A Smorgasmorgue of Horror: Blood Diner (DVD/ Blu-ray Comparison)

Released concurrently with Chopping Mall is the second release in Lions Gate exciting, new Vestron Line: Blood Diner. Blood Diner is one crazy, campy, wacko semi-sequel to Herschel Gordon Lewis's most famous feature, Blood Feast.  It does have a lot of references to the original - including the basic premise of madmen gruesomely murdering women with the insane motive of resurrecting an ancient Goddess named Sheetar - but tonally it couldn't be much further removed.  It's one of the most 80s 80s movies you're likely to come across, and pretty much all of its differences from the original are what make it appealing.
A movie like this really relies on hip parents.  Because if you wait until you're at least 17 to see R-rated (or in this case, unrated) movies like this, or Deathrow Gameshow, you've kinda missed the boat.  Because most of the jokes in this movie really aren't funny, despite being really overt; but they are when you're a kid, and you're experiencing a film break the rules for the first time.  I took a 'Cult Films' course at University, and I could write a very dry paragraph about how cult films are really all about breaking taboos, and the most famous and successful ones have always tackled the most culturally feared of them, like cannibalism and incest.  But instead I'll just give you a very real, personal example from Blood Diner.  It opens with a news radio broadcast warning about an escape maniac on the loose, "armed with a meat cleaver in one hand and his genitals in the other."  Are you going to laugh, encountering that for the first time at 30?  I don't know, but I can still vividly remember telling all the kids that most hilarious moment ever on the playground the next day after I first saw it.  And now that I'm older, both my best friend and I immediately had film this on pre-order when it was first announced.
This movie is really a mess, but that's actually the best thing about it.  Blood Feast is a very simple movie, basically just moving from one set-piece of our antagonist murdering a woman in her home to another.  It's from the 60s, so there's not really any gore or special effects besides pouring fake blood on women's limbs, and there's not much story except for a little simultaneous police procedural of a couple cops trying to stop the guy we're watching on his killing spree.  In fact, to be honest, when I first saw it, it bored me to tears and I couldn't have been more disappointed, giving the lurid marketing and shocking reputation it had (although since he just tragically passed, I'll add that I've always been a fan of his Two Thousand Maniacs).  And I believe that 80s kid sitting on his couch wondering he could've been so let down by such a notorious film is the exact target audience for this film.  Because yes, those basic elements are still there, even the police arriving too late at every crime scene.
But, at least for underage sensibilities, Blood Diner is the least boring movie possible.  Tons of characters, locations, set pieces, inventive gore effects, a totally unpredictable story with one bizarre-o tangent after another, from a prolonged wrestling sequence to a rock star's brains blasting out of the top of his head in front of a packed house.  It's extremely over-the-top, it's extremely lively and high energy.  It's constantly trying to shock and make you laugh, and it's full of bouncy pop songs and upbeat doo-wop music.  At it's worst, it's like a Troma movie, always wallowing in the lowest common denominator pandering.  At it's best, it's an almost surreal, high-camp, gonzo horror comedy.  How much you get out of it definitely depends on how much you're willing to play along, and again, it really helps if you're naive and impressionable.  But even if you hate it, there's undeniably something there that's given this cult film legs to outlast most of its cult film peers all these decades later.
Blood Diner's had a surprisingly sparse history on DVD.  I held onto my VHS tape for the longest time.  It took a while to come out the first time, and throughout most of the format's history, it was still only available as a 2004 import from Dragon Film Entertainment.  It was never available at all in the USA until it quietly appeared on Lionsgate's 2015 Horror Collection 6 Movie Pack set, barebones, packed onto the same disc as two other films.  That same year, there was a blu-ray released in Germany, and now finally, it's gotten the high-end, domestic special edition treatment as one of the flagship releases in the new Vestron Video line.  Let's see how the new blu looks compared to the 2015 DVD.
2015 Horror Collection DVD on top; 2016 Vestron blu-ray below.
If you want to really appreciate this blu-ray, just hold it up against the DVD - wow, what a difference!  They're both 1.78:1, but the framing is slightly adjusted.  The color timing is different, too.  Look at the white walls in the first set of shots.  They look yellow on the DVD, to slightly blueish, which makes sense, as it's meant to be a nighttime scene with light coming in through the window and door.  So that's better.  Much more significant, however, is the fact that the DVD is a murky, soft, interlaced mess!.  It's so soft, it almost erases the interlacing by smudging it all together.  But thankfully the blu does not have those problems.  The HD transfer is so much clearer and attractive to look at.  It's actually not an amazing transfer on its own terms.  It still looks soft and kind of washed out with greyish blacks.  I suspect they may not have had access to the original negatives.  But, just on it's own terms, as a blu-ray, it's still a respectable B picture (no pun intended). But looking at that DVD, should you upgrade?  Oh, yeah!

For audio, we get the original mono audio in DTS-HD, and it sounds pretty great.  There are syncing issues, but that's not a flaw on the blu-ray's part; a lot of this movie is just, often poorly, post-synced.  Vestron also comes through with optional English subtitles.
But I'm most excited about the special features.  Blood Diner has really never had any extras before, but now Vestron has paired up with Red Shirt Pictures for some incredible stuff.  First, director Jackie Kong provides a cool audio commentary track.  But even more exciting than that is the feature length documentary, which brings together just about everybody who's still alive.  Kong, the producer, the screenwriter, creative consultant Bill Osco, stars Carl Crew, Roger Dauer & Drew Godderis, the composer and the director of photography.  It's all nicely edited, and everyone has great memories of the filming.  Honestly, if this documentary had been sold on its own, I would have happily bought it and been super satisfied.  And besides that, there's an additional on-camera interview with the film's creative consultant Eric Caiden, plus a healthy collection of trailers, TV spots and radio spots.  There's also a stills gallery, and like Chopping Mall, it comes in a cool, glossy slipcover.
This film isn't for everyone, but even if you're on the fence about adding this film to your collection, I think you'll find the documentary is absolutely worth it.  Definitely not the movie to impress your teachers with, but a fun time.  And the way this film has been treated is definitely keeping me excited for the future releases in this Vestron series... rumor has it that Parents and Lair Of the White Worm are next to be announced, and I hope so because both of those would be awesome!

1 comment:

  1. Ha! I just did a piece on BLOOD FEAST and it has a ton of gore, just nothing remotely believable. It's all a bunch of pig and sheep organs pulled from the wrong part of the body (I'm no anatomy student, but I don't think the heart is located in the head). It has an incompetent charm.

    BLOOD DINNER seems worth a look by the screen shots alone. Can't believe I missed it back in the day.