A DVD REVIEW, PART 1: THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (2005, MGM/Dimension) [Archive] - Audio & Video Forums

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Lexmark3200
10-14-2005, 11:35 AM
For any of you that care at this point about any of the scandal material regarding this film, especially if you read my in-depth review of the box set MGM just put out of the DVDs for the original Amityville films, I am going to begin with this simple statement: this remake was utterly, utterly unnecessary, and this is coming from a massive fan of the 1979 original who lived minutes from the real town of Amityville, New York where the legend of the real tragedy began.

In what seems to be an absolute flood of classic horror film remakes lately, MGM and Dimension films hopped on the bandwagon this month to let none other than Michael Bay --- famous for his huge action blockbusters such as Bad Boys and Armageddon --- to help produce this utterly fictionalized and blown-out-of-proportion re-telling of two stories that had the world fascinated in the 1970s. WHY this film needed to be remade is beyond me, because the original, which starred James Brolin and Margot Kidder in the lead roles, still seems "spooky" enough, making the infamous "haunted house" of Amityville appear to be the REAL star of the picture, even if not to the brainless young core audience these remakes go for, and even if THAT film stretched the facts of the novel way out of proportion. The story of The Amityville Horror, as it came to be known, is believed by many at this point to be a hoax, concocted by a couple to make money off a real-life tragedy that DID happen to a family in 1974. Whatever the case may be, this film plays JUST like the ridiculous, awful "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake we had to recently endure.....maybe that's because the same team responsible for destroying Tobe Hooper's original Chainsaw Massacre was responsible for once again bringing us to the sleepy town of Amityville, New York and further stretching the actual events of this case to downright unbelievable proportions; the entire effort just felt "rushed" and completely special effect-reliant --- even though early rumors of this remake promised the film was supposed to much more truthfully follow the facts of the novel written by Jay Anson, even mores than the 1979 version. This was the furthest thing from the truth. But I will get into the deficiencies of this film in just a little bit....

For those of you who don’t know anything about this now-world infamous case, never saw the original "Amityville Horror" or read my review of the DVDs in the DVD forum, let me provide some background. These were the facts: On November 13, 1974, twenty-three year-old Ronald DeFeo Jr., eldest son of his family, murdered his parents, two brothers and two sisters as they slept in their Dutch Colonial home located in a cozy seaside town called Amityville, located on the South Shore of Long Island --- about an hour's drive from the hustle and bustle of New York City. This would have been a fairly forgotten-about homicide case in ordinary circumstances once some time passed, but when DeFeo broke down and confessed to New York State police that he did in fact murder his family, the situation snowballed into his own claims that voices inside the house were telling him to kill them --- in one police interview, DeFeo claims "I couldn’t put the gun down if I wanted to.....I felt like there was someone inside moving me...." He then claimed that on the night of the murders, as he sat in his bedroom, he heard the voices of his family members conspiring to kill him and that "someone with black hands had appeared and handed him a rifle to kill them." From there, all kinds of pleas and motives exploded from the case, and in the book "High Hopes: The Amityville Murders," an in-depth examination of the DeFeo case written by DeFeo's law team, we learned how abusive Ronald DeFeo Sr. was towards Ronald Jr. and the rest of the family, his mafia connections, and Ronald Jr.'s drug addictions --- mainly LSD, which could have easily caused the "voices" he said he was hearing. In the end, DeFeo was charged with six consecutive life sentences, and still continues to come up for parole hearings.....in his last one, which I believe was in 1999, DeFeo claimed that he was "upstairs using drugs while someone else gunned down my family." His request for parole has been consistently denied. And what could never be figured out to this day even is why no member of the family woke up as Ronald fired his shotgun off each time to kill each of them in the middle of a quiet night --- tests proved their blood was not drugged and that DeFeo used no silencer.

The DeFeo home remained on the real estate market for about a year, when newlyweds George and Kathleen Lutz began house hunting in Long Island, New York. This is the beginning of what became "The Amityville Horror" story; they happened to stumble upon 112 Ocean Avenue, the address of the DeFeo home, with the help of a real estate agent that talked them into seeing the home even though it was beyond their budget. But at only $80,000, the house still seemed like a steal for them, and George and Kathy claimed that the DeFeo murders made no difference to them --- they even lived with some of the furniture left over by the DeFeos. This was creepy enough to begin with; but the Lutzes move in with Kathy's three children from a previous marriage. Suddenly, a few years later, a shocking book titled "The Amityville Horror", followed by a hit movie with the same name, flooded the public and put the town of Amityville, New York on the map forever.....the book, written by Jay Anson, who mysteriously died just after it was released, claimed that the Lutz family was "driven" out of the DeFeo house only after 28 days by "supernatural" events.

According to the first drafts of the book, these events included flies infesting a room of the house at the wrong time of year, a front door being ripped from its hinges by itself, a family priest being attacked by an unseen "force" and hearing a voice tell him to "get out" when he attempted to bless the house, George being awoken every single morning at 3:15 which was the established time of the DeFeo murders just to be terrorized by unseen noises, and an imaginary "friend" that their daughter had, named "Jodie," which was described as a "pig" with glowing red eyes that would look at them from inside the house, and out. These claims became more and more dramatic as the novel went on, and several changes were made to the narrative as the hard copy of The Amityville Horror became a paperback, leading many to believe that the Lutzes were making this story up to sell the public a story of a "haunted house" that a killer once occupied, possibly to get them out of financial debt they were in from buying the house. The story claimed that the Lutzes simply packed up and left the house in the middle of the night after spending only 28 days there, leaving all their possessions behind and returning the house to the bank, despite a huge financial loss. 112 Ocean Avenue, in Amityville, New York, from that point on, became an instant tourist attraction, with hundreds of would-be ghost hunters flooding the front lawn, and psychic detectives investigating the house --- on the Lutzes request, no less. After years of defending their haunted house story to the public, the Lutzes moved to California, where they claimed the "evil force" from Amityville followed them for awhile. George and Kathy are now divorced, and nothing was really ever proven regarding hauntings in the home, despite what self-proclaimed demonologists like Ed and Lorraine Warren or Hans Holzer say. These claims from these people center on the fact that the property at 112 Ocean Avenue is built upon an Indian burial ground where tortured Indians were left to die, and this is why the property is haunted, and it is what lead Ronald DeFeo to murder his family. The Amityville Horror novel goes into this background a bit, regarding the Indian burial ground and that the body of a witchcraft practicing Salem, Massachusetts man named John Ketchum is buried somewhere on the property, too.

But go onto the countless internet sites regarding this case, and there are so many who feel they can prove the Lutz's "Amityville Horror" was a fake story, including the late Stephen Kaplan, founder of Long Island's Parapsychology Institute, who also mysteriously died after his book, The Amityville Horror Conspiracy, came out, which tried desperately to prove the Lutzes were making the whole story up. The History Channel has done a special on this case, too, in which the Lutzes are interviewed, and that they STILL to this day hold to the fact that what was written in the novel version of The Amityville Horror was true --- even though other people interviewed, like Ronald DeFeo's lawyer William Webber, says that he and the Lutzes sat down to discuss "making up" a haunted house story in order to sell a book together.

The Amityville Horror --- subtitled "A TRUE STORY" --- went on to be a bestseller, and the home became infamous around the world, with people flocking to this small New York town just to get a glimpse of the "haunted house" with the "eye-like" attic windows on top. What was next was to make a motion picture version, and that’s just what happened in 1979, when American International Pictures and director Stuart Rosenberg released the movie version of Jay Anson's novel with the same name. James Brolin and Margot Kidder were signed on to play George and Kathy Lutz, with supporting roles from Murray Hamilton, Don Stroud, and Rod Steiger playing the role of the Lutzes' priest, who claimed he was attacked in the house by an unseen presence. The best thing about the original version of The Amityville Horror was the house itself; filmed in Tom's River, New Jersey, the house used for the film looked like an oversized, dramatic version of the real Lutz/DeFeo home, with the same infamous attic windows --- in reality, the property at 112 Ocean Avenue was smack in the middle of a regular block of houses without that much property surrounding it; the film version of "The Amityville Horror", as with the fictitious sequels that followed, showed the house standing alone, with no other houses around it, with a very grand size --- almost like a mansion. But that was just the beginning of the problems the even the original film had with keeping the so-called "facts" of the Lutz story in line with the book version, which was supposed to be more true, according to George Lutz. Some of the events depicted in the film were proven in reality to just not have happened, such as the front door being "ripped from its hinges by itself in the middle of the night;" what really happened is that an OUTER SCREEN DOOR was destroyed during a rainstorm, and being the house was on the waterfront, this was not unusual. Still, 1979's Amityville Horror, with the help of James Brolin playing a creepy George Lutz who decays into madness and who cant get warm enough in the house, and Rod Steiger over-playing the priest who is attacked by flies and is told to GET OUT by an unseen voice when he attempts to bless the house (which was never actually confirmed by the REAL priest who came to bless the house, Father Ray Pecororo), proved to provide a creepy atmosphere (along with Lalo Schiffrin's award-winning music for the film which was rejected for The Exorcist) and actually made audiences wonder what really did happen to the Lutzes in Amityville. Once the film was released, American International Pictures made George and Kathy submit to polygraph tests after the public was coming down on them for making this story up; they both passed, mysteriously. But the problems that plagued the original version of the film --- such as some of the characters looking and acting nothing like the so-called real people involved, such as Rod Steiger's priest who looked nothing like "Father Ray" and changing the names of Kathy's three children altogether --- were just the tip of the iceberg for what ruined the 2005 update of this case.

Like I said, I have NO idea why The Amityville Horror needed to be redone (after all, there was a "prequel" which followed, and seven sequels which made Amityville a cottage industry) in the same way I have no idea why the Texas Chainsaw Massacre needed to be redone (well, except to see Jessica Beil in those tank tops). The first Chainsaw is a disturbing film because it shows so LITTLE --- that was the whole point, that these cannibals are torturing this young girl who cant escape, and that’s what made it so creepy. The same applied, not to the same degree, with the first Amityville Horror --- it was what we were NOT seeing that made it kind of scary; the house itself suggested something was wrong there. But, this has been the time of big budget Hollywood horror remakes (all of which, in my opinion, sucked except for Dawn of the Dead) and first time director Andrew Douglas took the helm with producer Michael Bay to re-tell the Lutz story; completely unnecessary in my eyes, because there has been COUNTLESS controversy and investigation on this case already to the point that what does it even matter anymore......people are STILL living at the real 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York (the address has been changed to thwart visitors and the windows have also been changed; I was there recently before moving from Long Island) without ANY ghosts to report.

In order to bring these classic types of horror films to modern, young, brainless audiences that flood the movie theaters today, these remakes are soaked in special effects and rushed editing, to the point the entire story is tweaked with and lost. It happened with Texas Chainsaw, and it happened with The Amityville Horror. Was Douglas even READING the novel when he made this remake? Did he know ANYTHING about the case? First off, the house used looks NOTHING like the real 112 Ocean Avenue --- a TOTALLY different structure of house, resembling something like a church/castle combination; the original movie version house, while also not accurate size wise, was much more dramatic and appealing. Somewhere along the line, the address of the house is lost, becoming an inaccurate "412 Ocean Avenue" and the area this remake was shot in looks ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like the real Amityville --- or Long Island, New York itself for that matter.

I don’t know who cast this thing, but they were way off --- playing George Lutz this time around is Ryan Reynolds (Van Wilder), who looks WAY too young and WAY too shapely (the real George was a husky, bearded guy; Reynolds had a six pack stomach which was ridiculous). Playing Kathy is Melissa George, whose Australian accent slipped through too much of the ridiculous dialogue and ruined the role. EVERYTHING about the novel version of The Amityville Horror seems to have been changed and altered for this new version, simply to make it flashier, bloodier, and more appealing to these idiots with their cell phones who don’t even know who Ronald DeFeo WAS; the film opens on a promising note, with black and white mock footage of Ronald DeFeo shooting his family in the house (the original opened the same way, showing a faceless DeFeo killing the family as they slept with the words "NOVEMBER 13, 1974, AMITTYVILLE, LONG ISLAND....ENTIRE FAMILY MURDERED, NO APPARENT MOTIVE" as the sequence closed) and then what appears to be actual police video after the actual murders for a news station. Some mock newspaper articles show pictures of DeFeo (which looked SLIGHTLY like the real Ronald DeFeo) with the headlines "The Devil In New York"; this was kind of silly because there were no such clippings from local Long Island newspapers when this case hit the streets.

