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Re-Electrifying a Dead Cop to Stop EVIL! “The Blue Jean Monster” reviewed! (88 Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Click Here to Purchase “The Blue Jean Monster” available on Blu-ray!

Soon-to-be first-time dad Tsu Hsiang can’t wait to meet his son.  Often times, his cop vocation intrudes on being there for his wife during her pregnancy as his torn between work and family, trying to be a good man in both regards, but when a tip comes through of a suspected bank robbery, Hsiang can’t neglect his duty and pursues the thieves in a high speed and gun-blazing chase that ends in his death as a construction site pile of steel rebar crushes him during the arrest.  His corpse left under the rebar overnight, a storm causes a transformer to fall on top of him and a cat providing a mystical lifeforce.  The electrical currents course through his dead body, reanimating him with the superhuman strength and invulnerable to pain, but with a cost as Tsiang is slowly rotting away, unable to heal or enjoy any of his senses.  Tsiang also has to recharge his body with electrical volts direct to body in order to continue being reanimated.  With time running out, the cop’s two goals are to meet his unborn child and to capture the gang responsible for him becoming an undead monster. 

While “The Blue Jean Monster” is not the eminent representation of comedy-action with elements of science fictional horror to come out of the Hong Kong movie industry, the early 90’s Category III film does rank high marshalling an entertaining “Dead Heat” (1988) interpretation for Eastern audiences.  The sophomore film of director Ivan Lai, aka Kai-Ming Lai, (“Daughter of Darkness,” “The Peeping Tom”) and the last script credit for Kam-Hung Ng emerges as a bucket list imbroglio of the inexplicable mysticisms at play as well as the good die young but win in the end.  The Jonathan Chow (“Haunted Jail House”) produced film is a coproduction of Golden Harvest Films, Diagonal Pictures, and Paragon Films. 

Not just a mindless killing machine resurrected like an electrified phoenix for revenge and murderous rout, Tsu Hsiang’s rebirth out of death arouses complications around fleeting special moments.  Playing exactly his profile of a mid-30-year-old is the late “Her Vengeance” and “The Killer” actor Fui-on Shing as a cop torn between life and death, literally.  Struggling to comprehend what’s happened to him, Tsu Hsiang has no time to explore the root cause; instead, Hsiang instantly moves forward, learning on the fly, his newfound postmortem powers of invulnerability, immense strength, and to be exasperated right into a pale-eyed version of the angry Hulk.  Shing’s duality on levity and fierce cleaves “The Blue Jean Monster” into its well-intended multifaceted of genres with soft buttery ease.  Shing’s square jaw and large frame doesn’t quell the lighter touch he brings an even softer side to Tsu Hsiang with his intake of Power Steering (Wai-Kit Tse, “Mr. Vampire 1992”), a street nickname for a former hooligan took under Hsiang’s wing after killing his father, in a supposed criminal altercation gone awry.  Power Steering best friend Gucci (“Gloria Yip, “Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky”) becomes the primary target for the gang as she inadvertently becomes a hostage and winds up with the thieves’ hard stolen loot.  The circular, trifold connection between Hsiang, the troublesome young acquaintances, and the gang, helmed by Japanese actor Jun Kunimura (“Audition”) creates double edged complications Hsiang has to juggle and manage while being undead and a soon-to-be father.  Mei-yee Wu, Bei-Dak Lai, and “Mr. Vampire’s” Siu-Fung Wong playing Fui-on Shing’s wife Chu along with “Sex and Zen” star Amy Yip as the lustfully bosomed Death Ray, a gay man conversion therapy seductress, fill out the cast. 

