Cover Art

Credits

Director: Len Wiseman Starring: Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman, Michael Sheen, Shane Brolly, Bill Nighy, Erwin Leder, Sophia Myles Screenplay: Kevin Grevioux, Len Wiseman, Danny McBride Country: USA

Feeling a lot like the role playing games Vampire: the Masquerade and Werewolf: The Forsaken, to the point that both role playing game company White Wolf Games and author of Love of Monsters Nancy A. Collins sued Sony Pictures, Screen Gems and Lakeshore Entertainment over 60 points of similarity between their properties. Over and above any legal hoo-ha, Underworld was written by Danny McBride from a story developed by him, along with actor Kevin Grevioux (who also stars in the film) and Len Wiseman, who all also had writing credits on Underworld: Evolution, the sequel. Len Wiseman also directed this, his first, movie.

Originaly put forward as an adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet but with vampires and werewolves, Underworld tells the story of Selene (Kate Beckinsale), an assassin for the vampires whose targets are the last of the Lycans (the werewolves). While hunting Lycans one night, Selene discovers they are looking for a particular human, Michael (Scott Speedman) who may be the salvation for the Lycan race, she must find the truth all the while avoiding the vampiric political machinations of the leader of her clan, Kraven (Shane Brolly) and his Lycan contemporary Lucien (Michael Sheen).

Over and above the jaded reputation this film has due to the aforementioned court cases, it was nominated for several 2004 Saturn and Golden Reel awards and actually won The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films USA's Cinescape award for Best Genre Face of the Future Award, which went to Scott Speedman.

There are five featurettes on this disc: The Making of Underworld (13 minutes) one of those usual self promoting pieces that shows more of how cool the film is rather than much actual making.

The Look of Underworld (18 minutes 52 seconds) is all about the entire visual theme of the movie, far more interesting than the making of; this covers the design of everything from the creatures to the sets to the colour correction.

Creature Effects (12 minutes 30 seconds) is all about the prosthetics, visual effects and creature designs. Fairly detailed and quite fascinating, albeit for how many make ups and creatures there are, a bit too brief. This featurette mainly looks at the werewolves and Bill Nighy's prosthetic make up.

Stunts (11 minutes 40 seconds) is a look at the stunt work done for the action sequences in this film. Quite involved and interesting, although I must say I was quite surprised when someone actually mentioned the Matrix, which is an obvious visual and stunt influence.

Sights and Sounds (9 minutes 3 seconds) is basically a montage of behind the scenes footage with an occasional comment from a cast or crew member. It is really just a short look at the business of making movies.

The music video is called Worms of the Earth by the metal band Finch.

The storyboard comparison runs for just over 6 minutes and shows static storyboards split screened with the actual movie footage.

There are 2 TV spots for Underworld, one titled 'War', the other 'Trailer Cutdown'. Both run for just over 30 seconds.