The opening title sequence, which has the words "The Amityville Horror" in typewriter-like print, was unimpressive, and lacked the original's effective child lullaby-like music (which was heard on the TRAILERS for this remake, but wasn’t actually IN the film). From there, the film goes on to show us Reynolds and Melissa George getting ready to move, yadda yadda yadda, and being shown the DeFeo home; the rest of the film was a downward spiral, between the acting simply not how George and Kathy could have really acted, overblown special effects that took the film right out of the 1970s --- when this was supposed to take place --- and made it feel like something that happened yesterday, and CONSTANT effect rip-offs from films like The Ring and The Grudge.

Even the costuming seemed wrong ---- if you see real footage of George and Kathy Lutz during their days in the house, they are wearing typical 70s gear; Lutz often has on tight polyester floral shirts, etc, etc. Here, Ryan Reynolds is in jeans and blazer coats that do not even fit the time period, or so it seems; where did the team for this remake get their information for this story?

Rushed at a brisk pace, 2005's Amityville Horror trades the original's slow, spooky "boringness" for over-the-top, unnecessary scare techniques, and so much --- I mean SO MUCH --- information from the original novel has been changed and overblown. In this new version, we have, again, Kathy's children's names different from the real ones, instead of "Jodie" being an invisible "pig creature" with red eyes that plays with their youngest daughter, Jodie has now become a dead DeFeo daughter who is constantly seen as a ghost in the house during loud sequences; the effect is a complete ripoff of the little girl from The Ring, and was utterly fictitious in keeping with the Lutz story. Want more? The Lutz family dog's name was Harry, and he was a Black Lab, kept faithful in the original, but here, Harry becomes a multi-colored Border Collie who is hacked to death by Reynolds halfway through the film (Lutz didn’t kill his own dog in real life). Then, there are scenes when Reynolds and George are on the roof of the house, climbing up after their daughter who wants to kill herself because Jodie told her to; HUH? This NEVER happened in ANY version of Jay Anson's original story. As the film goes on, Reynolds' character decays into madness, his eyes getting red, until he picks up a shotgun and hears the same voices Ronald DeFeo supposedly heard....telling him to murder his family. This never happened to the real George Lutz; he never went after his family with a shotgun.....the only thing he claimed happened to him, according to the book, was that he WAS snapped awake each night at 3:15 AM and that he WAS constantly cold in the house, always chopping wood for the fireplace. Now, while James Brolin played the same "decaying into madness" character in his George Lutz (again, a bit inaccurate), Ryan Reynolds just goes way beyond anything truthful here; he chops wood outside like a madman, trying to butcher one of his stepsons by having him hold the wood for him....the effect was a complete ripoff of Jack Nicholson's character in The Shining.

The mysterious "red room" in the basement of the house, thought to be where the "Indian spirits" can channel and which was portrayed a bit over the top in the original, suddenly has become a full-blown torture chamber in this remake, with Reynolds going into it and seeing visions of Indians being tortured with bloody results; WHAT? This NEVER happened according to Jay Anson's book. Where were the producers of this travesty GETTING THEIR INFORMATION FROM, once again?

The end sequence of the film is also completely inaccurate, which shows, after the 28 days, the family "escaping" from the house by boat --- in reality, the Lutzes drove away from the home in the middle of the night in their van. The family needs to get Reynolds away from the house so he isn't "possessed" by it anymore and so he doesn’t want to shoot them anymore --- so they get him on the family's speedboat and suddenly, his eyes aren’t red and they race away by sea.....TOTALLY inaccurate and ludicrous. The sequence of the priest being attacked by the flies and the "unseen presence" was also overblown for this remake and made the original performance by Rod Steiger seem like art; as he prepares to bless the house, the priest has an urge to check a vent in one of the rooms, which explodes with thousands of flies, and the booming voice of "GET OUT!" is heard once again. In all fairness, this whole sequence was blown out of proportion even for the original film, because this event was never confirmed by the real priest who was in the house that day. At any rate, the Lutzes claimed, according to the novel, that once their priest was attacked and left their house, any chance to contact him, or for him to contact them, was thwarted by broken up phone connections and static, and that the priest became horribly ill any time he thought of trying to help the Lutzes or tell them about their house....this was portrayed in the original quite well, but again, seemed overblown because in interviews with George Lutz, he never says anything about the priest becoming sick; just that he mentioned one of the bedrooms felt "uncomfortable" and that when he discussed the Lutzes in church, he always heard the heat coming up in the vents.....in this remake, the priest is attacked by the flies, leaves the house, and never has contact with the Lutzes again, never gets sick, yadda yadda yadda.....the whole timeline on this seems wrong, too.