The 1991 film has fast-paced action, politically incorrect humor, and spectacular physical and hand-drawn visual effects.   “The Blue Jean Monster” relied heavily on the skill of the cast and crew to elevate a staggering, fast-and-loose story that barely bridges gaps of its presaged plot holes.  There’s also some fast-and-loose editing slips that expose oversights, such as reused unmasking scene of Jun Kunimura’s head robber and showing five members of a five-member gang huddled behind a flipped van in a scene that was supposed to be sans Kunimura as his character was chasing after Gucci and the money through a construction zone.  Yet, “The Blue Jean Monster” is too enjoyable, too funny, and too drop-dead neat that any and all flaws can be written off as negligible.  Heedless humor encapsulates an antiquated way of thinking that shapes “The Blue Jean Monster” into a time bygone novelty.  When Tsu and Power Steering are suspected gay lovers, as they’re physically intertwined in electrocution to recharge Tsu undeadness, and AIDs becomes the center of the joke, casually tossed in a handful of times even by the brief portrayal of two colorfully sweater-wearing, feminine-displayed men wanting nothing to do with Tsu and Power Steering’s misperceived actions for fear of the deadly virus.  That just epitomizes the slapstick wackiness this not typical but warranted Cat III feature that transfixes with a lot of borderline insensitive satire kneaded into the modish action and special effects of every other Hong Kong film in a saturated market. 

“The Blue Jean Monster” takes over United States and North America courtesy of the UK distributor 88 Films, through MVD Visual from the Fortune Star Media Limited catalogue, with a new AVC encoded, 1080p high definition, Blu-ray.  The BD50 comes top of the line within the limits of the format with a bitrate decoding the original aspect ratioed widescreen 1.85:1 presented and newly restored 2K scanned film an average of at or just under 35Mbps.  Nearly being a non-issue coinciding with a pristine original print, the dual layer disc offers plenty of breathing room to display “The Blue Jean Monster’s’ range of motion, sufferable color palette, painted composite effects, and masterstrokes in lighting a fast-paced pressing without the blight of artefacts.  A few darker scenes are not as rich because of compositional effects but still render significantly with detail under a slightly more penetrating grain.  The overall grain naturally infuses with the 35mm print and translates nicely to a transferred digital scan.   The original, uncompressed Cantonese LPCM 2.0 mono track is the sole offering that, in truth, is all this comical, cosmic caper needs with agreeable action Foley and ambience and some looney absurdity tacked on for good measure.  None of the assortment ever sounds pressed and squished through the single channel suggesting a pretty clean, well-kempt sound design from over the years.  ADR dialogue favors less spatial position but that’s expected with 90’s Hong Kong cinema and is also well-preserved in its fidelity with a clear and damage free recording.  English subtitles are optionally available.  This special edition includes a new interview with assistant director Sam Leong Man Made Monster, the original Hong Kong trailer, and image gallery.  The limited-edition set comes with reflective and glistening slipcase sheathing the same but lusterless composite illustration, artwork created by James Neal.  Inside the green Amaray Blu-ray case, the reverse side of the cover art sports the original Hong Kong one sheet illustration stretching both ends, inferring nearly all the action and characters in the story, along with a doubled-sided cardboard poster of the reversible cover art.  The not rated release comes region locked on A and B and has a runtime of 96 minutes.

Last Rites: If a fan of “Dead Heat,” “The Blue Jean Monster” can prolong the action-caffeinated, narcotized high with supercharged unrest, necropsy humor, and the walking, talking, inexplicable undead in another stellar package and quality release from 88 Films!

Click Here to Purchase “The Blue Jean Monster” available on Blu-ray!

Oscar Wilde’s Not-So-Evil…”The Canterville Ghost” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on


An ambitious physics professor Hiram Otis obtains a research grant that requires him to study in England, pulling his wife, daughter, and two young boys from their Indiana home into a strange new world. In an age of obsolete aristocracy, the Otis family is able to afford rent at the grand Canterville Hall, a legendary castle with an infamous tale of death and suspicion that also might have resulted in being an affordable estate for the American family. Legend records have it that the lord of the castle, Sir Simon de Canterville, had subsequently killed his wife due to his obsessions and became the victim of his wife’s family spiteful vengeance by being chained to a dungeon cell. For 400 years, Sir Simon remained in that cell and his ghost haunts Canterville Hall, but despite their beliefs in the supernatural, the physics professor and his wife can’t see the ghost and only their teenage daughter and two young boys are able to witness him roam the halls, haunting those who live within the castle walls.

