Tweet
Released by: Saturn’s Core
Released on: February 22nd, 2022.
Director: Ronnie Sortor
Cast: Daniel Skinner, Steve Kelly, J. Gregory Dollarhide, Marcia Carol Miller-Dollarhide
Year: 1995
Purchase From Amazon
Sinistre – Movie Review:
Directed and co-written by Ronnie Sorter, who would make Ravage a short time later, 1995’s Sinistre opens with a trio of rough and tumble crooks fleeing the scene of an armed robbery that went south (we see some of this play out in flashbacks later in the movie) and in the ensuing chaos, split up. They decide to hide out in an old abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere surrounded by the woods and wait there to meet up with co-conspirator Lisa (Marcia Carol Miller-Dollarhide), but injuries from the shootout leave only the driver, Simon (Steve Kelly), left alive.
After Simon buries one of his dead cohorts out behind the house, the day turns into night and Simon starts losing his mind – or so it seems. He starts seeing visions of tumultuous events from his violent, criminal past, while a maniac (Dan Skinner) with an axe and his small army of zombies arrives in the house with clear intent to make Simon’s life a literal living Hell.
What spends the first half hour or so of its running time as a micro-budget SOV version of Reservoir Dogs soon turns into a pretty entertaining, and very gory, haunted house mashup. The crime film elements aren’t ever particularly convincing visually or in terms of the actors playing it out, but these elements do serve to do a decent enough job of setting up the craziness to come. Spiced up with periodic doses of pitch black humor, Sinistre as it its best when it’s offering up the splatter and cheap gore effects that make camcorder epics such as this as much fun as they can be, and these effects, which are the highlights of the movie, are pretty well done even if they aren’t always super realistic. There’s a cartoonish, over-the-top quality to the many scenes of strong violence in the film that really does add to the movie’s entertainment value. Sorter also does a pretty solid job with the pacing, keeping things moving at a good clip.
Shot in and around Springfield, Missouri, the seventy-three minute feature, presented here in its “newly restored director’s final cut,” does feature some interesting local flavor that sets it apart from movie show on the east or west coasts. You can hear it in the accents and notice it in some of the fashions on display. The movie is absolutely a product of its time, it feels very nineties in a lot of ways, but despite the fact that the acting isn’t very good and that there isn’t really a whole lot to the storyline overall, the energy and enthusiasm on display in the feature is kind of infectious and this turns out to be a pretty fun vintage splatter movie.
Sinistre – Blu-ray Review:
Sinistre arrives on Region A Blu-ray in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition presentation framed at 1.33.1 widescreen with the feature taking up 15.5GBs of space on the 50GB disc. Shot on vide and obviously taken from an analogue source, the transfer here looks as good as the source material will likely allow for. The image is soft and fuzzy looking and the colors are muddy. In short, it looks like a tape – and that’s okay, since it basically is a type.
An English language audio option is provided in 16-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono with optional subtitles provided in English only. Again, the quality of the presentation is limited by the source material. Dialogue can sound a bit muffled in spots, but most of the time it’s pretty clear and properly balanced.
Extras start off with an audio commentary with director/editor Ronnie Sortor. As you’d expect, he goes over the history of the film, talking about the locations, who he worked with on the production and what they were responsible for, where the idea to shoot the movie came from, the effects work, the cast, how certain shots were setup, the difficulties of a control track on the bottom of the frame in a certain scene, some of the changes that were made to the director’s cut (a lot the changes are quick dialogue and sound work changes but there are a few other inserts and changes), where shots were extended and lots more. The disc also includes two isolated audio tracks featuring music by composers Larry Simmons and Clark Carter.
The disc also includes the original alternate 1997 "Sinyster" cut which runs seventy-one minutes. This is available with a new retrospective commentary with director Ronnie Sortor as well as a an archival cast commentary with director Ronnie Sortor, writer / producer Todd Reynolds, and actor Dan Skinner and a third (archival) commentary with special FX artist Mike Starin.
Beyond The Screen is a new behind the scenes featurette that runs for twenty-eight minutes. It's essentially a collection of raw, fly on the wall style material that was captured on a camcorder while the movie was being made. There's some interesting stuff in here, a lot of which revolves around the effects work done on the production.
Sinistre @ Studio 2060 is a behind the scenes piece that explores what went into the creation of the Final Cut shoot that clocks in at eighteen minutes. It shows Mike Strain Jr. in 2016 working on some effects bits along with Sorter to make a head properly explode when hit with an axe. From there, we see the two men, and Jason Lee Knight, work on additional effects bits and makeup shots that were captured on S-VHS and worked into the movie.
Composing Sinistre is a twelve-minute interview with composer Clark Carter shot in 1997 that is primarily him in a very dark looking attic of some sort playing around on a synth rather than an actual interview. Still interesting to see though, as the soundtrack in the movie is quite cool.
Sinyster/Sinistre is a three minute before and after comparison that explores what was changed from the 1997 edit compared to the new director's cut version. We see differences in color timing, the length of certain takes, where small shots were added, where voice work was done and more.
The eleven minute Remains short was directed by Sorter and Anson Aldridge in 2006. It features a young couple trying to escape a zombie plague while two guys travel to meet them. A man in the backyard of the house fights zombies with a chainsaw. Things inevitably go from bad to worse things escalate and they try to make their escape. It's got some pretty solid gore effects in it and it's fairly ambitious. The acting won't win any awards but it's as good if not better than your average no-budget SOV picture. The cinematography in it is pretty decent and the synth score works well enough. Sorter provides a commentary over this short as well, and he describes it as an experiment for him, noting that it was the first thing he’d directed since 1996. He then goes over the shooting schedule, creating the short to show the world he’s still around and wants to make movies, casting the movie, shooting digitally and more.
There's also a twenty minute 'Cooking With The Director' featurette where Sorter takes us through what goes into making fake blood suitable for use in a splatter movie. We then get to see it used during the shoot during the making of Remains' various gore set pieces.
Finishing up the extras are an eleven minute outtake reel, a few trailers for the feature, a four minute piece where Sorter shows us what went into cleaning up and remastering the movie in Final Cut Pro, a two minute clip showcasing some vintage 1994 TV new coverage, menus and chapter selection options. The disc comes packaged with some nice reversible cover sleeve art.
Sinistre - The Final Word:
Sinistre is a grubby micro-budget picture that takes a little while to get going but, once it hits its stride, proves to be a really solid splatter film with some memorable set pieces and strong, practical effects work. The Blu-ray release from Saturn’s Core does what it can with the source material but the disc is absolutely stacked with extras, making this quite an impressive disc for fans of SOV horror.