DVD DETAILS:
Vision
The 16:9 enhanced widescreen transfer is nonetheless effective in preserving the film’s design as something of a South American western (indeed, the film is critically considered a companion piece to Straight to Hell, if it is acknowledged at all). It is evidently taken from a quite pristine print and is full of a sense of earthen saturation in its use of locations and its emphasis on grit; the golds, reds, yellows, greens and browns especially effective as are the frequent gory effects in what is a film about an intense, gathering and out-of-control carnage. To capture this notion of an unmanageable madness, the film is thus ever more deliberately stylized, with grotesque looming close-ups on occasion and frequent violence that seems both a homage to, and parody of, the style of the late Sam Peckinpah (whose name appears on a grave marker in the film), who often romanticized Mexico (where Cox was filming and where he would, like Peckinpah, return). Its lush jungle iconography is well-sustained and Cox uses a mobile camera for a fluidly horrific immediacy, constantly undercutting the offbeat comedy with the inevitable recourse to violence. The result is a deliberate outrageousness and a provocative challenge to any conventional notions of drama. It adroitly uses religious symbolism most ironically, with Walker paralleled further to Christ in a scene parodying the last supper, for audacious affect.
Sound
The sound transfer is effective in Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo but has the same peculiarly intense crispness that also plagued the region 4 DVD of Cox’s earlier cult classic Repo Man. While solid in terms of its home theatre possibilities, the voices especially (and some diegetic noises) sound as though they take place in an echo chamber in the middle of the screen and thus often feel somewhat hollow as they then spread through the soundscape. Paradoxically enough, they are also always crisp and well-defined. The score is often intentionally bizarre and grating although by the end of the film is used for a most ironic sense of counterpoint, even something of a deliberately alienating device perhaps – evidence of its own nature as a form of dramatic artifice. It is thus as unusual as is the film. Incidental sounds are often truly vibrant. Harris’ voice-over functions as an ironic mock-documentary narration, indicating a man convinced of his own importance as he talks about his exploits in the third person, further evidence of the self-aggrandizing nature of his mission. This indicates that the film is indeed the world as presented entirely through the protagonist’s own warped grandiosity, hence the absence of any normality or sanity – he is incapable of perceiving such. Often, the stability of his voice and demeanour is used in total contrast to what is going on around him, as if he is wholly unaware of the lack of control. read more
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