Every once and awhile, we’ll thoroughly review a light-hearted fantasy, horror, or sci-fi film and since we’re hot off the heels of the review for Wes Craven’s “Summer of Fear,” the made-for-television train might as well keep chug-chug-chugging alone with the 1996 TV movie adaptation of the Oscar Wilde novella, “The Canterville Ghost.” Distributed by ABC, the Sydney Macartney (as Syd Macartney) directed and Robert Benedetti teleplay written installment tries to differentiate itself and standout amongst a plethora of adaptations that span across the globe, but the American Broadcast Company, a subsidiary of the great and powerful Disney, aimed to separate from the masses by adding star studded power and the result brought a rejuvenation to the ye old tale over two decades ago.

The big name headliner is none other than Captain Jean-Luc Picard himself, Patrick Stewart, two years after his 7-year stint on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Stewart, who co-produced the film, adds his theatrical flair and is absolutely brilliant shaping drama monologues into dense thickets that define Sir Simon de Canterville’s ghost, but there’s an issue; the problem doesn’t lie with Patrick Stewart, but with how Benedetti’s teleplay expos from the story as a continuous, if not slightly jumbled, stream of old English that just feels like rambling. To alleviate that strain is Stewart’s co-star Neve Campbell to add a softer, glassy-eyed touch to the story with a pinch of plain jane American girl insecurities, characterized in Wilde’s story as Virginia Otis. Perhaps in the beginning portion of the height of her career, Campbell finds herself between “Party of Five” and hitting scream queen status as Sydney Prescott in “Scream,” but the “Wild Things” actress wasn’t that sultry or that chased in “The Canterville Ghost” who only took upon an annoyed teenage girl persona, wishing her life was back in America up until the mysterious spirit of Sir Simon de Canterville allured a spark into her dull life. Alongside Stewart and Campbell, Daniel Betts, Ciarán Fitzgerald, Raymond Pickard, Cherie Lunghi, Donald Sinden, Joan Sims, and the late Edward Wiley, who died shortly before the film’s premiere, costar.

Going into “The Canterville Ghost” was nothing short of knowing nothing other than the fact the Patrick Stewart and Neve Campbell were in the lead roles of a Disney backed, family film and to be completely honest, Macartney’s vision completely underwhelms. Along with the verbose nature of the script-to-teleplay alterations, the magical supernatural portions are inarguably cheap, even for television. The simple superimposing of Sir Simon de Canterville offered no stimulation as the the two scenes just didn’t splice together well to seamlessly make the grade. Firecracker explosions and party store cobwebs dilute even thinner the already slim pickings of special effects that top when Virginia Otis crosses over into a dense fogged ghostly realm thats chopped, cropped, and edited with such disorganization, the entire scene feels more lost than Virginia trying to escape the other side back to the living.

Sydney Macartney’s “The Canterville Ghost” is presented for the first time ever on Blu-ray courtesy of the U.K. distributor Second Sight Films. The Blu-ray is presented in the Academy ratio of 1.33:1 with 1080p resolution on a MPEG-4 AVC BD 25. Second Sight’s release will have the best looking version of this film, if the quality is anything like the screener sent to me, with a strong color palette, minor digital noise, and rich in great detail; so detailed in fact that the blemishes on Neve Campbell and Daniel Betts can be seen. The English DTS-HD audio track is lively, but not entirely boastful with more thematic and dramatic elements. Dialogue track is clean and clear and the score by “Dead Heat” and “Tremors” composer Ernest Troost augments his fairy tale rendition into the mix. Bonus material includes new interviews with director Sydney Macartney and producer-writer Robert Benedetti. Second Sight’s presentation of Hallmark Entertainment’s “The Canterville Ghost” has strong Blu-ray technical potential, but despite the big names of that time period and a visually stimulating setting, the fantastic adventure through a cursed ghost’s melodrama and a bored young girl’s tenure of self discovery unfortunately didn’t rivet with excitement or wonder, losing steam with it’s important message that life is more than being in a bubble of stagnant disappointment and guilt.

Handcuff Evil! R.I.P.D. news!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

The Big Lebowski and True Grit star Jeff Bridges has been confirmed for a buddy cop undead comedy called R.I.P.D. which stands for Rest In Peace Department.  The Academy Award winning actor joins along side Ryan Reynolds in this Universal Studios film about two dead cops, one recently dead and the other a long time dead gunslinger, make their routine round on trying to keep the dead quiet.  Sounds a bit like Dead Heat, doesn’t it?

Read more after the break!

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