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The Abyss: Special Edition At 0922 local time an American nuclear submarine, the USS Montana with 156 men went down about 22 miles from where the crew of the Deepcore are working and they’re being asked to team up with a bunch of Navy SEALs to help in the rescue. Hopefully they’ll be a little more prompt than the Russians were with the Kursk, although I’m sure the Montana’s downward spiral is for an entirely different reason…
The situation brings together estranged, warring couple oil-rig foreman Bud Brigman (Ed Harris) and his bossy other half Lindsey (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). Together with SEAL team leader Lt. Hiram Coffey (Michael Biehn) they’ll head off “two and a half miles straight down” to see what they can see, where we’ll learn that not all aliens are bad and perhaps we can get along with our extra-terrestrial friends, but it’s not a given in all cases.
It’s difficult to explain The Abyss further without giving away any plot points, suffice to say it’s worth a watch for anyone and is never less than fascinating, for those who’ll appreciate it, apart from the occasional slow moment early on as the film gets going.
There’s a few problems I have with this release, albeit mostly none that are Fox’s fault, but I shall mention them as the review progresses. The main thing is the cut enforced by the BBFC in chapter 12 where a rat is shown breathing oxygenated liquid. Around 50 seconds has been lost to get around showing the submerged rodent, since they cannot show anything that might illicit animal cruelty. As it happened though, the rat was perfectly fine and it is possible to breathe in that environment once you’ve taken the fluid into your lungs. Taking the censored scene as it is it doesn’t look too bad unless you’ve seen the unabridged version and you can see what they’ve done to it.
Another problem I have with this DVD release for The Abyss is in the picture, but again it’s something that’s not Fox’s fault. James Cameron didn’t strike a fresh anamorphic transfer so shame on him for leaving us with a 2.35:1 widescreen picture that loses intensity as you have to zoom it in to appreciate as much of the effect as possible. Overall, the PAL transfer just doesn’t always look as sharp as it should and this is especially obvious in the tidal wave sequence which is quite as shame as it’s something that could’ve been avoided had Cameron been bothered. The widescreen image is also not centrally-positioned and, like a few recent non-anamorphic Paramount DVDs, the subtitles are placed outside of the 16:9 frame so they don’t fit on a widescreen TV without some tweaking! Please can someone remember to get this right next time? The average bitrate is 6.42Mb/s varying wildly through the film.
For his first Super 35 experience, Cameron has always said he prefers the open-matte fullscreen version after personally overseeing that transfer, so why would he bother with sorting out the widescreen? Call me a cynic if you like…
The sound never fails to impress in the remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack whether it’s the aliens appearing, heavy breathing inside the helmets or the general ambience of the underwater life.
Released over two discs, the first containing both the regular version and the special edition with an extra 24 minutes of footage. There are plenty of extras, but my final niggle is that there’s not quite as many as the Region 1 DVD:
- Imaging Station: Accessing this section gives you the chance to read Cameron’s Final Shooting Script for the film and Cameron’s Original Story Treatment. There are 773 Storyboards created for the film and laid out in story sequence, not to mention an Image Gallery with scores of photos and artwork relating to the movie.
The Pseudopod Multi-angle Sequence allows you to view the six-minute piece in either the final version, storyboards, the original dailies and a working cut with some temporary SFX. Breakdowns and time-lapse footage of other key scenes can be found here including the Engine Room flooding and the Crane crash. The Special Effects Reel brings together 20 minutes of the most impressive moments from the film, although in basic surround sound and not DD5.1 🙁
- Personnel Lockers: A fancy way of saying ‘Cast Biographies’.
- Featurettes: There’s an 11-minute simple one with soundbites from the cast and crew – the sort of thing that would turn up on that old Casey Kasem cinema show and then the 59-minute documentary, “Under Pressure: Making The Abyss”. It’s interesting to see producer Gale Anne Hurd saying she reckons she’ll never tackle anything bigger than this film. She clearly hadn’t reckoned on the Titanic…
- Trailers: A 75-second Teaser in non-anamorphic 16:9 with deep-voiced Don La Fontaine, the 3-minute Main Trailer also presented the same way and a final, 40-second, 2.35:1 non-anamorphic Reviews Trailer which enthuses about those magazines that loved the film prior to its initial release.
Sadly, compared to the Region 1 DVD, it is missing the DVD-ROM content, the Abyss in-depth Mission Components, looking at the Deepcore 2, Pseudopod and Cab One, plus a stack more info about the machinations of its creation under Operations. The Drill Room presents all the text info in a straight-forward manner without having to negotiate too hard. Finally, on the R1 DVD, the Hydrophone Checkout in the audio menu is a Dolby Digital trailer I haven’t actually seen before.
There are 54 chapters in total (45 for the regular edition), plus subtitles in English only for both the film dialogue, even though they occasionally miss out lines of dialogue, plus text commentary. The menus evoke the under-the-sea feeling very well indeed and are almost identical to the Region 1 DVD but don’t allow you to access as many options.
The Abyss Special Edition is out now on DVD and VHS, but we’re still waiting for a Blu-ray!
|
FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
9 6 10 8 |
| OVERALL | 8 |
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 139 / 163 minutes
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Year: 1989
Released: 2001
Region(s): 2, PAL
Cat no: 01988 DVD
Chapters: 45 / 54 plus extras
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Languages: English
Subtitles: English
Widescreen: 2.35:1 (Super 35)
16:9-Enhanced: Yes
Macrovision: No
Disc Format: 2*DVD 9
Director: James Cameron
Producer: Gale Anne Hurd
Screenplay: James Cameron
Music: Alan Silvestri
Cast:
Bud Brigman: Ed Harris
Lindsey Brigman: Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
Lt. Hiram Coffey: Michael Biehn
Catfish de Vries: Leo Burmester
Alan “Hippy” Carnes: Todd Graff
Jammer Willis: John Bedford Lloyd
“Sonny” Dawson: JC Quinn
Lisa “One Night” Standing: Kimberley Scott
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.