Flashback: Mörderische Ferien (2000)

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General		Extras
Category	Horror	Main Menu Audio & Animation Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	94:04
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Michael Karen
Studio Distributor	Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Valerie Niehaus Xaver Hutter Alexandra Neldel Simone Hanselmann Erich Schleyer Katja Woywood
Case	?
RPI	Rental	Music	Siggi Mueller

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, snippets from production.

     Flashback is your typical horror movie. Random psycho armed with sharp implements hacks, mutilates and sexually assaults various cast members. The difference is that this one is set in Germany.

     Some of you may have come across the very clever and satirical German horror/thriller Anatomie starring Franke Potente from Run Lola Run. That film had a (relatively) complex plot, a lot of suspense and a fantastic and often hilarious finale. Flashback has very few of the above qualities. It is predictable, the characters are two dimensional at best, and in all honesty it is far more of a mirror of the lame sequels in the Friday The 13th franchise, with only a touch more class and a tad more of a plot. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t have been a problem for me. A bit of brainless slash and hack fun on a Friday night is usually enough to cheer me up. But sadly, I never quite got there with this one. I’ll come to why a little later.

     Basically, the outline of the story is that a little girl, Jeanette (Valerie Niehaus), witnesses her parents being hacked to death by a psycho wearing women’s clothing and carrying a scythe. For some reason she is left alive, but she doesn’t remember why. In the present, Jeanette grows up in a mental hospital undergoing therapy, until one day her psychiatrist decides she is fit to rejoin the world. She is given a job tutoring spoilt rich kids in the country in their spoken French. Of course, the spoilt rich kids live in some far secluded mansion in the hills surrounded by scary woods and a housekeeper that likes to stay out of sight. And thus the scene is set for the inevitable bloody massacre.

     The thing that ruined this film for me the most is the way it is presented on DVD -- there is no original German audio track. I speak German, have lived in Germany, and to hear the American overdub of lines that Germans would simply not say really, really grated. It ruined the whole tone of the film and the overall experience for me. Moreover, it is likely to be an impediment to others’ enjoyment of the film too. But more on that later. There were other problems.

     Basically, this film was largely uninspired. It lacked the clever and humorous scenes that made Anatomie a cut above the rest (so to speak), and although it was meant to be a send up, the humour often fell flat because of the atrocious overdub. Furthermore, it had no over-the-top, self-referential, sadistically violent and madly furious finale like the classic Scream. It had a finale, and a fairly crazed and bloody one, but it was not anywhere near as amusing or over the top. Nor did it have the supernatural nightmare imagery of Nightmare on Elm Street, but it wasn’t really trying for that. Basically, for a movie that is essentially meant to be a send up, it’s just not that funny. Sure, there’s plenty of cruelty to animals, and you sadists out there will get your jollies out of that. But the murder scenes were just not funny enough to be really good, or even remotely scary. I probably am totally desensitised, actually ... I should remove the ‘probably’ from that assertion, but this film just didn’t get me on the edge of my seat, and only a produced a chuckle or two at best. It had its moments, just not enough of them. While not anywhere near as bad as Halloween H20, a totally uninspired film if ever I saw one (and no wonder they give it away free with DVD players), there wasn’t much about Flashback to make it worth much more than a beer and a pizza. Still, it's good to see the Germans putting in a solid effort.

Video

     Presented in 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced, this is so close to the original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 as to be virtually indistinguishable.

     For the most part, this transfer is clean, with very little in the way of MPEG artefacts, which is very good after seeing the recent release of Scream: Collector’s Edition shot through with an almost unacceptable level of aliasing. Shadow detail is very good, which is important in this film because so much of the violence happens at night. Colours are generally rich, although not vibrant in the way many contemporary Hollywood features are when remastered on DVD.

     My only real criticism of the picture was that it was a little too soft, sometimes bordering on blurry. As to whether this was a fault of the print or a fault in the transfer process, I am not sure. For a sense of what I’m talking about, look at the shot where Jeanette leaves the sanitarium (13:19).

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

     There is only one soundtrack here and that is the dubbed English 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo track. In short, this sucks. I mean, it really sucks.

     Like I said above, I speak German. I’ve lived in Germany. The Germans have a particular way of expressing things and a particular body language which goes with that. The American overdub is so appalling I was nauseous. It wasn’t just bad, it was atrocious. A lot of the humour went flat or just never went because the Americans just don’t get what they’re saying. Worse, the tone of the delivery often fails to line up with what’s happening on the screen. A different form of audio sync problem?

     As for what is generally conceived of as audio sync, this was a real problem. Sure, you could always hear what was being said. But German is a relatively simplistic language once you get used to it, and a lot can be expressed in a little, especially if you use slang. The brilliant French film La Haine is a perfect example of this. In Flashback, the Americans doing the overdub are running their lines so fast to keep up that it becomes positively amusing for a while, then just sad, then just pathetic. I mean, they did a reasonable job, but why not just save all the bother and have the original language?

     On top of that, the overdub drowns out a lot of the ambience. The rest of the sound seems toned down, so that no German pokes through. You can turn it up, but the American drawl is infuriating when louder. Not so much because it is American, but because the setting is so archetypically German, as are the characters. Americans are crass about their sexuality, but not so blunt as the Germans. For them, a spade really is just a spade and you better call it a spade or you’re just not German. There are a couple of directional cues, but no surround presence, and a rather flat and dull overall sound field.

     There was no subwoofer use.

     I’m giving this audio track an overall score of half a star (below) because putting out foreign films without the original audio and multiple subtitles, and a dubbed language for the convenience of those who don’t want to read subtitles, totally vitiates the point of DVD.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menus

     All menus are 16x9 enhanced. The main menu has a 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo soundtrack with slashing noises and some music.

Trailer (1:85)

     Presented in 1.85:1, non-16x9 enhanced, and 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo, the trailer isn’t of the best quality. Worse, I get to hear what their voices are like in German which makes me even more irritated at Universal for the sole dubbed track.

     At this point, the R1 version has not been released and I can find no write up on it that says the R1 release will be any different to the R4 release, except for the NTSC coding. Ditto R2. Chances are Universal is being slack and have just decided to not get hold of the original German track and find somebody to write subtitles.

     Flashback is a German horror movie, but it’s still a by-the-numbers horror movie. It lacks any real inspiration, but it’s silly, violent, bloody and stupid and sometimes that’s all you want. It makes a good beer and pizza movie, so long as you can stand a little cruelty to animals with your dinner.

     The video quality is fairly good, but a little soft.

     The audio is a complete travesty.

     The extra was more a source of annoyance for me than anything else.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall