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Released by: Saturn’s Core
Released on: July 26th, 2022.
Director: Ronnie Sortor
Cast: Mark Brazeale, Dan Rowland, Dina Harris, Frank Alexander, Mike Smith
Year: 1997
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Ravage – Movie Review:
Directed by Ronnie Sortor after completing his 1995 horror film Sinstre, 1997’s Ravage tells the story of a man named Gregory Burroughs (Mark Brazeale). He works as a criminal psychologist but he’s clearly got issues of his own, his kids having been murdered by a ruthless serial killer a few years ago, something that he’s obviously, and understandably, still struggling to come to terms with. Despite his best efforts, however, Gregory really just wants one thing and one thing only, and that’s to exact his righteous vengeance on the man who took his kids away from him.
To do this, he starts investigating the patterns and actions of the killer, still at large. As he finds himself being pulled deeper and deeper into his subject, so too does he find himself being pulled deeper and deeper into the dregs of society, eventually inadvertently discovering that a covert world of coldblooded hitmen exist, offering their services to those with the cash to afford them. Either way, as Gregory starts getting closer to catching up with the killer, he realizes that not only is his life in danger, but his girlfriend Lydia (Dina Harris) is in trouble as well.
Once again shot for very little money in his home state of Missouri, Sorter’s second feature film directorial offering, which he co-wrote with Bryon Blakey (who would later go on to write and direct PMS Cop!), is a violent and fast paced micro-budget mix of action and horror made with loads of local flavor. Highlighted by a really well done shoot out that takes place inside a police station, there’s no hiding the fact that this was shot on tape without much of a budget and with an amateur cast… but it’s got that certain something that makes no-budget epics like this as watchable as they can be.
Sorter’s picture is unapologetically violent. Likely inspired by the Hong Kong gun-fu pictures that people like John Woo were making in Hong Kong a few years prior to the production of Ravage, the film never feels as original as maybe it should have been but what it lacks in narrative innovation it more than makes up for with a whole lot of squib effects and some impressively choreographed shoot out sequences.
Is the acting great? Not really, but Mark Brazeale makes for an interesting and unlikely hero and you have to admire the fact that he looks like a slightly overweight man approaching middle age rather than your typically buff, chiseled to perfection action hero. He’s a chubby buy with a moustache and a lot of bullets, out to get the revenge he needs to set his soul at ease and the fact that he has a quirky, goofy everyman quality to him somehow works in the movie’s favor even if he doesn’t so much look the part. After all, chubby middle-aged guys can have good aim too.
Note that the version of the movie that the disc defaults to is the new director’s cut of the film which runs eighty-seven minutes as opposed to the original version which ran eighty-two minutes (and which is included in the extra features on this disc). What are the differences? Well, they include a brief but noticeable CGI addition to the mirror used in the opening scene, some very different (and much improved) color grading (the blood in the shootout looks much better in this version), some fixed continuity with blood effects in the main shootout, and some digitally amended gunshot effects throughout the picture. None of these changes alter the story very much, and surprisingly enough they don’t really stick out like a sore thumb the way a lot of changes made a few decades after the original version tend to do.
Ravage – Blu-ray Review:
Ravage arrives on Region Free Blu-ray in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition presentation framed at 1.33.1 widescreen with the feature taking up 18.15GBs of space on the 50GB disc. Shot on video 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. That said, it’s a big step up from the older Sub Rosa DVD with noticeably better compression, improved colored and an overall stronger looking image.
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.
An audio commentary with director/editor Ronnie Sortor and writer/producer Bryon Blakey starts off the extras. They talk about how they met on the set of Sinestre before then going on to talk about how they came to collaborate on this project. As the amiable discussion continues, they go over casting the film and working with the different actors featured in the picture, working with producer Dan Skinner, where Blakey's wife appears in the movie, putting together the crew for the shoot, their thoughts on acting versus working on the crew, what it was like collaborating on the shoot, using blue gels on the lights to get a certain look, where some of the props came from, shooting on S-VHS, some of the effects work in the movie, when and why they had to add a fake beard and moustache to Skinner's character, some of the changes that Sorter made to this director's cut, an odd instance of censorship that the movie dealt with in on one of its release, securing some of the locations, some of the editing decisions and lots more.
