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THE ULTIMATE 3-D HORROR COLLECTION
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Soundtrack: Mono
CAMP BLOOD (USA - 1999): Whilst hiking in woodland near the deserted Camp Blackwood - site of an unsolved murder ten years earlier - four young city-dwellers are targeted by a masked psychopath who kills their guide (Courtney Harris) and stalks them through the woods with murderous intent...
HUNTING SEASON (USA - 2000): A woman (Cindy Pena) arms herself with an arsenal of lethal weapons and heads into the woods to take revenge against four masked hunters who beat her boyfriend (Michael Walker) to a bloody pulp and subjected her to a brutal sexual assault.
THE ZOMBIE CHRONICLES (USA - 2001): Whilst searching for an isolated town with a history of strange occurrences, a young reporter (Emmy Smith) picks up a grizzled hitchhiker (Joseph Haggerty) who tells her two stories involving flesh-eating zombies which are reputed to haunt the area.
Billed as 'campy, horror-filled fun', the three movies which make up Slingshot Entertainment's 'Ultimate 3-D Horror Collection' were filmed on camcorder utilizing the Nu-View field sequential 3-D format, with no attempt to disguise their microscopic budgets or their origins as bona fide video productions. In a word, they're dreadful. In interviews, Brad Sykes - director of CAMP BLOOD and THE ZOMBIE CHRONICLES - cites the early works of George A. Romero and Sam Raimi as key influences on his career, but while those filmmakers used their lack of adequate funding to challenge the mainstream with cutting-edge works which substituted imagination and energy for glossy aesthetics, Sykes and his cohorts have used video technology merely to imitate their cinematic counterparts, resulting in (literal) home movies with delusions of grandeur...
CAMP BLOOD has the strongest narrative, but Sykes' script adheres closely to an established blueprint (with obvious nods to the likes of FRIDAY THE 13th, THE BURNING and THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, which the director readily acknowledges) without adding anything even remotely new or interesting to the formula. THE ZOMBIE CHRONICLES is a complete waste of time, hobbled from the outset by Haggerty's painfully amateurish performance in a key role, and the two stories which make up the bulk of the running time are utterly routine, made worse by indifferent performances and lackluster direction. HUNTING SEASON - directed by Jeff Leroy (editor on all three productions) - is marginally superior, featuring a spirited performance by Amazonian beauty Pena as the vengeful, leather-clad harpy seeking revenge on four irredeemable slimeballs, leading to a genuine twist in the tale. However, while Leroy's direction is lively and competent (including a fair number of off-the-screen 3-D effects), the rock-bottom production values and unflattering camcorder photography conspire against any and all good intentions. These aren't 'fun' movies in the sense that Ed Wood's movies are 'fun' (he, at least, believed in what he was doing and was sincere in his efforts, despite a lack of talent); they are, in fact, aggravating, boring and almost completely devoid of any redeeming virtue, and most viewers will feel justifiably angry and cheated by such unimaginative, badly-conceived junk.
And yet, this release amounts to a dual-edged sword: The movies are packaged here with a video transmitter and wired glasses - almost twice as expensive if purchased separately - which allows viewers to experience 3-D movies in the field sequential format, and Slingshot has sensibly included both 3-D AND 2-D versions of the films on each disc. Whereas anaglyphic presentations (using red-blue glasses) tend to distort colors and obscure dimensional effects, the field sequential process (polarized glasses) offers a near-perfect reproduction of 3-D images, preserving all the color and resolution inherent in the material. Some flicker is evident during brightly-lit sequences, but this is reduced markedly when viewed in a darkened room (ideally, the lights should be turned off altogether). However, while all of the titles under discussion generate an extraordinary illusion of depth (particularly HUNTING SEASON, which features a number of eye-popping landscape shots), the visuals are often afflicted by crosstalk (that is, left-eye images retain residual imagery from right-eye images and vice versa, leading to ghosting and eye-strain), and the image flattens out whenever the filmmakers resort to slow motion or speeded-up action. Often, background details are reduced to an indistinct blur which defy all attempts to resolve them into a dimensional image, and foreground details (grass, hanging branches, etc.) are often similarly unfocussed. However, these problems are not insurmountable, and the field sequential format is tailor-made for the reproduction on DVD of any 3-D movie photographed with truly professional polarizing equipment (HOUSE OF WAX, FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN, etc.).
Sadly, while 'The Ultimate 3-D Horror Collection' keeps the field sequential process in the public eye and paves the way for GENUINE 3-D movies on DVD (with 'flat' and 3-D versions on the same disc), the technology is tainted by association with this kind of direct-to-video garbage, thereby hindering its acceptance within the mainstream.
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