For the first half of the '90s, Full
Moon Entertainment were the kings of straight-to-video horror and
sci-fi, cranking out some very memorable films like Puppet Master
and Subspecies
that were among the most well-made flicks produced specifically for
the VHS and laserdisc market. While their output dropped in quality
in the later-90s and never really recovered, they have never
forgotten their roots, and over the years have offered several
re-releases of the movies from their “golden era,” when they were
a subsidiary of Paramount. But up until recently, those DVD
re-releases typically featured the same old fullscreen
laserdisc-quality transfers that we had been seeing since the films
were new. This never bothered me, mind you: I just figured that they
still looked like the made-for-early-90s-home-video films that they
were, and it was an authentically nostalgic way to watch them. Over
the last few years, though, Full Moon has been giving these films
some beautiful restorations for blu-ray: going back to the original
negatives or interpositives, overhauling the rushed-at-the-time
color-correction, and releasing the films in widescreen for the first
time since whatever theatrical premieres they may have once gotten.
While part of me will always love the nostalgic experience of
watching these films on tape, I can't help but be really impressed by
these restorations: they really show off just how good early-Full
Moon's production values were. The latest vintage Full Moon film to
get the blu-ray treatment is 1994's Dark Angel: The Ascent,
and we were lucky enough to get an early look at this new
restoration.
Dark Angel
is an interesting but very flawed film. At a story level it is very
ambitious, and it has some very interesting themes at work.
Unfortunately, this ambition hits a wall of limitations forced upon
it by the low-budget, and I can only imagine fairly rushed,
production. It's not an outright failure – I was too intrigued by
its core concepts to call it that – but it is nowhere near a
success. Ultimately it falls pretty flat, and is one of the weaker
Full Moon flicks from around this time (though not quite at the
rock-bottom that is Lurking Fear).
It seems to be going for a dark, adult-oriented hybrid of superhero
and vigilante story, a la The Crow,
but it never really finds a firm narrative drive. It is about a demon
(Angela Featherstone) who dreams of going to the world above and
living among humans (like some sort of hellish Little Mermaid), but
when she arrives in our world she is shocked and horrified by how
cruel and violent it is, and makes it her mission to dish out
vengeance against evildoers. As a premise, this is great – as is
the philosophical undertone that the residents of Hell aren't evil,
but are like a metaphysical justice system with a strict ethical
code. The early scenes in particular are very entertaining, as we
observe our demon antihero, Veronica, living in Hell with her parents
who just don't get her: it's a very normal, very human situation,
except surrounded by Gothic horror set-pieces and fire. The
dissonance between the visuals and the drama is used for a welcome
bit of humor, as the premise is established with tongue firmly in
cheek. Some of the types of human evils she encounters is also quite
interesting, as it is every bit as relevant today as it was twenty
years ago when first released: racist cops beating up black
pedestrians, a decidedly Trump-ish politician throwing around hateful
anti-immigrant rhetoric. It's a bit depressing how much our go-to
examples of systematic oppression and bigotry haven't changed or
diminished at all in two decades... but this also means that the
themes at the center of Dark Angel
have aged well and remained current.
"It's so hard to find ways to articulate your teenage angst when you are already literally in hell..." |
Unfortunately,
nearly everything else about the script is pretty disappointing. Her
acts of vengeance against evil humans have no real direction or
narrative thrust; it feels far too haphazard and random. Unlike Eric
from The Crow,
Veronica isn't hunting down any specific people or pursuing any
specific end, but is instead just generically going after evildoers.
This robs the story of any sense of a three-act structure in
progress, as none of it feels like it is building towards anything
much. Perhaps the biggest problem is that there is no real villain;
there is a sleazy public figure who becomes the focus of her scorn
(in what seems like an unlikely homage to Taxi Driver),
but even that character is given almost zero weight or real
importance. If this movie was to work, it needed a Big Bad equivalent to The Crow's Top Dollar, and the absence of one feels like an empty space in the plot. Naturally there's a love story as well, between Veronica
and a human, but it again is lacking the emotional weight or quality
of writing that it needs to feel authentic. The acting is pretty
wooden all around, which doesn't help matters, but it's honestly
difficult to say how much is due to the actors' talent levels, and
how much has to do with the clunky dialogue they are being made to
deliver. Despite having a really interesting premise, the weak script
just drifts around aimlessly until it ends with an equally weak and
poorly thought-out anticlimax.
