Harrad Summer (1974) |
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Harrad Summer (1974) |
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| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Drama | Menu Animation & Audio | |
| Rating |
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| Year Of Production | 1974 | ||
| Running Time | 85:23 (Case: 93) | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | No/No | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 1,2,3,4,5,6 | Directed By | Steven Stern |
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Studio
Distributor |
Cinema Art Prods Beyond Home Entertainment |
Starring |
Laurie Walters Victoria Thompson Robert Reiser I Richard Doran Bill Dana Marty Allen Patrice Rohmer |
| Case | C-Button-Version 2-Opaque | ||
| RPI | $19.95 | Music | Patrick Williams |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None | English Dolby Digital 2.0 (448Kb/s) | |
| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 1.85:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
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| Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | Unknown | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles | None | Smoking | Yes |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | Yes, Pictures of the actors | ||
Predictably, the rest of the world isn't ready for the free-love philosophy of Harrad's, whether it's Stanley's Polish working class immigrant parents, Harry's clothing tycoon father Jack Schact (Bill Dana) or Sheila's landed-gentry, widower daddy. There are a few lighter moments, such as when soft-porn star Patrice Rohmer sinks a sausage with Harry for the price of a hot-dog or Bill Dana beats a hasty retreat to the Holiday Inn to escape the round pool nude meditation sessions, but most of the feature has the charisma and entertainment value of wet toilet paper.
Of course it's extremely rare for any sequel to live up to or better its forebear but I find little to like in the concept and execution of this movie. The characters are caricatures and barely credible, lack the opulence of Dallas or Dynasty or the intrigue of The Bold and The Beautiful and make John-Boy Walton seem like Arnie by comparison. This movie isn't even excruciating bad enough to be good, as I believe the production was actually trying to deliver a message. However, if you're an avid fan of truly awful cinema, or you really, desperately want to know what happened next after Harrad Experiment, then Harrad Summer is definitely for you!
The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced.
The transfer is of reasonable sharpness throughout but has limited shadow detail and intermittent low level noise (eg at 101:30).
The colours were a little washed out, in keeping with the film's age, but mostly true to life, however skin tones didn't fare too well with limited contrast and either a pale doll-like complexion or else rather too ruddy posterized colours. The whole film suffered with an alternating phase shift due to pixelization, exacerbated by telecine wobble, which made your eyes begin to hurt if they could be bothered to focus. Moderate aliasing was evident and lost pixels, fine scratches and intermittent black flecks and hairs were evident throughout the feature.
There were no subtitles.
The disc is a single layered, single sided DVD-5.
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| Colour | |
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| Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
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There was one audio track, Dolby Digital 2.0 monophonic in English.
If you were interested in the dialogue you could make it out quite clearly, although you'd probably have the volume turned right down to minimise the unpleasant effects of the accompanying score. The synch, however, seemed to be reasonably on cue.
The music was scored by the prolific Patrick Williams who has been responsible for many soundtracks of TV features - it's corny, at times doleful and generally in keeping with the hammy nature of the acting. You really don't want to know about the opening song, trust me.
There was no usage of the surround, centre or subwoofer channels
| Dialogue | |
| Audio Sync | |
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| Surround Channel Use |  |
| Subwoofer | |
| Overall | |
The menu is quite nicely done, no doubt the handiwork of the Melbourne-based IML DVD mastering house - good on 'yer boys, it's the highlight of the DVD! And that's it - no more extras, no making of features, no biographies (well they'd be short), not even a trailer (well you wouldn't want to scare off prospective audience would you now!)
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
This multi-region disc does not appear to have been released in R1 - one R1-based reviewer of Harrad Experiment even asks if anyone has a copy of this feature - I think he may be in luck very shortly!
The video quality is poor.
The audio quality is equally poor.
The extras are non-existent - thank Heaven for small mercies.
| Video | |
| Audio | |
| Extras |  |
| Plot | |
| Overall | |
| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | EAD 8000 Pro, using RGB output |
| Display | NEC MP3. Calibrated with Video Essentials/Ultimate DVD Platinum. |
| Audio Decoder | Naim AV2. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
| Amplification | Theta Digital Intrepid |
| Speakers | ML Aeon front. B&W LRC6 Centre. ML Script rear. REL Strata III SW. |