Frozen in Fear (Flying Dutchman, The) (2000)

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Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Full Frame	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	None
16x9 Enhancement	No
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.33:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    This film starts out as an entertaining horror flick that doesn't take itself too seriously. I'm sure it would have been relatively successful if it had just stuck to that premise, but unfortunately this film loses its way pretty quickly by weaving in an overly convoluted storyline and trying to become a suspense thriller. The characters are nowhere near developed enough for the audience to get into the suspense thriller plot (indeed, its a pretty d*** silly storyline) and the time wasted on the plot leaves less time to develop what should have been the primary focus, i.e. the horror action. Worse still, half way through this plot, the film steals off into a little melodramatic romance for a while, with all the panache and excitement of a Mills and Boon novel. And just to broaden the potential audience appeal even further, we get some gratuitous sex scenes and full frontal nudity to boot! What we end up with here is a low budget horror flick that can't decide exactly what it wants to become. It ends up a rather contrived, undeveloped, stereotypical made-for-TV suspense story.

     The story itself is set in the sleepy US town of Dark Hollow, Montana, where a series of mysterious murders of young girls have taken place. The town is home to several weird and whacko characters, including Sean (Eric Roberts), a young man who experienced a traumatic event in his childhood with the death of both parents, and from which time he has not spoken a word, Sheriff Ethan (Scott Plank), who has a strange habit of creeping up on people and needing to know absolutely everything that goes on in the town, Ben (Rod Steiger), the reclusive and very unfriendly town mayor, and Moira (Joan Benedict), the owner of the local hotel (come art-shop!) and a lady haunted by an ominous past. Into this clichéd town step two even more clichéd young, single, sexy, city-slicker ladies named Lacy (Catherine Oxenberg) and Polly (Elina McCormick). Lacy and Polly are two art dealers who have come to track down the artist of a mysterious painting. The artist turns out to be Sean, the unspeaking, traumatised young man who lives alone in his isolated cabin by the lake. But getting to speak to Sean and arrange a deal with him for the art gallery proves to be a harder task than the art dealers first expect. And so the story develops from here, against a backdrop of a couple of quick and highly unsuspenseful murders and the intrigue of wondering who in this strange town has the motive to be the murderer.

    The actors do their best to have a bit of fun with what they've been given in this film, which is not much. Rod Steiger is the clear stand-out - this is a veteran actor who can easily turn on the acting skills and steal a scene from his younger cast members when he wants to. The film is amiably directed and photographed, but ultimately let down by a deplorably woeful script and one-dimensional character development. If only this film had just concentrated on being a horror flick as it started out to be then it might have been more successful and more fun.

Video

    The presented aspect ratio is 1.33:1. It appears that this this was the original full-frame aspect ratio for this direct-to-video release, rather than a pan and scan effort.

    Sharpness is better than you might expect for a low budget flick such as this. It has been shot on film and resolution is quite sharp. There is only minimal grain and shadow detail is sufficient, although lacking on occasion. There are no material low level noise issues.

   Colour is great. The transfer comes alive with some bold colours, to show off the wonderful backdrop of the mountains, lake and surrounding countryside to great effect. Blacks are fairly deep and skin tones are acceptable. There is no colour bleeding.

    The transfer also scores well on the artefacts front, with no MPEG artefacts, minimal film-to-video artefacts (only minor aliasing) and minimal film artefacts (the odd but very minor film fleck here and there).

    There are no subtitles and the disc is single-layered.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    Dialogue quality is for the most part perfectly fine, however I did have some trouble picking up one or two lines, including one particularly crucial one at 75:47. Unfortunately we don't have any subtitles to turn to here either. Audio sync is not problematic at all.

    The music is largely taken from Richard Wagner's 19th century opera "The Flying Dutchman", interspersed with some other film scoring that is uncredited. The use of Wagner's classical music is at times appropriately haunting but at other times just overused and rather pretentious. The DVD's audio transfer captures the music well, with the only problem being some annoying audio hiss (probably due to poor audio source materials being used). Otherwise, dynamic range as captured in this transfer is sufficient.

    The transfer is surround-encoded, with the surrounds used moderately, starting with an obligatory thunderclap in the very opening sequence. The surrounds are then used effectively many times, notably for things such as the sound of the wind, a dramatic audio queue for dramatic flash-back sequences, several ambient noise effects and also to help bring out the soundstage when the  music swells. This is by no means a constant or immersive use of the surround channels, but is effective when used.

     The subwoofer is called upon by the front main speakers on occasion to lend more emphasis to the dramatic music effects, as well as provide some knocks and bumps.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    This DVD is available in Region 2 in identical format. It is also available in Region 1, but technical information for that release is hard to come by.

    The video transfer and audio transfers are great, but there are no substantive extras for this rental release.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall