Notable Cast: Vin Diesel, Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser,
Keith David, Lewis Fitz-Gerald, Claudia Black, Rhiana Griffith, John Moore,
Simon Burke
Vin Diesel’s career has certainly had its ups and downs and,
quite frankly, most of his key franchises feel like roller coasters of quality
as they careen around attempting to find their footing. One of those happens to
be the Riddick series which saw itself soar so high, the sun melted its
wings, and it quickly crashed to the ground to become a passion project series
for the divisive actor. It’s origins in Pitch Black, the
little-film-that-could, are still impressive though. It’s a tight, ambitious,
and effective piece of science fiction horror that still holds up. The latest
4K release of the film, courtesy of our friends at Arrow Video, is a welcome
upgrade to the previous Blu Ray in my collection that sports not only a slew of
the various original and new features, but a gorgeous transfer that maximizes
one of the key aspects of its visual style.
Notable Cast: John Adams, Toby Poser, Zelda Adams, Shawn
Wilson, Joan Poser
One of the great problems to have when attending a film
festival is that often a person can burn themselves out watching new films. As
I said, a great problem. During my time at the Telluride Horror Show in 2019, I
was privy to see The Deeper You Dig, an ambitious little indie horror
flick made on a shoestring budget by, in essence, one family. Between the burnout and the lack of sleep, I didn’t feel fully comfortable at the time doing a
full review for the film. Fortunately, the wait to see it again wasn’t long.
Our good friends over at Arrow Video picked up the film for distribution and
with the snazzy new Blu Ray in tow, I was ready to dig deeper into The
Deeper You Dig.
Yea, I’m glad I waited to review this with fresh eyes.
Here is disc two: The Hooked Generation and The Psychedelic Priest.
Notable Cast: Keizo Kawasaki, Toyomi Karita, Bin Yagisawa,
Shozo Nanbu, Bontaro Miake, Mieko Nagai
It’s no secret that WWII changed cinema and how audiences
reacted to it. There are a small mountain of books, articles, and authors that
really dig into the boom of creature features and science fiction that erupted
throughout the 1950s and 1960s, so that will not be the intention of this
review to explore those facets beyond this introduction. It is a trend and
approach to genre filmmaking that becomes important to this article, focused on
the film Warning from Space, the 1956 Japanese science fiction romp from
Daiei Studios.
