Frankenfish (2004)

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General		Extras
Category	Horror	Main Menu Audio & Animation
Rating
Year Of Production	2004
Running Time	80
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4,5	Directed By	Mark A.Z. Dippé
Studio Distributor	Columbia Tristar F/D Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Tory Kittles K.D. Aubert China Chow Matthew Rauch Donna Biscoe Tomas Arana Mark Boone Junior Reggie Lee Noelle Evans Richard Edson Muse Watson Steve Ritzi Ron Gural
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$34.95	Music	Ryan Beveridge

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French Italian Spanish Dutch Arabic Croatian Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Norwegian Polish Portuguese Slovenian Swedish Turkish English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Take one part Jaws, mix it with two parts Tremors and season it with a smattering of Lake Placid, and you have the low budget schlockfest that is FRANKENFISH. My, how the pilfering, err, homages, mount up. Now this in no way implies that there isn't any fun to be had here. If you like a good old-fashioned nature run amuck, low I.Q. gorefest than this rampant fish tale is for you. We have decapitations, severed torsos, gunshots to the head, gratuitous female nudity and very ugly yet well executed CGI mutant fish all begging for your attention and hard-earned rental dollar.

    To be honest I enjoyed this cheese platter a lot more than I should have. The acting is weak, the story is ludicrous, but the effects are decent and the climax suitably outrageous. When all these elements combine, a passable slice of exploitation cinema emerges - who would have thought it?

Video

    The film has been presented in its original aspect ratio of 1:85:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.

    Simply put the transfer has a first rate image. There are no signs of aliasing, telecine wobble or edge enhancement problems. As the majority of this film takes place at night it was good to see the transfer sported solid black levels and well defined shadow detail. There are no grain or low level noise trouble spots.

    Colours are rich and natural and showcase the bayou in all its lush beauty. There is no image bleeding.

    There are no film or video artefact nasties to speak of.

    This is simply a very pleasing picture courtesy of Columbia Tristar.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    Frankenfish has been given four soundtracks in Dolby Digital 5.1. The English version is reviewed here. The other tracks are Spanish, French and Italian.

    Dialogue levels are strong with no discernable audio sync problems.

    Ryan Beveridge provides the film's score and does a reasonable job. The score is never intrusive, except when our aquatic slayers are on the war path, and thankfully underplays the on-screen proceedings instead of constantly bombarding them as is the case with most B grade quickies.

    The 5.1 mix has a very well constructed surround channel balance. Directional effects are well rendered and give the rear channels a busy workout.

    The subwoofer adds the required bass and reverberation for a film of this type.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Main Menu Audio & Animation

    All versions of this title are basically the same.

    Frankenfish is a cheesy rip-off of every aquatic horror adventure you can think of. However, this low budget moving cliché does have a modicum of style when stacked up against the recent batch of similarly budgeted horror cash-ins. The film is a definite no-brainer, but you could do far worse when it comes to direct to DVD horror fodder. The disc looks and sounds fine, but is barren of extra material.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall