Ghost Rock (2003)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	Main Menu Audio & Animation Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	2003
Running Time	97:00
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Dustin Rikert
Studio Distributor	Silverline Pictures Imagine Entertainment	Starring	Gary Busey Michael Worth Craig Wasson Jenya Lano James Hong John Laughlin Adrienne Barbeau Jeff Fahey
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	?	Music	Soon He Newbold

    East meets West in the awful Ghost Rock, which technically resembles a poorly made student film, with the art direction of a US daytime soap. Described on the cover as "an ambitious re-invention of the western", Ghost Rock is a cliché-soaked attempt at a western, with lots of shaky-cam, absurd kung fu, and lame attempts to emulate John Woo's gun fight scenes. I'm afraid that even the plentiful breast implants and lap dancing (yes, lap dancing) can't save this one. I rate this movie NRA - Not Recommended for Anyone.

    Set in Arizona during the Old West, the film opens with a boy witnessing his family being slaughtered by "a band of merciless outlaws led by the ruthless Black Jack Pickett" (Gary Busey). There seems to be no motivation for the carnage, nothing appears stolen, and the family are merely gunned down (as a gross plot contrivance), before the outlaws ride off. We then skip forward 20 years, and guess what? The boy is now grown into a man, with the unlikely name of Johnny Slaughter (Michael Worth), and he is looking for revenge.

    Slaughter finds out that Black Jack is now the mayor of Ghost Rock. Ghost Rock is a lawless town, filled with clichéd western characters and bad sets. Ghost Rock is a dangerous town. Not only does Black Jack run it with an iron fist, with the help of his Kung Fu goons, but many of the building's one-dimensional facades look ready to topple over on passers by.

    Here, Slaughter meets Jasmine (Christa Sauls), who has invented lap dancing, and Savanah Starr (Jenya Lano), a mysterious post-feminist gun fighter with a dark past.

    Slaughter immediately sets about letting his presence be known, and we have the mandatory villain henchmen beating up the hero scene. Of course we know the hero will return with guns (and fists) blazing.

    Will Slaughter get his revenge? Will Jasmine's lap dancing invention take off? Will this movie ever end?

Video

    The transfer is reasonable, for what I assume is a made-for-video production.

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. I am guessing that it is open-matte, full frame.

    The sharpness is poor, and many scenes are noticeably soft, such as at 53:13. The shadow detail also suffers at times, but overall, it is reasonable.

    The colour is fine, but the image is often grainy, such as at 23:40.

    There are no serious problems with MPEG artefacts, but the grainy image sometimes looks pasty or pixelated. Film-to-video artefacts are present in the form of aliasing, such as the roof tiles at 8:08 or 15:26. Small film artefacts appear throughout. This was not distracting, except for at 87:58, when a lot of scratches appear on the print.

    No subtitles are present on this single-sided, single-layer disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio sounds pretty flat. The only audio option is English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s). Note: The cover incorrectly claims this DVD is encoded with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.

    Generally the sound design for this movie is amateurish. For example, the sound effects are dreadful and the sound of the gun fire is muffled throughout. Also, at 18:19, our hero walks through a busy saloon and there is complete silence except for some muffled, background talking. Someone forgot to add in all the Foley effects!

    The dialogue quality and audio sync are mostly fine, but sometimes the dialogue sounds too buried in the mix.

    The synth-based musical score is credited to Soon He Newbold, and it is pretty forgettable, and often far too loud.

    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

    There is one extra.

Menu

    Animated with audio.

Trailer (2:45)

    Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, non-16x9 enhanced.

    Ghost Rock is also available in R1, and our version is basically the same as the R1 except they get a few extra trailers for other Lion's Gate releases.

    With its childish paint-by-the-numbers story, and lame production, this movie is better left alone. Ghost Rock is a failed attempt to marry a traditional gun-blazing western, with a Hong Kong style martial arts flick.

    The video quality is poor.

    The audio quality is very poor.

    There is one extra.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall