Stars:
Steven Culp, Clea Duvall, Tyler Mane, Jason Marsden, Karim Prince, and Julie
Strain
Writer:
George Huang
Director:
George Huang
Feature
length: 90 minutes
Extras:
Featurette, Photo Galleries, Filmographies, and Trailers
Languages:
English Dolby Digital 5.1 and French Dolby Surround 2.0
Subtitles:
English Captions and Closed Captions and French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese,
Korean, and Thai Subtitles
Packaging:
Amaray Keep Case
Chapter
Stops: 28
Sound:
Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and Stereo Surround Sound
Year
of Theatrical Release: 2001/DVD Release: 2002
Home
Video Distributor: Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment
MPAA
Rating: R
Reviewer:
Mark A. Rivera
The
latest in Stan Winston’s “Creature Features” series of DVD-Videos has been
released by Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment and is entitled “How To Make A
Monster.” Clea Duvall plays a college intern who works for a corrupt video
game designing company that hires three extraordinary programmers to design the
ultimate scary monster. To motivate the programmers, a million dollar award is
posted for the person whose contribution greatly improves the overall product.
Competing against each other, the programmers ruthlessly create the ultimate VR
monster that comes to life in the real world after a freak electrical storm bent
on taking out the game team, who it sees as players.
As
a popcorn straight-to-video DVD release, “How To Make A Monster” is
entertaining with a mix of camp, humor, and Winston’s amazing creature
effects. The moral of the story is that greed consumes everything, but the film
ultimately appears to reward this behavior with an ironic twist that is somewhat
unclear. It is refreshing to see a film that relies on a monster that is on
screen with the actors in these days where so much CGI has robbed the human
quality practical special effects are able to invoke.
Columbia
TriStar’s DVD edition features both a widescreen (1.85:1) transfer and a full
framed (1.33:1) aspect ratio. The image quality is clear and free of color
bleeding and anomalies. There is an English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
Soundtrack, which is not entirely aggressive, but well mixed enough to give a
true surround experience. A French Language Dolby Surround Soundtrack and
English Captions and Closed Captions as well as French, Spanish, Portuguese,
Chinese, Korean, and Thai Language Subtitles are also encoded as options on to
the dual layered DVD.
A
short 3-minute behind-the-scenes featurette is included along with extensive
Monster Sketches, Makeup Effects, Behind-The-Scenes, and Production Still
Galleries and select cast and crew filmographies. A “Creature Features”
video trailer is accompanied by trailers for “It Came From Beneath The Sea,”
“Wolf,” “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” “Fright Night,” and “The
Breed.”
DVD-ROM
users have access to additional behind-the-scenes footage, an interactive game,
and website links. The main menu is animated with animated transitions to
standard interactive still frames that are easy to navigate. Fans of this series
on DVD will no doubt want to add this to their collections, but for passive
viewers and collectors I recommend renting this title first. “How To Make A
Monster: Creature Features” is available on DVD-Video now from Columbia
TriStar Home Entertainment.
©
Copyright 2002 By Mark A. Rivera
All Rights Reserved.