The original eighty-three minute 1997 version is, as mentioned, included here as well. It’s presented in AVC encoded 1080i and it also features 16-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Stereo audio, although there are no subtitles offered for this cut. The picture quality is quite a few steps down from the better looking director’s cut of the film but it is important that the original version be preserved for posterity and, honestly, it probably looks about as good as it can.
The original version features a retrospective commentary with director Ronnie Sortor who starts by talking about how one of the main actors in the film, Dan Rowland, was ‘murdered by the state’ in 2019 before then going on to note that a few of the people who worked on the movie are no longer with us. He goes over some of the stunt work featured in the opening, what's happened to a few of the people that worked on the movie since the production was finished, using Facebook to get in touch with some of the people he worked with during this period, location work, where they got the cop car from, the use of color in the movie, running into a problem with the main camera that they used to shoot the picture, how killer cults were in the zeitgeist in the nineties, changes he made between this version and the new version, choreographing the big shoot out sequence, his dislike of leading man Mark Brazeale's white shoes, the original Sub Rosa distribution deal he had, getting the film into Best Buy and more! The archival commentary, featuring Sorter, Dan Rowland, Todd Reynolds, Mike Smith and Frank Alexander, is also included. It covers a lot of the same ground as the other two tracks but it’s interesting to get some input from other participants here in regards to the shooting conditions, dire locations used for the shoot, stunts, acting and much more.
The Year Of Ravage is a feature length documentary chronicling the production of Ravage runs an hour and forty-one minutes. It's made up of effects test footage, behind the scenes footage and B-roll footage, alternate takes and other assorted bits and pieces and, as assembled here, provides a reasonably linear look at the making of the movie starting with behind the scenes footage shot on day one of principal photography.
The Ravage: Outtakes, Deleted Scenes And Unused Ad-Libs featurette runs for a half an hour and is made up of exactly what the title suggests. We get to see quite a bit of alternate material in here as well as some flubs and bloopers, different takes on familiar scenes, unused material that didn't make it into the final version of the movie and more.
Transient Error is a twenty-one minute short film by Ravage writer/producer Bryon Blakey that starts with a transient digging through a garbage bin. This leads to him being assaulted by someone, possibly the owner. From there, we meet a man who lives alone, having lost his family (according to the narration). When he finds some homeless people camping nearby, he roughs them up, asking for information on where one of their friends is. This leads him to the city where things tie into the opening scene in an interesting way. His SUV and wallet get stolen and he finishes the rest of his journey on foot, with no money on hands or means of supporting himself. This is a much more recent project than Ravage, shot on high definition digital video, so it looks much better. The audio is also nice and clean. It's an interesting, well-made and creative short.
Finishing up the extras is a quick three minute comparison between the original version and the new director's cut, a still gallery, two different trailers for the feature, trailers for a few other Saturn's Core releases (Burglar From Hell, Mail Order Murder: The Story Of W.A.V.E. Productions, Red Spirit Lake, Psycho Sisters, Shatter Dead, Sinistre, We Await, ), menus and chapter selection options. This release also comes packaged with some nice reversible cover sleeve art.
Ravage - The Final Word:
The reality is that if you’re not into shot on video oddities, Ravage won’t likely work for you as it’s just a bit too derivative, but if you enjoy seeing what random people can do with a camcorder, a few hundred bucks and some friends, then the odds are good that this will be right up your alley. It’s an enjoyably violent and bloody slice of no-budget revenge cinema, and Saturn’s Core has once again rolled out the red carpet, giving this picture a proper special edition release.
Click on the images below, or right click and open in a new window, for full sized Ravage Blu-ray screen caps!
