You, yes you, are keeping physical media formats alive. Not the average movie goer, you who will watch endless amounts of utter shittastic celluloid for that one gem. You who watches movies that fall under such sub-genre names “naziploitaion” and “slasher”. Hell, you even seek out satanic panic and psychological mind fucking because you enjoy it god dammit! Don’t worry, you aren’t alone if no one else you have me too. In a world that is becoming increasingly digital the average movie viewer is primarily streaming, downloading, and video on-demand-ing their media. To hell with special features and “bulky” boxes, they say. Bullshit. It’s the Scream! Factories and the WaxRecords that keep us broke but happy.
And then something happens that endangers it for everyone. We get greedy, we take things for granted. And that’s what has happened with the long awaited Scream! Factory Collector’s Edition of Dog Soldiers. After being delayed for about a year, Scream! was finally able to release the Blu to eager fans after taking painstaking measures to get the best print that was available to them. Director Neil Marshall himself gave the seal of approval and it was released to the public.
Who then promptly ripped it to shreds much like the werewolves featured. But here’s the thing, they did the best they could. They delayed the release to try and find better prints but in the ever-present digital age most hard prints have been destroyed or lost. Major complaints come from the grainy quality of the film which should be expected when something that was originally shot on 16mm is blown up to 35mm. It’s like when you print out that awesome spaghetti picture you filtered to perfection Instagram and it still looks blurry. Technology can only do so much folks!
But the bottom line is if we want to continue to have these horror gems coming to us we have to realize some are going to be rough around the edges. There are an endless amount of rough-cut gems just waiting to get a Blu-ray release be it from Scream! Factory or Arrow or any other number of awesome horror distributors popping up. But if all we do is complain and stop buying things, there will be no one to cry to when these companies go away.
Dog Soldiers is a great werewolf movie and it should be seen by all and to be honest it’s a gritty film. It shouldn’t be glossy and slick, it’s rough and tumble soldiers running through the woods and battling gargantuan werewolves, and you want to complain about some grain? I’ve watched my copy twice now and the number of special features and time put into this release is more than enough to make up for less than perfect visuals.
Never bite the hand that feeds.
