{2jtab: Movie Review}
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You’ve probably never heard of this film (and I suppose I’d worry about you if you had). Be that as it may, the producers of Death Valley were betting that it’d be a hit back in the day with horror hounds and gore girls across America. In 1982, Universal took another stab at the slasher genre with this cliché-ridden narrative penned by Human Experiments’s Richard Rothstein. While it slipped away without a single drop in the bucket, Death Valley isn’t nearly as forgettable as one would expect it to be.
Mixing its narrative with almost every genre - shifting from family drama to western to horror and back again - available to a filmmaker, director Dick Richards’ Death Valley, an eventual horror film that introduced child actor Peter Billingsley (A Christmas Story) to American audiences, is much, much better than it ought to be. It was a film that was expected to play well, garnering the usual slasher film groupies, but faded quickly into the sunset of its southwestern setting. In fact, I simply cannot believe Shout! Factory has seen fit to release it on blu-ray due to its lack of notoriety as even a cult film.
Paul Stanton (Edward Herrmann) spends a teary-eyed day in New York with his son, Billy (Billingsley), before sending him to Arizona with his mother, Sally (Catherine Hicks) and her new boyfriend, Mike (Paul Le Mat). While on a vacation of sorts, the trio stops at an abandoned gold mine and Billy enters a motor home in which the inhabitants have just been murdered and unknowingly picks up evidence that can link the killer to the crime. Feeling guilty, Billy hands over the necklace to the sheriff (Wilford Brimley) and positions himself and his family as a target for the killer (Stephen McHattie) who haunts a wild west-themed tourist town with a loaded gun.
While the nudity and gore never matches the intensity of Friday the 13th or Halloween, Death Valley does manage to be a suspenseful slice of slasher lore. It is nicely peppered with long sequences that develop character and establish tone and work to make the clichés tolerable and less off-putting (even at the sake of being accused of being boring by some audiences). It never operates as a slasher film and that, for longevity’s sake, is an excellent feature of this film. Billingsley’s performance is a solid feat for a child actor; believable without being annoying. It’s authentic and definitely tugs a bit at the old heart strings in the opening moments of the film.
Maybe, with this release, Death Valley might have a fighting chancel to … survive.
{2jtab: Film Details}
MPAA Rating: This title has not been rated by the MPAA.
Runtime: 87 mins.
Director: Dick Richards
Writer: Richard Rothstein
Cast: Paul Le Mat; Catherine Hicks; Peter Billingsley; Wilford Brimley; Stephen McHattie
Genre: Crime | Thriller
Tagline: Welcome to Death Valley.
Memorable Movie Quote: "Let's see if your gun is as loud as your mouth, sheriff."
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Official Site:
Release Date: May 7, 1982
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: December 11, 2012
Synopsis: A divorced mother, her young son and her new boyfriend set out on a road trip through Death Valley and run afoul of a local serial killer.
{2jtab: Blu-ray Review}
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Blu-ray Details:
Available on Blu-ray - December 11, 2012
Screen Formats: 1.85:1
Subtitles: English
Audio: English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1; English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
Discs: 25GB Blu-ray Disc; Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD); DVD copy
The 1080p transfer, compressed using the AVC codec, is a solid looking release from Shout! Factory. Colors are muted but consistent to the film. Detail is strong as single grains of sand in the desert are viewable as well as textures of the pavement. Contrast and colors are also very good, with bright whites and deep blacks to balance out the spectrum. Occasional specks of dirt and other blemishes are scattered throughout. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack fills out the original 2.0 mono mix. However, surround channels are rarely used and provide ambience only.
Supplements:
Commentary:
- Moderated by Edwin Samuleson, the commentary track features director Dick Richards answering questions about the film and his career.
Special Features:
Outside of a bonus DVD copy of the movie, a collection of TV Spots and theatrical trailers, the supplemental material is null and void.
{2jtab: Trailer}
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