Thursday, August 12

Deep Rising (ザ・グリード) (1998) - Japanese TOWA Video VHS

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As far as Japanese tapes go, this one appears common, yet Stephen Sommers's Deep Rising is my favorite oceanic monster-run-amok piece 'o crap to "emerge" from the '90s. What's not to love? A "tough" Treat Williams woefully miscast with endless Jack Burton-esqe one-liners, Famke Janssen being all tremendously hot, ridiculous looking gatling machine guns never in need of a reload, Wes Studi, and a giant cryptozoological creature crashing a cruise ship that liquefies its victims. Oh, and piles of said liquefied, gooey skeletal corpses that the monster literally shits out after drinking. Awesome. Perfect rainy day viewing when you don't want to subject yourself to something important like The Abyss.

This tape from TOWA Video is interesting for its lime green clamshell case and lack of any note of the film's English title on the cover. Also notice the D-2 Composite Digital marking on the back. I'm guessing the source for this release was a D-2 tape which I'm guessing again was a big enough deal to note to Japanese consumers at that time. Nowadays, many high definition transfers, especially from smaller DVD-centric studios, are captured on the newer D-5 standard. So yep, analog magnetic tape is still utilized today.   

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I'm actually in love with this TOWA cover. The soothing lime green monster and the gratifying demise of what the best laid out fatality scenes of the late 90s displayed on back. Lovely

...do you dare tread upon the staircase?

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