Zandalee (Beyond Home Ent) (1991)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1991
Running Time	100:03
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (54:34)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Sam Pillsbury
Studio Distributor	Beyond Home Entertainment	Starring	Nicolas Cage Judge Reinhold Erika Anderson Joe Pantoliano Viveca Lindfors Aaron Neville Steve Buscemi Ian Abercrombie
Case	Amaray-Opaque
RPI	$14.95	Music	Pray for Rain

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

     Zandalee (Erika Anderson) is a free spirit; we know this because she dances around her house naked. She is married to Thierry (Judge Reinhold); he used to be a talented poet, but has given up practising his art, more concerned with running his deceased father’s company in New Orleans. Zandalee is sexually unsatisfied, and we don’t need her cross dressing boss Gerri (Joe Pantoliano) telling her this for us to know. Onto the scene comes Johnny Collins (Nicolas Cage). In their younger, wilder, bohemian days Johnny and Thierry had been close friends, one a painter, the other a poet, but whereas Thierry has moved on Johnny remains a wild soul, painting his life: “if I cannot paint, everything goes to s***” he states at one stage with a straight face. We know Johnny is still an artist – he has long hair, a goatee beard, smokes constantly and is generally blunt and obnoxious. He awakes in Zandalee lust, jealousy and Catholic guilt as they begin a passionate affair. Thierry knows something is amiss; he and Zandalee try to reconnect by going away for a few days fishing in the bayou, but Johnny follows them. There can be no winners here.

     Zandalee is not a film of any subtlety; director Sam Pillsbury (Free Willy 3: The Rescue (1997) may be the highlight of his CV), draws character and motivation with as broad a brush stroke as Johnny’s garish canvasses. He is not helped by the often banal dialogue, with “I want to shake you naked and eat you alive, Zandalee” as a good example. The acting is also wooden. Judge Reinhold is flat and gormless, Nicolas Cage unconvincing as the wild artist – he just looks silly. Erika Anderson looks good naked, but she is not sufficiently an actress to make us believe her change from initial dislike for Johnny to white hot passion in a couple of meetings. Mostly she just looks glum. The sex scenes are also nothing special or erotic, grunts taking the place of passion.

     Zandalee has pretensions to be art, a meditation on love, lust, Catholic guilt and jealousy but it is mostly all talk and needs some serious work on the plot. As noted, motivations are perfunctory, seemingly important characters such as Thierry’s grandmother Tatta (Viveca Lindfors) go nowhere, the relevance of Steve Buscemi’s character is hard to discern, and the movie resolves its love triangle with about 15 minutes to run, leading to what feels like an ending of another film.

     Zandalee went straight to video in the US and only received a very limited release in other territories. With an indiscriminate plot, silly dialogue and indifferent acting, the film has not a lot to recommend it. Perhaps Nicolas Cage fans might like this one.

Video

     Zandalee is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, the original ratio, and is16x9 enhanced.

     The print is fine without being anything special. It is sharp enough with nice detail, while contrast and brightness are consistent. Colours are natural if not vibrant, skin tones fine. Blacks and shadow detail are acceptable. There is evidence of film grain and the odd small artefact but nothing distracting.

     The layer change at 54:34 resulted in an imperceptive pause.

     There are no subtitles.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

     Audio is an English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo at 192 Kbps. While stereo, the mix is very centre speaker oriented with minimal surround use for ambient noise and music. The sub woofer was silent. Dialogue in the film was mostly clear, although some of Reinhold’s lines, especially when he is quoting poetry, are indistinct as are some of Cage’s southern drawl dialogue. The lack of any subtitles didn’t help, nor did turning up the volume a couple of notches.

     The score was credited to Pray for Rain with a number of added tunes on the soundtrack performed by Jump with Joey and other bands. The music was not obtrusive and worked reasonably well.

     Lip synchronization was fine.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

     Not a single thing.

     I have found records of a Region 2 UK and Region 1 US release but neither seem to have any extras either. In fact, the Region 1 is reported to be in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Stick to the local release.

     Zandalee has pretensions to be art, a meditation on love, lust, guilt and jealousy but it is mostly all talk, with silly dialogue and indifferent acting. It also needs some serious work on the plot. The video and audio are fine; there are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall