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Day Of The Reaper

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    Ian Jane
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  • Day Of The Reaper



    Released by: SRS Cinema
    Released on: December 30th, 2014.
    Director: Tim Ritter
    Cast: Cathy O'Hanlon, Patrick Foster, Todd Nolf
    Year: 1984

    The Movie:

    The directorial debut of Tim Ritter (who recently popped up again working on the Hi-8 (Horror Independent 8) anthology), 1984's The Day Of The Reaper is about as derivative and amateurish as you can get - but it's also a hell of a lot of fun.

    Shot on Super 8 film stock over a summer vacation in the day when Van Halen ruled the world, the story is typical slasher movie fare. There's a lunatic dubbed The Reaper (Todd Nolf) running around killing women. He wears a burlap sack over his head kind of like the bad guy from The Town That Dreaded Sundown. When the movie begins, he's escorted off to be incarcerated in a red Toyota but he escapes and takes out the two orderlies puzzlingly put in charge of this. Through a few poorly connected flashbacks and a lot of scenes involving walking very slowly with narration over top, we learn how he stalked and killed four women. He left only one survivor - a dark haired cutie named Jennifer (Cathy O'Hanlon).

    At one point the Reaper was locked away in the Sunnyvale Mental Institution and everything seemed fine, but the fence at the hospital sucked and one day our axe wielding nutjob just decided to slip out underneath it. Literally… he just lifts up the bottom of the fence and voila - FREEDOM! More flashbacks explains that Jennifer and her friends - Heather (Cristy Carrington), Cheryl (Sheila Hudson), Julie (Colleen Foley) and Jill (Sherry Gibson) - were all just enjoying a day at the beach when the Reaper showed up and did his thing. Now that he's free again… will he hunt Jennifer down and finish what he started? Damn straight. Thankfully a tough cop named Detective Rosenberg (played by Ritter) is on the scene. Sort of. Eventually he pawns Jennifer off on a shrink who hangs out in a cemetery who tries to explain how and why the Reaper does what he does. We won't spoil it here but it leads to a pretty awesome final showdown…

    Literally made for about a cool grand by a group of teenagers over the span of a few weeks, Day Of The Reaper is technically inept and frequently pretty hard to follow when you stop to think about what's happening. The acting is amateurish to the nth power and the casting just as bad - the cop, the shrink, the orderlies - all these guys who should be at least in their thirties if not older are played by pimply-faced Florida teens with about as much acting experience as your pet hamster. The gore effects are sometimes pretty laughable, the whole thing was poorly dubbed with an amazingly ineffective sense of 'disconnect' by the voice actors and the synth score is as bad as the cinematography. By all rights, Day Of The Reaper is a horrible, horrible film.

    But you know what? Day Of The Reaper is also a blast to watch, and not just in a 'I'm gonna make fun of a bad movie with some friends' kind of way. Anyone who made a movie with their friends as a teenager will get a huge nostalgia blast from this one. That sense of naiveté mixed with blind, dumb enthusiasm and that inexplicable teenage drive and ambition permeates through every stinky frame of this screwy neighborhood gore opus to the point where it becomes infectious. Where the movie shows the most enthusiasm is in the gore department. There are the usual stabbings and slashing to be sure but so too is there a great knife to the crotch moment, a memorable bathtub full of gore scene that could have come straight out of an H.G. Lewis picture and a few other splat-tastic moments scattered throughout the movie.

    Of course, the dialogue is as inept, unrealistic and overwritten (ironic in that it's consistently under delivered!) as you'd expect from writers who were probably working on getting their driver's licenses at the same time as they were writing the script, but that just adds to the movie's charm. The movie might borrow from Halloween and Friday The 13th in spots but the 'local flavor' afforded by the Florida locations give it its own feel. All of this is almost irrelevant though, as the final product is so strangely distilled that we wind up with a slasher best described as pure. Ritter and company really cut to the chase of what makes the movies Reaper borrows from and just goes for it. Lack of talent and experience doesn't stop anyone here and the end result is nothing short of amazing.

    Note: both the opening and closing credits for the movie have been changed a bit on this release. The text reads the same but uses a different font. Thankfully the super awesome 'melting skull' thing backdrop is retained so all in all it is a fairly minor difference but hey, sometimes you notice these things and feel the need to point them out.

    Video/Audio/Extras:

    The 1.33.1 fullframe video is presented in AVC encoded 1080p high definition in a transfer taken from the original Super 8 elements. While this has definitely not been given a frame by frame restoration or much of a cleanup at all, those familiar with the film's origins should be pleased nonetheless. Expect plenty of print damage, shifts in color timing, screwy jump cuts and other age and element related issues to crop up pretty constantly throughout the movie, but along with this comes a decent increase in detail and color reproduction. Black levels are okay but inconsistent, the same goes for the skin tones. This is rough around the edges, but you'd have to be crazy to expect anything but rough around the edges. There aren't any obvious compression artifacts and there's nary a trace of edge enhancement or noise reduction to note, but there are at least four 'blink and you'll miss it' digital glitches of some sort that result in some really quick instances of macroblocking/pixilization.

    The Dolby Digital Mono sound mix is equally quirky. Dialogue is a bit muffled but more often than not perfectly serviceable. Levels jump around a bit and the post dubbed dialogue can sometimes sound a bit hollow - but this seems 'true to source' in that it's an authentic replication of what the movie should sound like.

    The extras start off with a commentary track from Ritter who is pretty blunt about the picture and its history. He talks about where the ideas came from, shooting the movie with his friends, the writing process, some of the locations and the gore effects seen in the movie but he also discusses getting the money together for this and what they were really trying to achieve with the film. He's got a good sense of humor about all of this but is also pretty keen and enthusiastic to tell his story here - it's a fun track, lots of great information here delivered at a quick pace and with a refreshingly honest tone.

    Also included on the disc is a pretty extensive still gallery and the 'original transfer' of the movie that includes the original (and much cooler) opening and closing credits. Those credits are really the only advantage that this offers over the HD presentation, however. This old transfer is quite literally a mess, at times pretty much unwatchable. Black levels turn to grey mud, skin tones smear and detail is pretty much gone thanks to some blown out contrast and completely destroyed colors. Supposedly this was shot from a shoebox projected onto a sheet - and it looks like it!

    The Final Word:

    Day Of The Reaper suffers from all manner of technical issues, bad acting and illogical scripting choices but so too does it stand as a testament to the bizarre creativity and determination shown by low budget filmmakers. Ritter would go on to considerably crazier projects than this but it all starts here. Is it a completely derivative film? Absolutely, but it's got that weird enthusiasm that can only come from teenagers making backyard movies in their spare time. As to the Blu-ray itself, it looks about as good as it probably can without a whole lot of restoration dollars dumped into it, and the commentary is excellent.

    Note that the Day Of The Reaper Blu-ray was limited to 100 copies and it's now sold out.

    Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!




















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