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| Astro (Germany). All Regions, PAL. 4:3. English DD Mono, German DD Mono. 90 minutes |
| The Movie |
| Cover Art |
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| Credits |
Director: Claudio Lattanzi
Starring: Lara Wendel, Robert Vaughan, Leslie Cumming
AKA: Raptors; Dark Eyes of the Zombie |
Italian stalk 'n' slash
'n' dash picture from the heyday of Aristide Massacessi,
Claudio Fragasso and Carlo Maria Cordio's el-cheapo
horror house, Filmirage Productions. An entertainingly silly flick in the teenkill mould
established by such Italian predecessors as Antefatto and American made examples as Cunningham's Friday the 13th, Zito's The
Prowler and Gianone's Madman ad nauseum, this even chucks in the dead, and
the living dead to keep Fulci devotees happy in
it's somewhat 'kitchen sink' approach.
Raptors, to give this
it's correct moniker, is pretty basic stuff, though
it does contain some graphic kill sequences, and
a smattering of iconic genre staples, which include;
sex, violence, illogicality,
character-stupidity and apparent menace of the
'look out behind you' variety. In truth,
this is not a particularly good example of it's
type, given it's more widely known title, Killing
Birds, by an especially lame framing device.
Story opens with a demobbed soldier arriving home
at his remote house to find his wife in bed with
another man. Not best pleased, he slaughters both,
though not before she's revealed a young child,
but promptly has his eyes pecked out by some of
a multitude of birds-of-prey kept caged on the
porch for God knows why. Film then cuts to contemporary
times, and a motley group of college friends heading
out into the Bayou to study the local birds for
reasons best known to themselves and the scriptwriter.
After an odd encounter with the now blind Vaughan,
they hang around the creepy old house seen in
the film's opening for a while, until, out of
the blue, ghosts and zombies show up and start
killing them, along with the once again gathering
birds.
Claudio Lattanzi's film contributes
nothing new to any of the genres it steals from,
but it does prove a mildly diverting 90-minutes,
and with it's entertainingly shameless homage (read blatant rip-off's) from Hitchcock's The
Birds and John Carpenter's The Fog, Raptors is nothing, if not small-dumb-fun,
right down to it's laugh-out-loud lame climax!
Whilst it's poorly acted, with an unknown cast,
save Lara Wendel (Ghosthouse, Tenebre)
and Robert Vaughan, who will stay that way, ineptly
written (aren't they pretty much all??), the direction
from Claudio Lattanzi (as "Claude Miliken") is
unexpectedly good, nicely shot, quite atmospheric
in places, and agreeably scored by Carlo Maria
Cordio (Rosso Sangue, Mangiati Vivi and a couple of latter Fulci's), as well as boasting
some nice photography amidst the Louisiana locale.
For the more bloodthirsty reader, the fx are competent
and graphic, if hardly plentiful. All in all,
it's another funeral-paced Filmirage project,
quite a rare movie, albeit one with enough entertainment
to last the 90-odd minute running time and make
it worth acquiring. |
| Video |
| The DVD
itself is nothing special, probably not worth extra
money over the standard VHS version. The transfer
is relatively clean for the most part, unlike the
dirty and grainy disgraces that were Astro's The
Grim Reaper/Anthropophagous and Un
gatto nel Cervello/Nightmare Concert which
seemed to be little more than direct copies of the
VHS transfers. However, this appears to have been
taken from a censored print, because for several
sequences, obviously cut scenes have been reinserted,
and these have clearly been culled from an
inferior master, probably VHS and undoubtedly NOT
an original copy. This has some novelty value, it's
interesting to see what was censored, but is distracting,
and the inserts are of such poor quality that this
reviewer is moved to wonder what exactly is the
point. The film is presented fullscreen 1.33:1/4:3
ratio and looks to be an unmated transfer, as no
important visual information is lost. Otherwise,
this not a particularly bad transfer, not too many
marks or scratches, colours look bright and sharp
during daylight scenes, though in darker scenes
the blacks look washed out and overall the picture
lacks fine detail. Shadow delineation is unimpressive,
however there is no colour bleed and flesh tones
are passable. There is no sign of artifacting,
in truth, for a low budget release of an old, low
budget movie this is watchable enough, but no more. |
| Audio |
| There are two sound options, neither exciting; you have to make do with an English or German dubbed mono track, which does the job and no more. Dialogue is clear, ambient sound distinct, but on the whole the aural experience is less than inspiring. |
| Extra Features |
| There's not much here to speak of, we get a dialogue-free (presumably theatrical) trailer, that's fairly representative of the film and of the presentation. There's a lame "Slideshow", half a dozen uninteresting pictures forming a thin photo gallery. Finally, there's a Joe D'Amato biography in German, D'Amato (Aristide Massacessi) having been labelled as the director of this film. Menu's are not animated and there is a thin 9 chapter stops. |
| The Verdict |
I like the film, it's a guilty
pleasure, so sue me. Astro hasn't done a particularly
good job with the transfer, but it seems to this
reviewer that that is pretty much par for the course
with their releases - it is good at least, to see
the film available. This edition will do for now,
but I wait in the hope of a better transfer and
more extras from someone such as Anchor Bay or Image.
Got something else to say? Spill your guts on the
Digital Retribution Message Forum! |
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