Dancehall Queen

• Cert:
• Cat.no: PALM 7637
• Running time: 97 minutes
• Year: 1995
• Pressing: 2000
• Region(s): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (UK PAL)
• Chapters: 12 plus extras
• Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Stereo)
• Languages: English
• Subtitles: None
• Fullscreen: 4:3
• 16:9-enhanced: No
• Macrovision: No
• Disc Format: DVD 5
• Price: £15.99
• Extras : Scene index, Trailers, DVD-ROM content
  

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  Directors:

  Don Letts & Rick Elgood

Producer:

Screenplay:

(based on a story by Ed Wallace & Carl Bradshaw)

Music:

Cast:

Marcia: Audrey Reid
Tanya: Cherine Anderson
Larry: Carl Davis
Priest: Paul Campbell
Junior: Mark Danvers

Dancehall Queenis what single mother Marcia (Audrey Reid) hopes to become as she spends her daysas a street trader on the Kingston market in Jamaica, but her nights as the “mystery lady”on the dancehalls. She hasn’t much else going for her other than this night-time extravagance.

The man in her life, Larry (Carl Davis), casts more of his desires in the directionof Marcia’s eldest daughter Tanya (Cherine Anderson) and there’s Priest (Paul Campbell),a man you wouldn’t like to meet down a dark alley, who is determined to make life hell for her.After he offs Marcia’s son’s friend late at night, he proves that no-one is safe when he’s around.

If she can win the upcoming dancehall contest, she’ll win the money to buy her way out ofher crappy life and rejoin a decent society.

Presented in a fullscreen 4:3 ratio, the print looks very good indeed. Free of artifacts and verycolourful, even for scenes that you wouldn’t expect to look so good, it’s only failing isthe occasional ‘processed’ look, like when something is shot on video but treated to looklike film. I presume this was shot on film, but that’s just the effect it gives.The average bitrate is a so-so 5.35Mb/s, varying around the 6Mb/s mark.

The sound is mostly fine, but there’s not as much of the music as you’d have expectedthroughout most of the film and nothing to match the rousing theme tune. The soundtrack alsokeeps going out of sync with the film. I can restart my DVD-ROM drive and carry on from whereI left off, but I’ve never had so many out-of-sync problems as I have had with this disc.

The trailers included are a theatrical trailer, plus three trailers forother Palm Pictures DVDs – Talking Heads: Stop Making Senses, Baaba Maaland Ghost in the Shell.

Languages & Subtitles :All the dialogue is in English, but there are no subtitles. This is a shame as theJamaican accents are incredibly strong and I can’t always make out what they’re saying,even though you can still follow the basic plot. And there’s more… :The DVD-ROM content features music samples, info and rough-lookingvideo clips of a range of Palm Pictures produce: Sly and Robbie, Baaba Maal,Mocean Worker, Ernest Ranglin and Kora Revolution. Menu :The menus are static but contain a brief bit of the film’s theme tune.

Overall, the film’s worth a look but not one I’d want to watch time and again. Given thesound and picture problems, coupled with scant extras, I’d only recommend a rental on thisone. However, it’s not the sort of disc the average Blockbuster store would carry.

FILM CONTENT
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS


OVERALL