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Dom Robinson reviews
Trickshot-Films.co.uk
- Cert:
- Cat.no: TS002
- Running time: 110 minutes inc. extras
- Year: 2002
- Pressing: 2005
- Region(s): 0, PAL
- Chapters: 12 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Surround)
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English
- Fullscreen: 1.33:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: No
- Macrovision: No
- Disc Format: DVD 5
- Price: £9.99
- Extras: Festival Version, Trailers, Terror Fantastico, Uncovered Remains, Gravewatch, Music Video, Gallery, Deleted Scenes, Easter Egg, Audio Commentary
Director:
- Robert Allison and Jack Vine
(Eightball, Short: Grave Matter, Tranquil Repose)
Producer:
- Jack Vine
Screenplay:
- Jack Vine
Music:
- Keltech, Cicatrice and MC Tension
Cast:
- Mac Featherstone: Max Koutouzov
Callam Featherstone: Richard Allison
Steve Queenan: Jack Vine
Crazy Dave: Daniel Sturdee
Grave Matter is a 30-minute short which has now been released on DVD with a full set of extras.
Coming from the same writer/producer/director stable, with Robert & Richard Allison and Jack Vine, as Eightball, this one takes us into the woods with an entertaining zombie movie.
Starting with friends Mac (Max Koutouzov) and Steve (Jack Vine) drinking to excess while playing some chess, they go looking for a vintage bottle of Turkish whiskey belonging to their Dad, but instead find a case belonging to Mac’s brother Callam (Richard Allison) which makes them think he thought he was the new ‘Buffy’ as it contains a wooden stake, a bottle of ‘essence of garlic’ and a book entitled, “Book of the Lost Souls – Chapter One”.
However, by reading selected passages from the book, they plan to bring back to life their friend Jon, who died last week. By the next day they’ve forgotten all about it, but when Callam finds out what they’ve done he tells them it can take 24 hours for the spell to take effect and, along with his mate, Crazy Dave (Daniel Sturdee), they set off to kill the undead Jon. Alas, as they just called out the name ‘Jon’, and there’s eight “Jon”s in the cemetary… Yes, there’s plenty of blood to be spilled. And once the problem’s cleared up in the graveyard, it follows them home…
Grave Matter is an engaging film. It’s far from original, but it keeps you watching throughout to see who’ll survive and who won’t.
Crazy Dave’s voice is quite amusing and I like the notion of killing a zombie with a lawnmower, which is later shown, alongside the use of a chainsaw and baseball bat. There’s also some interesting, brief, panning round the table during the chess match. Whether all the moves match up is another matter, but it shows a great flair for this style which you’d normally expect in a high-profile TV show like E.R.
The feature is shot in standard 4:3 fullscreen on hand-held digital cameras. The image can be a little too dark in the graveyard scenes, or in the finale, but it’s never too much of a problem, given that careful thought has been given to picture composition, with footage speeded-up or slowed-down as required.
The sound is in stereo only, but Doom-style gunshots and other implements of destruction come across clearly. And there’s only a couple of times where I spotted slightly-out-of-sync dialogue, with Crazy Dave’s voice.
The extras on this DVD are listed below, all of which are of great relevance to the movie, which is where some other, more mainstream, DVDs fall down.
- Festival Version (15 mins): A shortened ‘Grave Matter’ for the Argentina festival listed below, since they’d only allow a maximum length of 20 minutes.
- Trailers (4 mins): Three here. One each for Grave Matter, Eightball and the Reservoir Dogs-inspired No Choice)
- Terror Fantastico (12 mins): Executive producer Richard Allison introduced this film at the Cinencuadre Film Festival in Argentina. The footage includes panel interviews with celebrated US horror directors J.R. Bookwalter and Brian O’Hara.
- Uncovered Remains (5 mins): A behind-the-scenes featurette with the cast and crew filming various test scenes including the Trickshot Cyberman which was left out of the final cut.
- Gravewatch (4½ mins): The official movie premiere, held in their own house, with awards distributed for “Cleanest Zombie” and “Most Overused ‘Fucks’ in a Grave Matter Film”.
- Music Video (3½ mins): Entertain You by Keltech and Johnny B.
- Gallery (2 mins): Various poster designs from the Allison brothers, plus the aforementioned awards on view and an unused CGI FX shot.
- Deleted Scenes (4½ mins): The opening and closing of the chess section, cut for timing reasons; an extended summoning scene which was retrieved from a VHS backup but doesn’t look any worse for it; and a Star Wars game discussion which didn’t aid the story so was cut too.
- Easter egg (1:45): A piece of live footage from a Cicatrice gig in 2001, linked from the DVD Credits page.
- Audio commentary: with Richard Allison (executive producer) and David Bynan (special effects and zombies).
For this DVD, we now have some intriguing 3D menus with a CGI animated intro which sets the eerie tone for the movie you’re about to watch, along with a section of music that repeats on a loop. This time there are English subtitles included and 12 chapters for the 30-minute short, plus copious chapters for many of the other extras too which are most welcome. For example, there are 8 chapters for the 12-minute Argentina trip, while, by comparison, 20th Century Fox couldn’t be bothered to chapter their hour-long ‘making of’ featurette for Aliens Vs Predator. Hence, we know from this that when this crew are big-production movies in the future, we’ll have better DVDs to look forward to.
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.