DEEP RISING/THE PUPPETMASTERS DOUBLE FEATURE BLU-RAY

Another double feature review from those folks over at Mill Creek Entertainment who are releasing a backlog of 250 titles acquired from Sony. This one is for DEEP RISING and THE PUPPET MASTERS, two mid 90s sci-fi films that i rate highly myself. Shawn Francis gives us his insights into this new release.

Written By Shawn Francis

In my realm of experience, when it comes to double features, it’s very rare to find one where both movies appeal to me. Luckily, this is one of those cases. I’m a big fan of both DEEP RISING and THE PUPPET MASTERS, and I believe Mill Creek acquired them when they made a deal with Sony for 250 of their movies. The bad news is this double feature is only available in the blu-ray format, but luckily I just recently went blu so these kinds of releases no longer annoy the hell out of me.

First up is DEEP RISING (1998), Treat Williams plays Finnegan, a mercenary for hire, who along with his buddy, Joey Pantucci (Kevin J. O’Connor) and Joey’s girlfriend, Leila, transport a second gang of mercs, these armed to the teeth, and sporting douchebag personalities, to a cruise ship for nefarious means, but instead encounter what seems to an infestation of deep sea Lovecraftian worms that have eaten just about everyone on the cruise liner before hand. From here on out it’s a race against time to get out of the bowels of the ship before it sinks and before these “worms” can devour them.

This is pretty much an action horror movie set at sea which I was enthralled by the moment the creatures showed up. And, yes, the “creatures” are CGI creations with the renderings running the gambit of being solid to looking kind of like something made for a SyFy channel movie. Thankfully, those shots are scant and even when on screen they don’t really pull you out of the movie, of course, that all depends on your tolerance for bad CGI.

I remember this was a movie that put Treat Williams back on the map for a little while, and is filled with a lot of familiar faces, just to name a few there’s Kevin J. O’Connor, who I’ll always remember as Illusionist, Philip Swann in Clive Barker’s LORD OF ILLUSIONS (1995); Famke Jenssen, who, to me, will always be that possessed alien teacher from THE FACULTY (1997), despite her more popular James Bond heritage, and who played O’Connor’s wife in ILLUSIONS, too—Jason Flemyng, Dr. Jekyll from LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN (2007) and Cliff Curtis, VIRUS (1999) and Danny Boyle’s ode to EVENT HORIZON flick, SUNSHINE (2007).

Next up is THE PUPPET MASTERS (1994). I remember this flick from when I was working in the warehouse of a department store called, Service Merchandise, at the time. And I remember reading some coverage of it in Fangoria. Was even planning on going to see it once the trailers began showing on TV. Then I started to hear some bad reviews. I don’t recall if it was Siskel And Ebert I heard them from, or from someone at work, regardless, I never went to see it, and ended up catching it on cable a year, or two, later, and

I loved it!

It’s based, loosely, as I understand, on Robert A. Heinlein’s novel and is basically about aliens invading the earth and taking us over. Donald Sutherland is in charge of the government agency that’s on the front lines of this invasion, working with a resentful son played by Eric Thal, and a hot scientist played by Julie Warner. As the aliens extend their reach, more familiar faces get involved, like Keth David (THE THING), who plays a covert operative; Yaphet Kotto (ALIEN) and Marshal Bell (THE VAGRANT) who play military leaders; stand up comedian, Richard Belzer, has a small role and so does Andrew Robinson (HELLRAISER), but neither live long enough to see the aliens vanquished.

I’ve never read the novel, so I can’t say what was kept in and what was jettisoned, but go here and you can read all about the turmoil that went on in trying to get a proper adaptation on screen: http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/wp15.Building.the.Bomb.html

I like the design of the aliens, specifically how nice and practical and animatronic they are. It’s one of those movies where just about all the leads get taken over at some point, but are spared a death scene. The movie kind of moves at a leisurely pace, but that didn’t bother me. The invasion is seen strictly through the eyes of the officials and agents who are combating it, kind of like a long X-Files episode, except with a blatant amount of alien eye candy and a lot of action and gunplay. Like DEEP RISING, I consider this movie a solid scifi action piece.

Both flicks are in their proper aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and anamorphic. Audio is 5.1 on DEEP RISING but only 2.0 on THE PUPPET MASTERS, for those audiophiles who are picayune about such things. Only extra is the full frame trailer for DEEP RISING. The transfers for both are fantastic and I have never seen RISING look so good.

DEEP RISING