Another American Psycho. (The Eyes Of Laura Mars (DVD))

Member Name: Brett Bligh

Product:	The Eyes Of Laura Mars (DVD)
Date:	17/06/01 (71 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good quality anamorphic print, interesting photo gallery section, reasonably good range of extras in general.

Disadvantages: Mono soundtrack, director tends to state the obvious in his commentary, Visions featurette is rather dated.

Featuring major award-winning actors Faye Dunaway and Tommy Lee Jones, as well as other recognisable names and faces such as Brad Dourif, Rene Auberjonois and Raul Julia, ‘Eyes of Laura Mars’ is a reasonably prestigious production from 1978 which seems to have been largely forgotten since its initial release. Now, with DVD release, comes an opportunity to rectify that situation…


THE FILM
Laura Mars is a fashion photographer currently causing much controversy with her violent and provocative pictures taken for both photo galleries and advertising concerns. When, suddenly, people she knows start being murdered, Mars begins to suffer frightening visions in which she sees through the killer’s eyes in the moments prior to his committing the crime. Only homicide detective John Neville believes that what Mars claims is happening to her is true, and only he can save her from the deadly assassin now on her trail…


THE DISC

· Distributor: Columbia Tristar Home Video [CDR 10016].
Columbia Tristar seem to be flooding the market at the moment; at least, a huge percentage of the DVDs I have bought in the past few weeks seem to have been released by thus company. This release seems to be par for the course for a CT DVD at the moment, comprising a nice anamorphic print of the film with generally poor sound, together with an adequate if not exceptional range of extra features.

· Rating: 15.
This film is does not contain a particularly large amount of violence or actual nudity, although implied violent and sexual imagery is implicit in the very narrative of the film, and so this rating is probably about right.

· Region: 2 (PAL encoding).
This disc I am reviewing here is the standard UK release of the film, suitable for most UK DVD players (specifically, any region 2, region 0 or multi-region players which support PAL playback; all players bought within Britain should fall within one of
these categories).

· Type and case: DVD9 with black Amaray keepcase.
Single-sided, dual layered disc. I did notice a slight pause at layer change, which I have to say is rather rare on my equipment and signifies a rather poorly judged position at which to place the change.

· Running time: feature 99 minutes approx.

· Picture format: 16:9 anamorphic widescreen.
Based upon the 1.85:1 original exhibition ratio, this is a nice approximation and a nice print. Okay, so the film looks rather murky and the colours are certainly not modern, but this is caused by the film’s nature, which is “very Seventies” — walls are brown, certain rooms are much darker than those in which filming would take place today. None of this can be blamed upon the DVD transfer, however, and the reproduction here is quite faithful, including both blacks and fleshtones. Due to the fact that this transfer is both anamorphic and PAL screen resolution is excellent throughout, especially for those of us with widescreen TVs.

· Audio: Mono.
A slight disappointment is likely to be felt at the mono soundtrack, however despite lacking the subtleties and nuances of a surround soundtrack the sound here is crisp and clear enough to enjoy the film, and the viewer is unlikely to miss the other 4.1 sound channels for long.

· Subtitles: English, French, German, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Hindi, Turkish, Danish, Arabic, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish and Italian.

· Extras: Filmographies, Photo Gallery, “Visions” featurette, Director’s Commentary.

The filmographies, in the menu referred to as ‘Talent Profiles’, consist of the usual text screens and have sections on director Irvin Kershner, Faye Dunaway, Tommy Lee Jones and Raul Julia.

The Photo Gallery is not presented in the usual way, and is all the better for it. Rather than a se
ries of simple stills which can be navigated by selecting some kind of ‘next’ button, the photo gallery here is an actual video of stills, along with a running commentary from Lauren Bousreau [spelling unsure], the DVD producer, who talks about the various differences between the different scrip draft of Eyes of Laura Mars. This feature lasts just over 8 minutes and is probably the best photo gallery I have yet seen on a DVD.

The Vision featurette is a ten-minute 4:3 short, whose origins are contemporary with the film, comprising clips from the film together with brief snippets of interviews with actors and various other individuals related to the project.

The Director’s Commentary is a full-length audio monologue with director Irvin Kershner (also responsible for ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, ‘Never Say Never Again’ and ‘RoboCop 2’). Kershner is obviously proud of and interested in his film, but he does have the annoying tendency to point out the astoundingly obvious. Despite that, this is a welcome inclusion.

· Menus: the menus are not animated but are tastefully designed, consisting of a montage of sketches based upon scenes from the film surrounding a negative version of the ‘eyes’ image from the front of the DVD cover. They are also functional to the task at hand and no obvious problems are apparent.


CONCLUSION
Whilst it cannot compete with the prestige DVD productions being awarded to contemporary popular films, this is actually a reasonably impressive DVD for a film of this age and current obscurity. Although the soundtrack is only mono, this is not such a major drawback to the effectiveness of this particular film, and is in fact more than made up for by the excellent print and good range of extras — including the first photo gallery on DVD I have ever encountered which I actually thought was worthwhile. In general, then, a good job well done. r>