In all fairness, I actually came out of 2005's Amityville Horror thinking the critics' reviews I had read the night before were a bit too harsh, believe it or not.....while almost completely historically inaccurate, and a slap in the face for the DeFeos and Lutzes, the film was actually very, very frightening on its own --- it made my mother, cousin and female friend that I was with in the theater scream, jump and gasp more than a few times. The problem was just that this did not FEEL like The Amityville Horror; the pacing, the editing, the acting --- it was all too modern, with that typical MTV-style look to it (thanks, Michael Bay) that plagued The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake just to please these modern-day audiences. This remake was completely unnecessary in my eyes; the original told the Lutz tale as "close" as possible (even though, with George Lutz admitting it, it WAS a work of Hollywood even back in 1979) and it should have just been left alone. It is remakes like these that begin to make you realize when you are a GENUINE film buff, appreciating the SIMPLICITY of EARLY horror works like John Carpenter's Halloween and the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Amityville Horror.....films that did not rely on CGI or migraine-inducing editing to get their points across. To summarize, I believe, while convincing at times as a deranged, "possessed" George Lutz, Ryan Reynolds was completely wrong for this role because of his physical makeup; he looked NOTHING like Mr. Lutz.....and the rest? The house looked awful, the facts did not follow the novel and were fictionalized, the dog was hacked to death, and again, it seemed this was an excuse to get young audiences into theaters to look at sexy young actors, like they did with Jessica Beil in Texas Chainsaw Massacre with her breasts and *** practically in every shot, and what they did here with Reynolds and his six-pack stomach, showing it off in almost every outdoor shot. Come on......is this what cinema has REALLY come to folks?

From what I have read, the real George Lutz is PISSED at the makers of this film because he proclaimed it completely false and untrue to the story first told to author Jay Anson; rightfully so. I would be pissed too if my family was being exploited like this.

This above essay was taken from a review I did of the 1995 remake of this film after it debuted theatrically, and I figured I would just save A LOT of time and energy if I began the review of the DVD version with it as an introduction before getting to the technical specs of the disc itself. Arriving on DVD shelves for rental and purchase in time for this Halloween season (gotta love Sony's marketing gimmicks), I rented this COMPLETELY and UTTERLY inaccurate remake of this proven-to-be-somewhat-of-a-hoax story last night just to re-visit it and see if it was really as bad as I remember it being......it was. Everything from Jay Anson's novel -- which Michael Bay claims was NOT going to happen this time around -- has been changed, exaggerated and transformed into nonsense for modern teenage audiences. The best version of this tale -- and that's STILL stretching it -- is Stuart Rosenberg's original with Margot Kidder and James Brolin. This is absolute remaking crap at its best, folks. I don’t know any other way to put it. The costuming is wrong, the behavior of the characters is wrong, the events that take place are COMPLETELY wrong (George Lutz, as Ryan Reynolds does in this remake, NEVER hacked his dog Harry to death with an axe and the family NEVER chased their daughter on top of the roof of this house which looks NOTHING like the real house did and there was no dead DeFeo daughter looming around the place named "Jodie") -- in fact, the writer of this remake admits during a special features interview that many facts were changed for shock value including changing the Lutz's daughter's invisible "pig creature friend" Jodie to a dead DeFeo daughter ghost named Jodie. Utterly ridiculous and completely not inline with what this story originally told.

