Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)

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General		Extras
Category	Vampire	Theatrical Trailer Featurette TV Spots-2
Rating
Year Of Production	1992
Running Time	82:01
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Fran Rubel Kuzui
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Kristy Swanson Donald Sutherland Rutger Hauer Paul Reubens Luke Perry Michele Abrams Hilary Swank Paris Vaughan
Case	?
RPI	$31.95	Music	Carter Burwell

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	Croatian Czech Danish English for the Hearing Impaired Finnish Hebrew Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish Turkish	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, TV Reports, death scene

    Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a ten-year-old movie. It's not a great work of art. Oh, it's amusing, but the real interest lies in its historical value - from this movie came the TV series. If you are a regular reader, you are probably aware that I rather like the TV series. So how do I feel about the movie?

    In 1992 I saw a trailer for this movie in a cinema. It caught my attention. The title was clever, summarising the movie concept quite succinctly - Valley Girl battles creatures of the night - sounded like a delightful absurdity. I made a note to see the film (this was, of course, in those dark ages we now call BD - Before DVD - when cinemas still existed). I did. And I was a little disappointed that they hadn't explored some of the ideas adequately - the movie seemed a bit flip. That didn't stop me hiring it on video a year or so later (again, I stress that this was BD - when video shops offered VHS tapes for rent).

    I make no claims to prescience. I was quite surprised when I saw ads for the TV series - I remember thinking "they made a series from THAT movie?". I still thought the title was cute, so I made a point of watching it, even though our local broadcaster had seen fit to make it hard to watch (moving it from timeslot to timeslot...). I was delighted to discover that what the movie left unrequited was more than adequately served by the series. Before the end of the first season, I was hooked.

    Am I saying that the TV series is superior? Absolutely! The ideas that Joss Whedon had need the lengthy exploration possible in the series format. Besides, the series better captures the mixture of darkness and comedy that is the show's great charm. I also have to admit that I consider Sarah Michelle Gellar rather more beautiful than Kristy Swanson (your mileage may vary).

    Does that mean that I consider the movie bad? No. In fact, in my latest viewing, I have come to appreciate how much of what I like in the TV series appears in the movie - most particularly the language. Oh, there are numerous differences, some of the most obvious being:

• the vampire makeup is radically different, and there's no morphing from human appearance to vampire and back - making it rather easy to pick out the vampires
• vampires don't turn to dust when staked
• vampires can float / fly
• Merrick (Donald Sutherland) appears to be the only Watcher (not called that, though), and he has lived many lives, training Slayers each time
• Buffy dreams of Slayers past, and remembers the dreams
• Buffy gets cramps to warn her of the proximity of vampires

    One thing did surprise me - (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) in the first episode of Season One, mention is made that Buffy burnt down the gym at her old school because it was filled with vampires. I thought I remembered her doing that in the movie. I was wrong.

    This movie was directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui, Kaz Kuzui was one of the producers, and Joss Whedon was the writer - you see those names on every episode of the TV series, although not with Fran Rubel Kuzui as director.

    Having reviewed Bring It On, I feel obliged to say that the cheerleading in this film is pretty lame, but this film is far from unique in that respect.

    One thing in particular really annoyed me about the movie, though: (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) the death scene of Amilyn (Paul Reubens) - who let him go on so long?

    The character Pike (Luke Perry) seems to be the archetype of Oz - laid-back, quite cool. He even has a guitar.

    I'd recommend this film to Buffy fans who came in late, and want to see where it all started, and to non-fans who'd like something a bit less dark, with broader (less subtle) comedy.

Video

    The DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, 16x9 enhanced.

    The picture is for the most part rather good: clear and sharp, with very good shadow detail and no low level noise. There are two night sequences that are grainy - the first is the lightly-grained scene of Buffy's first time in the graveyard; the second starts as light grain around 77:06, but gets much worse around 77:22. This grain takes a heavy toll on the sharpness of the image.

    Colour is a little less saturated than the R1. There's no oversaturation or colour bleed.

    There are very few film artefacts (nice to see on a ten-year-old film), and they are all hard to spot. There's no aliasing or moire worth commenting on. There is some minor telecine wobble (see 8:31, for instance). There's some light MPEG shimmer on backgrounds. All up, this is quite a nice transfer

    There are subtitles in 13 languages, including English. The English subtitles are labelled as English for the Hearing Impaired, but they fail to subtitle sound effects. They do subtitle the songs, though. They are easy to read, accurate, and well-timed.

    The disc is single sided and single layered. There is no layer change, but that's probably why there are so few extras.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The soundtrack is presented in English, in Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded. That's what I listened to, particularly given the dearth of other choices.

    The dialogue is clear and readily understood with no obvious lapses in audio sync.

    The score is by Carter Burwell. Perfectly adequate stuff, but without the grab of the Nerf Herder theme used for the TV series. There are lots of contemporary songs used in the soundtrack.

    The surrounds don't have a lot to do, but they are noticeable during the senior dance and during the credits. Mostly they just add some depth to the score. The subwoofer gets no signal at all.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu is static, with no sound. It's easy to operate.

Theatrical Trailer (1:37) 

    A cute trailer, narrated by Luke Perry.

Featurette (4:04) 

    This is little more than an extended trailer, with a little bit of behind-the-scenes footage.

TV Spots

• Fantasy (0:34)
• Hip-hop (0:34)

    These are just TV advertisement for the movie.

    The R4 version of this disc misses out on:

• Dolby 4.0 soundtrack in addition to the Dolby Stereo
• 5 trailers for other movies
• layer change
• advertisements before the menu

    The R1 version of this disc misses out on:

• many languages of subtitles

    The R4 disc has a better video transfer, albeit with slightly less saturated colours, but the difference is not huge. You shouldn't hurry to replace your R1 with an R4, but if you don't own the R1, you can buy the R4 quite happily.

    Buffy The Vampire Slayer is an amusing film on a decent DVD.

    The video quality is very good.

    The audio quality is fine.

    The extras are basic.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall