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Dom Robinson reviews
Columbia TriStar
- Cert:
- Cat.no: CDR 24513CE
- Running time: 97 minutes
- Year: 1996
- Pressing: 2000
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 28 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English, French, German
- Subtitles: 17 languages available
- Widescreen: 1.85:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Deleted Scenes, Director’s Commentary, Filmographies, IsolatedScore, Featurette, Trailer
Director:
- Andrew Fleming
(Bad Dreams, The Craft, Dick, Threesome)
Producer:
- Douglas Wick
Screenplay:
- Peter Filardi and Andrew Fleming
Music:
- Graeme Revell
Cast:
- Nancy: Fairuza Balk
Sarah: Robin Tunney
Bonnie: Neve Campbell
Rochelle: Rachel True
Chris: Skeet Ulrich
Laura Lizzie: Christine Taylor
Lirio: Assumpta Serna
Grace: Helen Shaver
Girls can be geeks too.
And in The Craft, three girls at St. Bernard’s Academy,Nancy (Fairuza Balk), Bonnie (Neve Campbell) and Rochelle(Rachel True), are the spell-casting nerds who are looking for a fourthmember to complete the “circle” linked with witchcraft and the occult.
Enter Sarah (End Of Days‘ Robin Tunney),the new girl arriving to study in her final year. Being new, she’s finding ithard to fit in, which makes her perfect fodder to tag along with the aforementionedother oddballs who nobody likes, but, as it happens, who wield more power thanyou could possibly imagine. These days, it could almost be an episode ofHollyoaks is Zara (what the hell are those teeth all about?) Turneris involved.
Where the two differ, though, is that these girls have the power to indirectlykill people, to give an extreme example, when it comes to those who are actuallytry to cause harm to them, but if you take things a step too far then it tendsto come back on you in spades, so, to quote Jerry Springer, “Be goodto yourselves… and, each other.”
The Craft is a totally inoffensive film and will easily pass the90+ minutes with ease, but it’s not a particularly exciting one and when theclosing credits appear you might wonder why you really bothered. It’s alsoone of the DVDs from Columbia, first brought out as one of the initial launchin April 1998 with scant extras, now being reissued as a “Collector’s Edition”with a few more, but not a great deal more and it’s hard to see why itjustifies the “CE” tag.
I have almost no complaints with the picture quality. It looks a little softat times, but on the whole it’s free of artifacts and print defects.The picture is in the original 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen ratio.The average bitrate is 6.84Mb/s, often peaking above 8Mb/s.
Dolby Digital 5.1 comes in English, French and German flavours. When the witchesswoop on their broomsticks – almost – the melee of sound FX kicks in nicely, butoutside of that there’s not a lot happening in the aural department.
As alighted to earlier, it’s not particularly packed with extra features.
There’s a 2-minute Trailer in 4:3 open-matte and Dolby Digital 5.1 sound,a making of Featurette that runs for almost 25 minutes and featurescast and crew members talking the usual nonsense to camera. Three DeletedScenes are also included, each with a separate commentary track.
The disc includes a feature-length Director’s Commentary, Filmographiesfor the director and all four of its main stars and an Isolated Scoreto show off Graeme Revell‘s work.
As this is a Columbia DVD we have the usual 28 chapters and subtitles in a massive17 languages :English, French, German, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Hindi, Turkish, Danish, Arabic, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Dutch, Norwegian, Greek and Hebrew.The main menu has a short scored piece of looped animation showing the gruesomefoursome doing their bidding.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.