Father's Day (2011) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy / Horror	Trailer-5 different trailers for Father's Day Featurette-3 short featurettes More…-5 tongue in cheek promotions Deleted Scenes-x 4
Rating
Year Of Production	2011
Running Time	97:55
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Adam Brooks Jeremy Gillespie Matthew Kennedy Steven Kostanski
Studio Distributor	Gryphon Entertainment	Starring	Adam Brooks Matthew Kennedy Conor Sweeney Amy Groening Garrett Hnatiuk Brent Neale Kevin Anderson Meredith Sweeney Zsuzsi
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	?	Music	Jeremy Gillespie Paul Joyce

Video (NTSC)		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	480i (NTSC)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, after credits

     When the father of Twink (Conor Sweeney) is raped and murdered it seems that Chris Fuchman, aka The Father’s Day Killer, has returned after many years to again prey upon the fathers of Tromaville. In response Father John Sullivan (Matt Kennedy) is sent to find the now recluse Ahab (Adam Brooks). Ahab’s own father had been raped and killed by Fuchman years ago and Ahab had tracked down and apparently killed Fuchman, stopping his rampage. Ahab is reluctant to return to Tromaville but does agree, partly in order to find his younger sister Chelsea (Amy Groening), now grown up and a stripper in a seedy club. The police, particularly Officer Stegel (Brent Neale), are not pleased that Ahab has returned, especially as the rapes and murders escalate. Ahab, Father Sullivan and Twink join forces to stop Fuchman, a challenge which becomes more immediate when Chelsea is abducted. The trail does not lead the trio quite where they are expecting for there is far more to Fuchman that anyone realises.

     Father’s Day is a film made by the Canadian team of Astron-6 (collectively Adam Brooks, Jeremy Gillespie, Matt Kennedy, Steven Kostanski and Conor Sweeney) for about $10,000 that was picked up and produced by Troma. It has all the Troma hallmarks; it is irreligious, contains extreme bad taste moments, blood, gore, out there humour, sex and gratuitous nudity so it is easy to see why Troma were interested. Father’s Day adds rape and sodomy, a topless stripper with a chainsaw, a take on Snake Plissken, a cameo by Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman as God and enough intestines to fill an abattoir. The film also steals bits from Star Wars, Batman Begins, Alien 3 and The Karate Kid, to name only a few!

     Father’s Day is also supposed to be a grindhouse B movie being shown on a late night TV station, so we get station promotion breaks, and a damaged print with frequent dirt marks, vertical scratches, wild colours and the odd hair on the print plus audio crackles and the occasional drop out. The acting is corny and the set design shoddy, but what can one expect for $10,000!

     This tiny budget film is very funny in places with laugh out loud moments and it throws in gross out blood and gore, violence, sex, gratuitous nudity and a visit to Hell. It is weird, surreal, an absolute blast and extremely entertaining. If the Troma style of humour appeals Father’s Day will not disappoint.

Video

     Father’s Day is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78.1, which I guess is close to the original ratio and, for a change with a Troma title, it is 16x9 enhanced. It is in the NTSC format.

     The print of Father’s Day cannot be judged by normal standards. It is set up to look like a grindhouse B grade film shown on late night TV, so it has frequent dirt marks, both positive and negative, vertical scratches in white and yellow and the odd hair. Contrast, brightness and skin tones are all over the place and colours frequently bleed into each other, especially the reds. The print can be sharp when it wants to be, but mostly it doesn’t. However, the filmmakers do keep a control on the artefacts, so it all adds to the fun of the viewing experience.

    There are no subtitles.

    A print that looks just as the filmmakers intended.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

     Audio is an English Dolby Digital 2.0 track at 192 Kbps, surround encoded.

     The audio track has also been manipulated by the filmmakers to give that B movie experience. There are infrequent crackles and the occasional audio drop out. Dialogue is hard to hear on a number of occasions due to louder music or the actors just speaking softly, but nothing is lost and in the sequences where dialogue is important to the joke, such as when Ahab and Father Sullivan are sitting in a car having a discussion about trees and syrup (very funny) we can hear the words clearly. The effects are tinny, such as the occasional gunshot, and the surrounds only produced the occasional music or ambient sound. There was no sub-woofer use that I noticed.

     Lip synchronisation was fine.

     The score by Jeremy Gillespie included electronic music sounding like John Carpenter, popular songs and a bit of classical music by Delibes for good measure. It was perfectly in keeping with the tone of the film and added to the enjoyment.

    Similar to the video, the audio is as the filmmakers intended.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

     Father’s Day is a two disc set. Disc 1 has the film, with or without an introduction (1:15) by the Astron-6 team, plus the following trailers for the film:

• Feature Trailer (2:28)
• TV Teaser (0:30)
• Animated Trailer (0:42)
• Original Demo Trailer (3:44)
• Dan Bern Teaser (1:22)

     Disc 2 contains a number of short extras, mostly inessential. There is also an annoying authoring problem. It is sometimes difficult from the menu to know what section is highlighted. Worse, if you then click on something you don’t want or have seen before you cannot fast forward, pause or go to the next chapter using the remote. So either watch it again, make a cup of tea, or stop and restart.

Make Your Own

• Chris Fuchman Make-up Tutorial (4:36): shows actor Mackenzie Murdock’s face being made up for the part of Chris Fuchman. Quite interesting.
• Tire Iron FX Tutorial (1:46): Astron-6 people arsing around. Very bad taste.

Astron-6 Clinical Trial (2:50)

     Video footage of Heather Summers undertaking a pseudo-clinical trial of the drug Astron-6 and suffering the after-effects.

Astron-6 Promos

     Various people provide tongue in cheek promotions for Astron-6. They are:

• John Waters (0:09)
• Lloyd Kaufman (1:43)
• David Hess (1:52)
• Uwe Boll
• Tom Hodge of Dude designs who also shows how to mix a grindhouse film poster (3:24)

Deleted Scenes

• The Kiss (0:47)
• The Tipi (0:12)
• Ahab’s Anxiety (0:15)
• Artie & Mary (0:34)

    There is censorship information available for this title. Click here to read it (a new window will open). WARNING: Often these entries contain MAJOR plot spoilers.

     In the US there is a single disc edition of Father’s Day that includes only a couple of trailers as extras. The principal release is a four disc edition that includes a Region Free Blu-ray, a DVD of the film, a disc of extras and a soundtrack CD. As the Blu-ray is region free, I’d think the DVD is also. However, the Blu-ray uses only an MPEG-2 code and does not have lossless audio, instead the audio seems to be basically the same Dolby Digital 2.0 audio we have on the DVD. The extras on the third disc include most of those we have, but there are some variations. See here for a full list of the US extras courtesy of Blu-ray.com for comparison purposes.

     The UK release is a single disc edition, Region coding unknown. There is no listing of extras.

     As a stand-alone DVD release, our Region All version is fine.

     Father’s Day is irreligious and it contains blood, gore, out there humour, sex and gratuitous nudity, rape and sodomy, a topless stripper with a chainsaw, a take on Snake Plissken, a cameo by Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman and enough intestines to fill an abattoir. It is weird, surreal, an absolute blast and extremely entertaining. If the Troma style of humour appeals Father’s Day will not disappoint.

     The video and audio are pure grindhouse B-feature, just as the filmmakers intended. The extras are not up to the usual Troma standard in either quantity or “quality”, but there are some.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall