The Dead Zone: Special Edition

• Cert:
• Cat.no: SDE 3015
• Running time: 103 minutes
• Year: 1983
• Pressing: 2002
• Region(s): All, PAL
• Chapters: 20
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
• Languages: English
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
• Widescreen: 1.85:1
• 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
• Macrovision: Yes
• Disc Format: DVD 5
• Price: £19.99
• Extras: Trailer, Audio Commentary, 24-page Commemorative Booklet

Director:

David Cronenberg

(The Brood, Camera, Crash, Dead Ringers, The Dead Zone, eXistenZ, Fast Company, The Fly, M Butterfly, Naked Lunch, Rabid, Scanners, Shivers, Spider, Videodrome, TV: Friday the 13th, Scales of Justice)

Producer:

Screenplay:

Music:

Cast:

The Dead Zoneis a film that has an incredibly interesting premise, but the question is ofwhether it can carry it through.

Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken) is a man who suffers at the handsof fate when a disastrous car accident places him in a coma for five yearsleading him to possess a bizarre psychic ability to see the future, givinghim the chance to notify everyone about it so that disasters can be averted,but it makes you wonder why he couldn’t see happy things occuring.

While, to Johnny, waking up feels like it’s only the next day, but to everyoneelse time has moved on and so has his fiancee Sarah Bracknell (Brooke Adams),who is now married and with a child (which seemed rather too much to have happenedin just a mere five years, but there we go).

As the film progresses he is treated by Dr Sam Weizak (Herbert Lom,aka Chief Inspector Dreyfus in the Pink Panther films), brings theson of Roger Stuart (Anthony Zerbe) out of his shell once word getsout and everyone wants to cash in on his new found talent, eventuallyassisting in him not ending up sleeping with the fishes and helps Sheriff Bannerman (TomSkerritt track down the Castle Rock killer, which the cynic inside mereckons was so-called just to publicise the film company Castle RockEntertainment.

However, Johnny’s major gripe comes when he gets wind of senator Greg Stillson’s(Martin Sheen) itchy finger over the nuclear button and decides totake evasive action. To be honest, this is where the film falls down becauseJohnny seems such a likeable guy throughout and this complete change ofcharacter doesn’t suit him, but it was a great piece of entertainment untilthat twist in the tale.

Scissors. Not the first choice for anyone’s meal.

The film is presented in the original 1.85:1 widescreen ratio and isanamorphic, but for a time looks like a slightly-poor NTSC-to-PAL conversionas you can see the effect of it, while later on you notice more the flecksin the print. A remastering wouldn’t have gone amiss.

The sound is a remixed Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack but often it doesn’tsound any different than you’d expect from a standard Dolby Surround onegiven the lack of split-stereo effects, although there are a few effectsduring the film and the Michael Kamen score does impress in termsof keeping the atmosphere going.

For extras, on the disc is simply a 2-minute Trailer and a feature-lengthAudio Commentary from Stephen Jones (film writer and author ofCreepshows: The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Guide) and Kim Newman,the film critic with a dodgy handlebar moustache and a bit of a weirdo.

Also included is a 24-page Commemorative Booklet containing productionnotes about the adaptation of the Stephen King novel as well as itemsyou’d normally expect to find on the DVD itself such as an InternationalPoster Gallery, Cast and crew profiles, a Cronenberg filmography and apiece by Stephen Jones entitled “A World of New Flesh: The Film Careerof David Cronenberg”.

The disc contains 20 chapters, subtitles in English, French and Spanish and themenus contain are cleverly animated and scored to incorporate scenes andconcepts from the film.

FILM CONTENT
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS


OVERALL