DVD DETAILS:
Vision
There is a stylishly grim amorality throughout this movie and one which the anamorphic widescreen visual transfer captures extremely well. Slayground is always very grey, stark and downbeat in tone and texture, with drab colors increasingly drained until the tremendous final explosion of surreal color in the climactic showdown. This sequence gorgeously conveys bizarre, garishly surrealistic funhouse atmosphere and effectively transports the movie into a chilling and ruinous dream. Director Bedford also makes rather good use of parallel editing – inter-cutting the thieves with the girl about to die – as a means of stressing the idea of fate’s design from the beginning of the film. It is unusually resonant and evocative of a depressing, downcast world. The strange killer is rarely seen and then only in glimpses or silhouette, the film making much out of his absence and sudden, brutally taunting appearances. The death scenes are stylish, suspenseful and increasingly macabre as the killer sees humor in murder. Indeed, irony is equated with grim sadism in this film and it is in the murder scenes that colors seem most vibrant and alive. Appropriately, there is a striking use of a red light as a coda to the death scenes. At times though, soft focus looks oily and the textures somewhat murky, but these are transfer quibbles in what is a cleverly designed film with a fine use of shadows and misty backlights.
Sound
The sound transfer, however, is in Dolby Digital mono only. Although this need not be a problem, there are moments when Slayground cries out for a 5.1 remix and remastering if such were possible – perhaps if a cult reputation eventually develops, a quality enhancement may eventuate. Nevertheless, the sound design achieves a rare force, whether it is in the use of music (George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone”, also used to good effect by director John Carpenter in Christine) or the eerie manipulation of the killer’s disembodied voice. It is in the funhouse scene, where this voice pervades all spaces that the directional possibilities of home theatre are particularly missed. Still, it is a clean and clear transfer, probably as good and full as mono allows. The score is often deliberately abrasive and affecting and there is much variety as pounding rock alternates with soothing classical to suggest two worlds on what will literally be a collision course. The gentle music is often used almost as a prelude or even a premonition of disaster, however, making it increasingly tense rather than soothing. Early scenes make use of street clamor threatening to drown out human voices (a determinist correlation indeed) and the final mélange of carnival noises is disconcerting and fearfully invigorating. The killer’s odd voice truly does have a mysterious quality – when put through an echo effect, the result is quite startling. read more
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