The film industry is cyclic in nature....all of a sudden you'll be hit with a whole swag of films from a particular genre....Look at the number of horror films to drown our screens in blood since the release of Scream....Over the past few years we have seen a resurgence in comic books translated to the big screen..One of the latest offerings is the Vampire saga of BLADE..

In the first of what looks to be a new franchise for New Line Cinema, who have been looking for a replacement Elm Street for some time, BLADE went from a rather low budget vampire fest, to a $40 million kick arse vampire bloodbath romp, with very strong support both on and off camera by lead star Wesley Snipes...

While Eric BLADE (Snipes)  is a vampire of sorts.....he is referred by other vampires as "the Day Walker", as unlike most vampires he was infected with the vampire virus through his mother who was bitten while pregnant with him.......As a result his mother dies while giving birth and Eric has made it his life's' mission to seek and destroy all Vampires...Lucky for him, he has the help of Whistler (the scene stealing Kris Kristoffessen)...

Blades latest target is a vampire named Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff in a role that at first has him seen as quite miscast)....Deacon is a half blood (turned after birth) who threatens to take over the vampire council (who are all full blooded vampires and hate Deacon)....

As with too many damn films today.....the lead character must have a love interest....In Blade, this characters shoes are filled by the very lovely N'Busche Taylor so I guess that's some conciliation :-)....

anyway enough of the plot and what-not....

So How Does This Transfer Hold Up???

With the DVD Staff overhaul at Roadshow in recent days, the presentation of this DVD is more in tune with what we will see from now on......What does this entail you ask???.....hold on...I'll get to that in a minute...

Anyhoo.....This DVD is presented in the screen format of 2.35:1 and is anamorphically enhanced for widescreen TVs......As far as transfers go....this would have to be close to the sharpest I have EVER seen on a DVD.....it's is truly exceptional in this respect.....Colour levels are excellent leading to very accurate fleshtones and there is absolutely no grain in site here, with just a couple of dirt specks that are hardly noticeable......The DOP has made excellent us of lighting this movie.....there is a great range of colour balances throughout....near the beginning there is a green look to the film (like fluorescent lighting...the lead up to the the Club Blood sequence is one, as is all the hospital sequences....) as well as the outdoor scenes which are spot on (particularly the Park Sequence with Blade and Deacon....this one cries demo scene)....The only thing I was disappointed about with this transfer was the ever hated Aliasing.....for such a new film, and one where great care was obviously taken, the downconverting to an interlaced PAL source obviously posed quite a problem here as overall there is too much aliasing going on....some sequences fair very well (like the Club Blood and Park Scene) but some show up this video nasty more than we have come to want on DVD....with every other aspect of this transfer being so damn good, I can sort-kinda-not really forgive this, and as I understand it, if Roadshow were to have lessened the effect of the aliasing, it would have impacted greatly on the sharpness of the transfer, which as I mentioned earlier is truly first rate......and seeing as it's really only a major problem in a couple of spots, with more (little bits) here and there, you could overlook it a little.......Overall the severity of the worst aliasing is on par with the Garbage truck sequence in Roadshow's Long Kiss Goodnight....(but this transfer blows LKGN away).......In keeping with the improvements at Roadshow the Fade to Black to cover up RSDL Layer Changes has also Disappeared (thank god I say).....As this is a Dual Layered DVD there is a layer change well over half way thru the movie that is very well placed....and quite hard to pick...(it's located between chapters 17 and 18, or approx 1:33:43.

NOTE: During the opening Sequences you may notice the RED titles on the BLACK ground are really out of focus...I have sussed this out on 4 different DVD players...The sammy DVD905 and 907 a grundig and a panasonic....Via RGB there was no problem, the text was clear and crisp, but via composite and S-Video it was very hard to read.....from the looks of it, chroma noise and cross talk are the likely offenders.......the rest of the movie is fine so once you are passed the opening credits you will not see this problem again

As far as the Audio goes......it's a cracker....the only niggle I have is that it's recorded a but louder than I normally set my processor at (which is -18dB)...for Blade I had to back it off about 8 dB or the neighbours would be screaming......................more than they normally do :-)) ....For your listening pleasure, there a THREE audio tracks on this disc....the DEFAULT is Dolby Digital 5.1 (are you listening Columbia!!!!), the second is a Dolby Digital 2.0 track (actually Pro-logic through my sony), and the third a totally unnecessary second 2 channel track in the form of MPEG2.0 (at a guess I'd say the Roadshow may have no choice but the include MPEG on there DVDs, so practically speaking just one track with 2 channel sound would have been fine, even it is MPEG2.0, personally, I couldn't tell the difference between the two).........the 5.1 mix is excellent...it's extremely aggressive through ALL speakers, and the rears really get a great workout.... I didn't find the LFE track to be overly strong, but rather made the overall soundtrack sound very solid.....I thought it could have had a bit more of a slam factor with the amount of gun play that went on, but it still sounded pretty darn fine to me.....(I'm being fussy)...just be warned that while the overall level is fine, there are instances of extreme dynamics (like Club Blood).....I keep mentioning the Club Blood sequence, and after seeing this DVD you'll understand why......it will knock your socks off....the picture quality in this particular bit is as good as it gets....there is so much depth and clarity (and copious amounts of blood) that it almost looks 3 dimensional..it's a simply jaw dropping sequence and Roadshow have encoded it beautifully..

Now for the extras.....This is by far Roadshow's most ambitious DVD to date.....we have a tonne of extras, and some nifty animated menus (with the sound recorded in PCM...so anyone with a DVD player than can only output MPEG through the analogue outputs will be most pleased).....the main menu has a morphing effect and a very subtle "Japanese sounding" music playing....(you'll know what I mean when you hear it)....when you make a selection, there is an animated piece as the transition from one menu to another.....(very nice) I won't go into great detail of this feature as it's best to see it for yourself.......now onto the actual features.....while I was disappointed with the absence of a running commentary (seeing as this was the uncut film we are getting) the other extras are a welcome addition....and here they all are

Dolby Digital City Trailer: Actually begins at Chapter 1 and is 16:9 Enhanced (inperpolated from the looks of it) and actaully recorded with audio on both the DD5.1 track and DD2.0 track........Let's hope that Roadshow use ALL 4 Dolby Digital Trailers as City gets a bit boring after a while (my personal fav's gotta be Canyon)

Interviews : Cast and Crew......As promise, Roadshow have joined all the interviews together so rather than having to return to the menu to play the next bit (which you can still do here if you choose), you can simply press the button once, and it will play the lot one after the other......what I would also like to see is title card between each snippet of the interview (like Warner did with Lethal Weapon 4)...these interviews are windowboxed and are 16:9 enhanced

Trailer : The trailer to the movie which is only 4:3 windowboxed and 16:9 Enhanced....the audio is DD2.0 and MPEG2.0

Martial Arts Montage : sort of a TV promo thing that runs for about 2 minutes, again 4:3 windowboxed and 16:9 Enhanced....the audio is DD2.0 and MPEG2.0

La Magra a great featurette with Interviews with cast and crew, deleted scenes and the alternate ending (in 16:9)  it runs for about 14 minutes...it would have been nice to get some chapters for this

Behind the Scenes a sneak peak of some of the goings-ons on the set....(similar to other Roadshow BTScenes)

Designing Blade Interviews with FX artists and Production designers and the like, showing movie snippets art work, and story boards of film....runs about 23 minutes and is very informative but and need some chapters more than La Magra,

Overall, this is Roadshow's most best effort in the DVD arena, had it not been for the less than perfect video transfer it would have been a reference quality DVD..this aside, I certainly wouldn't hesitate in buying it as there's plenty to like about it.....

First Reviewed 2nd June 1999

Review Equipment
TV: Pioneer SD-T50W1 (16:9 RPTV)
DVD: Samsung DVD905 (via RGB outputs)
Receiver: Marantz SR870 & Sony SDP-EP9ES
Speakers:-
     Fronts: B&W 602
     Centre: B&W CDMC-SE
     Rears: Jamo Magic 14
     Subby: M&K V125