Everything is out of place here -- from the wrong address number of the house to the look and feel of the time and place this is supposed to be taking place in, to the actors themselves: Reynolds, while creepy at the end as George Lutz coming apart from the "house's influence," looked NOTHING like the real Lutz, who was a big, burly man; Melissa George is just hideous in this as Kathy Lutz, trying to hide her Australian accent through the film and hamming it up and not keeping in line with ANY way the real Kathy acted according to Anson's novel. These young producers, headed by Michael Bay, just ****ed this whole thing up and had NO idea what they were doing with the material. For a rental, this was ALMOST INTOLERABLE revisiting; I CANNOT recommend a purchase. The "somewhat" definitive version of the Lutz's tale still remains 1979's The Amityville Horror and MGM did a great job cleaning that up into a high definition print for the special AMITYVILLE HORROR box set recently launched; for those of you who have never seen Stuart Rosenberg's take on this creepy haunted house tale, do yourselves a favor and skip this remake because it's complete bull**** -- the original had enough bull**** in it already with liberties taken from the book version, but it just felt right and this remake does not, in any way. This is coming from someone who lived 20 or so minutes from the real house and has visited it countless times over the years; the remake didn't even look anything like Long Island, New York. Really sad.

At any rate, I can remember the theatrical launch of this remake sounding absolutely spine chilling and wild in the THX certified theater I saw it in, making the three female guests I was with jump, shake and gasp more than a few times whenever the multiple "stingers" kicked on and scared the crap out of them (a deliberate effect from Bay and team when they had no idea what to do with the material so they simply substituted loud, gory flashes of dead little girls and rapid-paced editing techniques). I was thinking to myself "although this sucked as a motion picture, the DVD is going to be one kick-ass ride...." I wasn’t not WAITING, mind you, on the DVD release of this piece of ****, as I have been for, say, The Batman Anthology or Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, but something made me go to Hollywood Video last night and rent this just to give it one last chance at home.....let's just say I cannot wait to drop this back into the return slot at the store and never see it again; I will be holding on to my original version by Stuart Rosenberg, thank you very much, especially with the newly minted high definition transfer from MGM.

Here were are with yet another Sony-influenced DVD marketing product, as they have been in conjunction with MGM's titles for some time now; originally released in 1979 by American International Pictures and eventually distributed by MGM who bought the rites of the film, The Amityville Horror was remade and once again released under the MGM banner, with co-production work from multiple studios, including Dimension and Platinum Dunes. The rear cover of the box exhibits Sony/Columbia’s influence, as with the recent John Carpenter's The Fog re-release, depicting all the audio and video specs in rectangular grids at the bottom of the rear of the keepcase. The artwork is horrible here, on the front and back, whereas the original showed the creepy Long Island house from the side and its infamous attic windows, here were have Reynolds and George's faces "streaming" out of blood red artwork under the film's title and an awful depiction of the house at the bottom of the cover -- a house that looks ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like the real home where all these events took place in Amityville, New York, save for the attic windows which looked WAY too exaggerated in this remake.

One saving grace of this disaster: the film clocks in at UNDER 90 minutes.....what a relief......

VIDEO SPECIFICATIONS:
2:35:1 ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN TRANSFER MASTERED IN HIGH DEFINITION

Unfortunately, for such a horribly made film, this was an absolutely reference-grade gorgeous transfer that I had no problems with. It's still a head-scratcher to me why so many titles are out there bearing great legacies and fan bases yet their DVD treatment is so much less-than-stellar, and absolute crap like this gets royal service in the video department. Now, I KNOW this has everything to do with the fact that this is an ultra-modern film, yet I find it such a pity that wastes of celluloid like this get such rich, colorful near-perfect DVD transfers; it should almost be against the law. But letterboxing was accurate on my screen at 2:35:1, and this widescreen presentation exhibited no problems that I could detect while watching it -- none. Colors remained steady, grain didn't exist, and even the most difficult scenes to shoot, which would be the lightning-quick "flashback" scenes of the dead Indians being tortured, etc., or the sequences where Reynolds' character is going mad towards the end, did not seem to exhibit any video breakup or noise of any kind. A good job for a really ****ty title.

AUDIO SPECIFICATIONS:
ENGLISH DOLBY DIGITAL 5.1, FRENCH DOLBY DIGITAL 5.1; SUBTITLES IN ENGLISH, FRENCH & SPANISH

I was surprised to see an omission of a DTS track for this title, being the audio was so bombarding in the theater -- but I said the same thing of films like Van Helsing which absolutely BLEW ME out of my chair in the theater and yet when the DVD arrived, it seemed Universal simply slapped one track on the release, a 5.1 Dolby Digital variant which got the job done but didn't wow me at home like it did in the theater -- by a LONG shot.

Lexmark3200
10-14-2005, 11:39 AM
....review continued in the PART 2 thread....