HORROR DVD/BLU-RAY REVIEWS

A police officer has to bust a drug ring on a mining facility in space.

Question: What’s more bad ass than Sean Connery?

Answer: Sean Connery in space.

Far off on Io, one of Jupiter’s many moons (but one of the few with planetary mass) Marshall William O’Niel is the new chief dick on Con-Amalgamate’s platinum mine. The General Manager not so gently informs him that if he doesn’t rock the boat, they’ll get along fine. Except you don’t tell Bond not to rock the boat. So when O’Niel gets wind of a drug ring running in the facility, he rocks the boat alright. He also picks it up and shoves it up everybody’s asses.

OUTLAND plays sort of fast and loose with physics. People don’t actually explode when exposed to the vacuum of space, and there really shouldn’t have been more gravity inside the barracks of the mining facility than outside of it. But hey, you know what? I don’t care. It’s Sean Connery in space. As well as Peter Boyle and Frances Sternhagen. That’s a lot of hefty acting prowess. There are also some great fight scenes, and the aforementioned exploding people.

And somehow, in the midst of a movie about space drugs on a moon of Jupiter, it manages to be a human drama. O’Niel’s wife and kid leave him for being a career man, and his one ally on the mine, Dr. Lazarus (Sternhagen), feels like she’s the mine’s doctor being she’s too old and worthless to do anything else. So by getting each other’s backs and wiping up the bad guys, they get to prove that they’re not actually colossal eff-ups.

From a production standpoint, the SFX are really good considering the film is 30-years old. Apparently it was a pioneering production for a process called IntroVision, which allowed an actor to exist in the same shot with a projecting foreground and background element. The fight scenes are realistic as well, and there is appropriate gore and blood when it is needed. All and all a neat little gem from the past.

Video: 1080p, 2.4:1, enhanced for 16x9 televisions. This transfer looks really good. There was a bit of controversy over the relationship between the director and the DP, but I’ll let you Google that.

Audio: DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 for English, Dolby Digital 2.0 for French and Castillian Spanish, and 1.0 for Latin Spanish. Optional English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles.

Other than the original theatrical trailer, there is a commentary with writer/director Peter Hyams. His voice is monotonous, but he’s pretty frank and funny, and tells a lot of interesting stories.

At the risk of repeating myself, it’s Sean Connery in space. Yeah, there are some other great actors, neat fight scenes, and some decent gore, but it all boils down to Connery. He delivers here, as always, and it’s great to finally have a Blu-Ray edition of this classic space western.