"Do you like my torture-typewriter? I borrowed it from Terry Gilliam." |
Then
there's the matter of the films visual style, which is equally a
mixed bag. The first few minutes are the strongest, with a vision of
Hell that looks absolutely great, especially for such a low-budget
production. According to the film's behind-the-scenes featurette, the
Hell sequences were lit entirely with the fire seen on set, and no
electric light. The results of this artistic challenge are very
strong, and these sequences show off how good Full Moon movies could
look. The rest of the film, however, is a different story. The
atmosphere is great, with lots of deep shadows and blue and red
lights... but the setting is a problem. Like so many Full Moon
movies, Dark Angel was
shot in Romania; a location which is great for European-set Gothic
horror films like the Subspecies
series. But the script for this film clearly implies that it's
supposed to be set in New York City, or some other large American
city. This creates a really weird dissonance where we are constantly
aware that we are watching a film, because the characters are always
talking as though they are in a different environment than the one
they are clearly in. This probably happened because this was the only
location they could get in the time and budget that they had... but
it badly harms the movie. They either needed to shoot their exteriors
in North America or rewrite the movie to be set in Europe; instead it
feels like they just hoped the audience wouldn't notice. Big mistake.
Still,
the visuals of the film largely do look really good even when they
may not be right for the setting, thanks to the moody lighting,
locations, and set design that were Full Moon's specialty at this
time. And with this very impressive new blu-ray restoration, they
look better than ever. This transfer, from the original camera
negative, looks really good: very rich in detail, with a healthy
presence of film grain and very few detectible defects. The colors
were handled beautifully in this restoration: the stylized
blue-and-red-heavy lighting really pops, and the (literal) fire and
brimstone of the Hell sequences have been pumped up so that the
images radiate heat. Particularly in those early scenes in the
underworld, the film looks quite cinematic for a straight-to-video
production, and certainly benefits from its newly-restored 16x9
aspect ratio. The film was undoubtedly shot with a 4x3 home video
aspect ratio in mind, but comparing this remaster to the VHS release
reveals that the tape was somewhat open-matte, but with a bit of
cropping on the sides. The 16x9 presentation crops the top and bottom
of the image a bit in comparison to the tape, but never in a way that
crowds the image or cuts off anything of importance, and it also
expands the sides of the picture out, revealing new details here and
there. This new framing strikes a pretty happy medium in bringing a
widescreen aspect ratio to a film shot with fullscreen in mind, and
shows off some pretty compelling wide shot compositions. Of course,
the restoration also makes obvious some of the film's low-budget
flaws that they might have counted on being hidden by the soft
quality of VHS – particularly where the not-terribly-convincing
demon prosthetics are concerned. While it looks very good for what it
is, there is no mistaking this for anything but a low-budget film of
its era, and especially with high def putting that quality right out
there, you need to give it a bit of a break in certain aesthetic
aspects. Still, for a film of this variety and this age, Dark
Angel could not possibly look
better on blu-ray, and Full Moon deserves some praise for the love
they show even their lesser films like this one.
"What's the matter? Can't sleep?" "No - that enormous blue light outside your window is keeping me awake." |
Dark Angel: The Ascent
is not that good. It's not horrible, it's just... there. The
worst thing about it is that the premise easily could have been made
into a really good movie, and the Hell sets in the first act deserve
a better film. The ingredients are there... but the bad script and
weird circumstances of the production stop those ingredients from
ever coalescing into something that works. This one is definitely a
miss for Full Moon, even though it could have been a hit with just
another couple script rewrites. Still, they made worse movies, and if
you're a serious fan of the studio's prime years of the early-1990s
you may want to give it a look. At the very least, it's really nice
to see Full Moon taking such good care of the films that made them
famous, with these really well-done blu-ray restorations. They are an
important piece of cinema history – the very best examples of the
golden age of straight-to-video genre films – and it's great that
such films are being restored and preserved so well. Since we already
have blu-rays of a bunch of the really good Full Moon flicks, like
Puppet Master 1-5, the
Subspecies trilogy,
and Doctor Mordrid,
it's only appropriate that they show some love to some of their
lesser films as well. I'm excited to see their blu-ray line continue:
there are a few of their movies that I'm really looking forward to
seeing remastered, like the extremely fun Seedpeople.
Still, this one will pretty much only be of interest to die-hard
fans. If' you're new to Full Moon, check out some of the ones I just
mentioned instead.
Score:
-
Christopher S. Jordan