83 Hours 'Til Dawn (1990)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Main Menu Audio
Rating
Year Of Production	1990
Running Time	93:57 (Case: 96)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Donald Wrye
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Peter Strauss Robert Urich Paul Winfield Elizabeth Gracen Kevin Kilner Shannon Wilcox R. Lee Ermey Samantha Mathis Cameron Bancroft
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$19.95	Music	Gary Chang

    83 Hours 'Til Dawn is the tense, gripping, and sometimes shocking true account of a kidnapping. A young heiress is taken from her family, and buried alive in a purpose built capsule. The capsule has a battery operated air pump, and some food and water. It's a disturbing and moving true story that will have you checking that you locked your doors before you go to sleep.

    83 Hours 'Til Dawn is based on court transcripts, police records, and the book written by Barbara Jane Mackle. When two strangers knocked on her door the night of December 17, 1968, Barbara was suffering from the flu, but she was soon to feel much, much worse. Barbara was kidnapped at gunpoint, and buried alive in a plywood box containing a lamp, air pump, three gallons of water and some food. The kidnapping was carried out by University of Miami researcher (and sociopath) Gary Krist and his assistant, Ruth Eiseman-Schier. A California prison escapee, Krist had built the coffin-like capsule at the University of Miami Institute of Marine Sciences, where he worked.

    I purposely haven't mentioned what happened in the real case, as the film is very accurate, and follows the startling true events closely. In the film, the names have been changed: Julie (Samantha Mathis) is kidnapped, and her wealthy parents (played by Robert Urich and Shannon Wilcox) are contacted. The kidnapper (Peter Stauss), wants $500,000 in twenty dollar bills in a suitcase. When he gets it, he will tell them the location of the underground capsule. He warns the parents and authorities that if he's caught, he will not reveal the girl's location. R Lee Ermey plays the FBI Agent in charge of the investigation.

    For a full account of the real story, and a startling update with recent events, please highlight to read: (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) "Doctor With a Dark Past: He was convicted of kidnapping a college student and burying her alive. Now Gary Krist, M.D., has a license to practice medicine. Dr. Krist now works as a general practitioner in Chesney, Indiana. Three decades ago, Krist was sentenced to life in prison for the 1968 kidnapping of Barbara Jane Mackle, a college student from a wealthy family. Authorities said Krist, then 23, and a female accomplice abducted Mackle, a student at Emory University in Atlanta, at gunpoint from a motel and drugged her with chloroform. They put Mackle in a wooden box with food and other provisions, and buried her in a remote area in Georgia. Police rescued Mackle 3½ days later, after her father paid a $500,000 ransom. Krist was captured off the Florida coast in a speedboat he had purchased with the ransom money. The crime became the subject of a movie of the week, and Krist himself wrote a book about it, as did his victim. In her book, Mackle described her reaction as she was buried inside the box. "I screamed and screamed," she wrote. "The sound of the dirt got farther and farther away. Finally, I couldn't hear anything above. I screamed for a long time after that." After serving 10 years in prison, Krist was released and went on to study at medical schools in Grenada and Dominica, eventually earning a medical degree. The state of Alabama rejected his attempt to get a license, but the Indiana Medical Licensing Board approved him in December 2002. Indiana law does not prevent convicted felons from obtaining a medical license, and the state medical board put a number of restrictions on his ability to practice medicine. He remains on indefinite probation, and he must appear before the board every six months. He was required to submit to psychiatric evaluation, and he is not allowed to prescribe certain drugs." (Source: abcnews.go.com)

Video

    Have you ever recorded a movie late at night on 'long play'. Imagine you did that, and then left the tape in your garden shed for ten years. Then imagine you found it at the bottom of a box of tools and played it out of curiosity. If you can imagine that, you can imagine the picture quality of this DVD.

    The very grainy transfer is presented in its original (pre-widescreen) television aspect ratio of 1.33:1, full frame.

    The sharpness, black level, and shadow detail are all very poor throughout. For example, consider the complete lack of detail in the dark interior scene at 23:00, or the lack of detail in the swamp scene at 84:26. There is also low level noise throughout.

    The colour has suffered with age, and often looks a little brown and murky.

    There are no serious problems with MPEG artefacts, but the grainy image sometimes looked a little pixelated. There are no problems with film-to-video artefacts. Some film artefacts were spotted, but the biggest problems were videotape related. I assume a poor tape master was used, and there are video artefacts throughout, such as the thick, white horizontal line that appears on screen from 19:18 to 19:41.

    No subtitles are present.

    This is a single-sided, single-layer disc, with the feature divided into six chapters.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio is limited, but it does the job. The only option is English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s).

    The dialogue quality and audio sync are fine.

    The musical score is credited to regular TV composer, Gary Chang, and while it is simple and minimal, it helps set the ominous mood for the story.

    The stereo audio is not surround encoded, and thus there is no surround sound presence or LFE activity.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    Not surprisingly, there are no extras.

Menu

    A simple menu, it is static with audio.

    83 Hours 'Til Dawn is zoned for all regions. Fortunately, our version is PAL.

    This is a great telemovie, and well worth watching, but due to the poor quality of the DVD I would only suggest renting it (unless you saw it in one of those $5 DVD bargain bins).

    The video quality is poor.

    The audio quality is very limited.

    There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall