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[Blu-ray Review] Morbid Cannibal Comedy ‘Ravenous’ Belongs on Your Shelf!
As actor Jeffrey Jones points out in his interview included on this new Blu-ray, the title of Antonia Bird’s cannibal film Ravenous has a few meanings. There’s the obvious one, referring to the ravenous hunger of a cannibal for human flesh. Then there’s the other meaning, referring to the backdrop of the Mexican-American War and the United State’s hunger for more land and power. It’s this layered approach to the genre, along with its great cast and offbeat tone, that makes the underrated Ravenous a wholly remarkable film.
Guy Pearce stars as Captain John Boyd, a recently promoted soldier sent to a remote fort in the Sierra Nevada mountains. At the start of the film he’s being honored for taking down some Mexican army leaders, but in reality he’s a coward who played dead as his platoon was slaughtered. Right off the bat he’s not a character you want to root for.
The fort is populated with a group of misfit soldiers led by Col. Hart (Jeffrey Jones). Amongst them are David Arquette (who plays a stoner), Jeremy Davies, and Neal McDonough. If you watch Justified you know McDonough can play one helluva badass, as he does here. One night, a ravaged man named Col. Ives shows up at the fort and tells them a dark tale of cannibalism. He’s played by Robert Carlyle, who turns in one gleefully insane performance. When the men go to investigate what Ives told them, all hell breaks loose.
Ravenous is a cannibal movie, but it also utilizes some Native American mythology of the Wendigo. There’s a pinch of vampirism mixed in as well, which makes for some diabolical twists in the story. The tone see-saws between suspenseful and dark to almost whimsical during scenes you wouldn’t expect a playfulness to come through. For example, there’s one tense chase scene in the forest, but during it composer Damon Albarn’s score is really perky, almost like a Mark Mothersbaugh tune. This combination of playful and morbid gives Ravenous a fun, comedic tone.
Guy Pearce, just coming off his first big role in L.A. Confidential, brings a stoic, solemn vibe to Boyd. While he may deliver the goods, this is Robert Carlyle’s show. It’s a maniacal, intense performance and there’s something really terrifying in his eyes that tells you he isn’t fucking around. He delivers these macabre monologues about the power of devouring human flesh that have such confidence in them that it’s scary. Pearce does get to shine a bit later on once he’s gotten a taste for human meat, but it’s Carlyle who grabs you by the balls the whole time.
Ravenous explores a lot of territory: power, mortality, morality, manifest destiny, redemption, etc. It really goes beyond a simple cannibal comedy, traversing through a cold, metaphysical landscape. I highly recommend it and now with Scream Factory’s new Blu-ray, you have no excuse!
The 1080 widescreen transfer is fine and highlights the film’s grim atmosphere. There’s nothing that really pops though. It oftentimes look like a standard definition DVD. The 51. DTS-HD Master Audio sounds fantastic, however. The score really shines.
Scream Factory has carried over the three audio commentaries previously included on the DVD edition. The best track features director Antonia Bird and composer Damon Albarn as they keep things really honest and insightful. There’s rarely a pause on that one. The track with screenwriter Ted Griffin and actor Jeffrey Jones is great as well. It’s obvious that Jones really has a strong fondness for this film. The last track is with Robert Carlyle. Although he delivers a powerful performance in the film, his commentary is wicked boring with loooong stretches of nothing.
The new special feature is a 20-minute interview with Jeffrey Jones. He really loves this film as well as the time period it takes place in. He drops serious knowledge about Native Americans, the Mexican-American War, and other historical tidbits relating to the production. It was interesting to learn that he actually convinced Bird to change the script so that his character would meet a different fate than originally planned. He also talks about the working condition they experienced shooting in Poland and how they created fake snow. You’re definitely going to want to watch this interview when the film ends. Bravo, Mr. Jones.
The disc also includes about 10 minutes of deleted scenes with option commentary by Bird, a trailer and TV spot, and a photo gallery.
Ravenous has gone underrated for far too long. Be part of the solution and check out this Blu-ray!
Night School, director Ken Hughes and writer Ruth Avergon‘s tale of a headhunting slasher on the streets of Boston, arrived in the early Golden Age of the slasher film and never quite broke through the endurance test that other films in the subgenre, like Friday the 13th, managed to pass with flying colors. Blame it on a more cerebral tone, a crowded market, whatever you like, but saying it’s a shame that the film didn’t break through doesn’t begin to cover it.
Night School isn’t just an underrated slasher, or an underseen one. For my money, it’s one of the best films the subgenre has ever produced, full stop, and Vinegar Syndrome’s new 4K UHD restoration, arriving just in time for the film’s 45th anniversary, is must-have proof. Stacked with special features highlighting the craft of the film and its place in slasher history, and headlined by a gorgeous restoration showcasing the wonderfully textured production, this is Night School as it’s meant to be seen for slasher devotees everywhere.
So, what makes the film so effective? It starts very simply, with the revelation that a killer with a very cool knife and a motorcycle helmet as a mask is murdering young women in Boston, taking off their heads, and dropping those heads in the nearest body of water (no matter how small).
Solving the case falls on Judd Austin (Leonard Mann), a detective with an academic background who traces all of the victims in one way or another back to a local night school. There, suspicion falls on a womanizing professor (Drew Snyder) who sleeps around on his research assistant and romantic partner, Eleanor (Rachel Ward), whose own death could be right around the corner.
I’m doing my best to stay as spoiler-free as possible here, not just because I think plenty of slasher fans still need to see Night School, but because the film is quite determined to be a whodunit in the classic Italian giallo sense. The kills are brutal and elaborate, the killer deliberately covered head-to-toe in leather and a gleaming black helmet, the knife and the headhunting a disturbing signature. Avergon’s script is well-versed in the trappings of exactly this kind of story, complete with red herrings galore. And yet, by the time it’s all wrapping up, there’s also the sense that the answer was right there in front of you the entire time, something the very best films by legends like Mario Bava and Dario Argento could also achieve.
But on to the restoration: Like the best of the gialli, Night School is also a beautifully engineered film full of colors and delicate camera compositions and sound design. The opening kill, which takes place on a playground carousel outside of a daycare, is rich in exactly this kind of thing, from the cityscapes that lead into the scene to the sound of a motorcycle slowly rolling forward, its engine already dead. Cinematographer Mark Irwin, best known for his many collaborations with David Cronenberg, paints the film in rich reds, absinthe greens, and haunting, chilled blue-white light on wet Boston streets, all of which are preserved beautifully by the restoration team at work on this one.
It’s a movie that very deliberately evokes a specific place – the aging streets of Boston in the 1980s, and the halls of relatively low-level academia – and then takes that place into haunted territory, saturating every frame with color and shadow that suggests a killer lurking just out of view.
Night School is not a massively gore-heavy film, but it does deliver the slasher goods with a series of tense, often unpredictable kills and body discoveries that range from the darkly comic to the flat-out jaw-dropping. That’s thanks to the sound design, the score, the editing from Robert Reitano, and more, all of which add to the film’s giallo soul.
In every case, the scene’s geography is outstanding, and it’s easy to see where the simplest possible kill shot might land, but the film never goes for the obvious. Throw in a surprisingly (for 1981, anyway) feminist bent to the storytelling and some very progressive moments for an early slasher film, and this one fits right in with Black Christmas and The Slumber Party Massacre as a film with depth you can just keep unpacking.
That depth, helped along by a load of featurettes and two new commentary tracks featuring members of the crew, is what stands out the most in this new 4K set. Night School may be a niche film recognized mostly by horror addicts and the slasher faithful, but it deserves to be something more, a landmark on the roadmap of slasher cinema history. It’s one of the best in the genre, and this restoration highlights, underlines, and shouts that from the rooftops.
Night School is now available in 4K UHD from Vinegar Syndrome.
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