Darkman III: Die, Darkman, Die

BUY

General		Extras
Category	Horror	Biography - Arnold Vosloo
Rating
Year Released	1996
Running Time	83:21 Minutes
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL (52:54)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Selection then Menu
Region	2,4	Director	Bradford May
Studio Distributor	Universal Pictures Video	Starring	Arnold Vosloo Jeff Fahey Darlanne Fluegel Roxanne Dawson Nigel Bennett Alicia Panetta
Case	Transparent Amaray
RPI	$36.95	Music	Randy Miller

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English (Dolby Digital 2.0, 192Kb/s) French (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192Kb/s) Italian (Dolby Digital 2.0, 192Kb/s) German (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192Kb/s) Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	Yes	Smoking	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired French Italian German Spanish Swedish Norwegian Dutch Danish	Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Darkman III begins with Darkman/Peyton Westlake (Arnold Vosloo) dropping in uninvited at a transaction between crime boss Peter Rooker (Jeff Fahey) and one of his business associates. Making off with the money he needs to continue his experiments in synthetic skin, Darkman returns to his hideout while Rooker decides that he needs to tap into the source of Darkman's strength. Meanwhile, a trauma surgeon by the name of Bridget Throne (Darlanne Fluegel) decides that she must find the phantom that she has been reading about in newspapers. As luck and a revisionist script would have it, Bridget is one of the surgeons who treated Peyton's injuries after he was found in the river near his original lab. After a rather amusing sequence involving Darkman's understandable reaction to one of those skin-care product commercials, Bridget finds her way into Darkman's lair and tells him her story. Essentially, she is working on a new surgical technique to repair the major nerve that was cut in the first film in order to save Darkman from dying from shock, and she needs a human guinea pig. By now, I know you're having doubts about the plausibility of a burns patient being saved by the severing of a nerve, not to mention his ability to survive the immunological ramifications of the burns, but what the hey, this is meant to be a live action comic book. In any case, Darkman and Bridget manage to create a synthetic skin that holds its structure past the ninety-nine minute mark set by previous versions, while Bridget repairs the nerve by implanting a strange kind of electronic device.

    I won't spoil any more of the plot for you, but suffice it to say that the ham-fisted references to Beauty And The Beast, as well as some moments when the story takes a back seat to the need for explosions, drag this plot down into the mud. Arnold Vosloo's performance as Darkman manages to save this film from being a total write-off, but Darlanne Fluegel is quite seriously miscast as the bitchy trauma surgeon, while I couldn't have cared less about Jeff Fahey's portrayal of a greedy drug lord. Unlike the previous two episodes of the series, Darkman in particular, the lower-echelon villains of this film have no personality, and Darkman himself has gone from being poignant and witty to another bad comedian like so many of the previous entrants in the halls of horror fame. Still, if you have three hours to spare, and enjoy a good piece of B-grade schlock, then Darkman III makes a good piece to view alongside Darkman II.

Video

    The colour saturation of this transfer is virtually identical to that of Darkman II, with the colours being natural and well-represented, if a little on the dull side. No bleeding or misregistration is apparent at any time, so the colour saturation is as good as can really be expected. Just don't expect any flashy, vibrant shades, as the only scenes that approach normal lighting are those in the Rooker household.

    MPEG artefacts were not a problem with this transfer, which also demonstrates the virtues of compressing an eighty-three minute film to a dual-layer disc. The bitrate is constantly high, although never reaching a rate of ten megabits per second. Film-to-video artefacts consisted of some image wobble at 14:06, but rather than the usual side to side wobble associated with an imperfect telecine mechanism, this was a vertical wobble that was quite distracting. Aliasing is not a problem in this transfer, with hardly a perceptible shimmer in sight. Film artefacts consisted of the occasional minuscule fleck, and a single hair, on the picture.

    This disc is presented in the RSDL format, with the layer change taking place at 52:54. The layer change is between shots, and only mildly intrusive despite its noticeability.

Audio

    The dialogue is clear and easy to understand at all times, although the sound effects occasionally intrude on the dialogue's clarity for a fraction of a second here and there. All of the important dialogue is easy to understand, so this is only a minor issue that I suspect only a handful of people will really notice or care about. There were no perceptible problems with audio sync.

    The music in this film, like the previous episode in the series, is credited to Randy Miller, with themes borrowed from Danny Elfman's score for the original. As with the previous episode, it is hard to tell exactly how much of the score is borrowed from the previous episode, because the two elements sound so alike. This score does a reasonable job of supporting the onscreen action and lending a certain level of excitement, but it still doesn't quite have the same comic and tragic elements of the first film.

    The surround presence of the English soundtrack is non-existent, and so was the surround presence in the Spanish dub for the most part. When I had listened to the entire English soundtrack in stereo, I tried it again with the same Pro Logic settings I normally use for a games machine, and found that the surround presence in the soundtrack still left a lot to be desired. Split stereo effects were also quite minimal, but this was difficult to notice in context of the soundtrack's constantly thunderous approach. The subwoofer had a whale of a time supporting gunshots and explosions, although it wasn't specifically called upon to do so. In spite of that, it supported the soundtrack evenly and consistently, without calling attention to itself.

Menu

Biography - Arnold Vosloo

    The video quality is excellent except for a quick bout of wobble.

    The audio quality is satisfactory, but could have been better.

    The extras are practically non-existent.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall