Outland

General		Extras
Category	Science Fiction Thriller	Theatrical Trailer(s)	Yes, 1
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1981	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	105 minutes	Other Extras	Cast & Crew Biographies Production Notes
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Movie
Region	4	Director	Peter Hyams
Studio Distributor	Warner Brothers	Starring	Sean Connery Peter Boyle Frances Sternhagen James B. Sikking Kika Markham
Case	Snapper
RRP	$29.95	Music	Jerry Goldsmith

    All is not well in Outland. A lot of miners go psychotic and kill themselves or others. In fact, a lot more in the last 6 months than ever before. Their bodies are judiciously whipped out into space and gotten rid of. O'Niel smells something rotten, and decides to investigate. He has the help of the colony's doctor, Lazarus (Frances Sternhagen) but not of the colony's general manager, Sheppard (Peter Boyle).

    Sean Connery makes this movie. Without him, I think the movie would have fallen flat. He makes it all very believable and very chilling, even though most of the exterior shots do look like the models that they are. This movie is more about people rather than about fantastic set design.

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer was a bit soft and blurred, but still acceptable, with some graininess at times. Shadow detail was lacking compared with current generation transfers, with blacks being just that, without any details discernible. No low level noise was apparent.

    The colours were well rendered with no under or oversaturation noted.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen.

    Some of the scenes in this film just screamed "aliasing alert". There are a lot of scenes with hard metallic blue closely spaced lines (eg exterior shots of the Outpost which showed nothing but a fine grille structure). A number of Warners transfers have had significant problems with this type of shot causing severe aliasing. Fortunately, this transfer has virtually no aliasing at all. Indeed, it is remarkably good in this regard. Film artefacts, on the other hand, were quite intrusive at times, and absent at other times. You certainly have no doubt that you are looking at a 17 year old film. There is a particularly large artefact at 22:28.

Audio

    Dialogue was quite audible at all times, though a bit muffled sometimes.

    There were no audio sync problems with this disc.

    The musical score is by Jerry Goldsmith and sounds a bit dated, and is present unevenly but nonetheless is an effective accompaniment for the movie, creating the appropriate sense of tension.

     The surround channels were used unevenly. Dialogue was all up front and centre. Special effects were spread throughout the soundfield. At times this became a little disconcerting - the centre speaker would be providing the majority of the sound output and then suddenly the surrounds would burst forth with a special effect. Music was mixed throughout the soundfield, also somewhat unevenly. This seems to be a characteristic of remixed soundtracks, presumably because there are subtle surround cues that we now take for granted which simply are not present in the original stems. The latter half of the movie has a lot of special effects, and because these are aggressively mixed, the second half of the movie is far more integrated soundfield-wise than the first half. Overall, a surprisingly effective surround mix has been created on this disc, even if it is somewhat uneven.

    The .1 channel was used moderately, and with good effect to anchor some of the special effects.

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

Cast & Crew Biographies

Production Notes

    The video quality is acceptable for the age of the movie.

    The audio quality is relatively good given the fact that the original movie had a Stereo soundtrack.

    The extras present are average.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna
30th March 1999