoved at our feet. It also doesn't help the women are dressed in Old Navy's vibrant and sassy athletic Spring sweats. Misty Mundae's performance towers above all others here and I'm being honest. Also the zombie outbreak finally occurs with not even a half hour left.

The gore is fucked up in the wrong way as well. Even though this was the ten minute longer unrated version, the crimson seems all too reluctantly released from arteries. When it does get splashed about it's either a too bright raspberry jam color or nearly black. I'd like the ask the creators if they understood this was a direct-to-DVD production.

I wasn't expecting much from the Blu-ray, given Shriek Show's dubious track record of merely passable DVD transfers, but I was pleasantly surprised. The 1080p MPEG-4 AVC-encoded transfer generally looks great and probably matches the quality found in the HD source master. SS even threw in a lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track that really only goes on to nakedly reveal the indie originals of the sound design and abundance of stock sound effects. All of the extra features found on the unrated double DVD set are included here. Hopefully the studio can keep this up as they move to debuting non-homegrown properties on BD.

1 comment:

I Like Horror Movies said...

I had to make a double take when I saw Shadow and Blu-Ray in the same subject line. Then again, I would have been equally surprised if the words "Bought" "DVD" and "Dead Riot" were in the same sentence as well.

...do you dare tread upon the staircase?

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