The Salute of the Jugger (The Blood of Heroes) (Force) (1988) |
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General | Extras | ||
Category | Post Apocalyptic |
Production Notes Biographies-Cast & Crew-The three main cast and the writer/director only |
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Rating | |||
Year Of Production | 1988 | ||
Running Time | 87:09 (Case: 90) | ||
RSDL / Flipper | No/No | Cast & Crew | |
Start Up | Menu | ||
Region Coding | 4 | Directed By | David Peoples |
Studio
Distributor |
Beyond Home Entertainment |
Starring |
Rutger Hauer Joan Chen Vincent D'Onofrio |
Case | Amaray-Transparent | ||
RPI | $32.95 | Music | Todd Boekelheide |
Video | Audio | ||
Pan & Scan/Full Frame | Pan & Scan | Audio Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) | |
Widescreen Aspect Ratio | None | ||
16x9 Enhancement | No | ||
Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
Original Aspect Ratio | Unknown | Miscellaneous | |
Jacket Pictures | No | ||
Subtitles | None | Smoking | No |
Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
Action In or After Credits | Yes, The credits start to roll over the final scene. |
The story of The Salute of the Jugger is set in a post-apocalyptic future where most technology has been lost. A violent game has grown popular, a game that basically involves beating your opponents to a pulp whilst trying to stick a dog's skull on a spike at the end of the field, and not get pulped yourself. This game is played in teams of five, and the players in these teams are known as "Juggers". These teams travel from town to town taking on other teams and getting paid by the people of the towns for it. The movie follows the fortunes of one particular band of juggers. The leader of the band, Sallow (Rutger Hauer), was in his youth one of the best of the Juggers - playing for "The League" - but was thrown out for dallying with a lord's wife (ahh...what love). His desire to return to The League is sparked by a new member of his team, Kidda (Joan Chen), who wants the team to become known as the best there is - and the only way to do that is to join "The League".
While there certainly are no award-winning performances here, the action sequences are good and the costumes nicely done to convey a decent feel of a society in decline. The sets, especially the larger ones later in the movie have that whole "we had $20 and a week to make them" feel, but still fit the piece rather well. Overall, The Salute of the Jugger is a good way to spend an evening without having to think too much.
Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33 (not 16x9 enhanced), this is a pan-and-scan transfer. Presumably the desert sequences would have been far more impressive in the film's original aspect ratio.
The sharpness of this transfer is good without being remarkable, displaying a decent amount of clarity that still could have been considerably better. There is a little in the way of low-level noise, but only if you look very hard. Shadow detail is also in the good-but-not-great category, although the level present works very well in the underground city scenes, providing a nicely dank and dark look.
In the desert scenes, colour is a little washed out, although this is really to be expected given the brightness of the surrounds. When the action is underground, the colours are still mostly shades of brown and grey, but the highlights on the gowns of the nobles and the uniforms of the League players stand out well.
Apart from one major problem, there are no MPEG artefacts. At 48:49, there is severe image break up and pixelization affecting several frames. This is extremely noticeable, but fortunately occurs in a location that is not too much of a problem to the flow of the film. This fault has been confirmed on more than one copy of this DVD, so it appears to be a pressing fault.
There is no aliasing in this transfer at all, even during a close-up of a cello, most likely due to the lower sharpness level. Film artefacts are present throughout the film, although given that they are predominantly black they are less noticeable once the action heads underground. The artefacts are never distracting and the constant brightness of the desert scenes probably highlights them to a greater extent than normal.
There are no subtitles present on this disc, and it is a single-sided, single-layer disc, which means no layer change, and no getting out of your chair.
Sharpness | |
Shadow Detail | |
Colour | |
Grain/Pixelization | |
Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
Film Artefacts | |
Overall |
This disc contains only one soundtrack, being an English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack that is surround encoded, and has the surround flag set. It is encoded at the high (for a two channel soundtrack) bitrate of 224 Kb/s.
Dialogue is easy to understand at all times, being very clear.
Audio sync is for the most part good, but slips out occasionally, most likely caused by the need to loop dialogue due to high background noise. An example is a scene on a beach at 39:00 where the wave sounds were obviously too loud for the live dialogue to be used, and the looped dialogue obviously doesn't match the lip movements.
The score is provided by Todd Boekelheide and is an interesting choice of non-traditional instruments and percussive sounds. The score suits the post-apocalyptic setting well, giving a hint of familiarity but at the same time something very different. It is used primarily during action sequences and supports them well.
Surround channel use could have been better for ambient sound, and goes virtually silent during the quieter moments above ground. Once the action moves underground however, the surrounds get more use for the noises of a large city. Surround use is most aggressive during action sequences where the sounds of fighting are reasonably well spread out through the soundfield. The nett end result, however, is a rather frontal soundfield, although there is good variation across it.
The subwoofer got little use, barely adding any effect at all.
Dialogue | |
Audio Sync | |
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts | |
Surround Channel Use | |
Subwoofer | |
Overall |
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
The video quality is good but not great, and the transfer is chopped to 1.33:1.
The audio is slightly better than the video, but it could have been better.
The extras are almost non-existent, barely deserving the description of extra.
Video | |
Audio | |
Extras | |
Plot | |
Overall |
Review Equipment | |
DVD | Pioneer DV-535, using S-Video output |
Display | RCA 80cm. Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
Amplification | Onkyo TX-DS787, THX Select |
Speakers | All matching Vifa Drivers: centre 2x6.5" + 1" tweeter (d'appolito); fronts and rears 6.5" + 1" tweeter; centre rear 5" + 1" tweeter; sub 10" (150WRMS) |