Review of Shocker

Introduction

Mitch Pileggi stars as Horace Pinker, a mass murderer, who goes on a rampaging killing spree in small town America. Peter Berg plays Jonathan who has premonitions about where Pinker will strike next and sees his own family amongst the victims. Pinker is eventually caught with help from Jonathan and is electrocuted on death row, though this isn`t the end as Pinker seeks retribution.

Video

Amazingly the video here is rather crisp. It`s presented as 1.85:1 anamorphic and is impressive throughout. The colour balance seems to be okay and there`s hardly any evidence of print damage. The level of detail is good for the most part, despite a few soft scenes, and makes the film look as though it were made quite recently. I couldn`t notice any signs of compression or other encoding problems, it`s a good transfer.

Audio

Shocker is presented with DD2.0, preserving the original soundtrack format. This is somewhat limited however and you won`t really hear the soundfield progress beyond the front speakers. The dialogue is pretty clear from the centre though I noticed very little if any sound coming from the rears at all. There`s lots of rock music used as the score for the movie, but this just underlines the fact that we`re watching an old style horror movie, it doesn`t do Shocker any favours.

Features

There`s not a lot of extras with Shocker, hardly surprising since it was a low budget movie made over a decade ago. What we do get are English and German subtitles, Director Commentary and storyboard to film comparisons. The menus feature stills from the movie and these don`t do the movie any favours. The quality of the stills with the poor colours used in the menus make Shocker look really, really dated. Like a picture left out in the sun. Couple this with a repetitive (read annoying) loop of dire rock music running in the background and you have a recipe for quick muting.

The trailer is the usual thing, while the storyboards consist of four scenes with multi-angle camera options. These are okay but you wouldn`t really miss anything by not viewing it. Incidentally, I had a problem with this multi-angle part because my DVD player (Arcam DV88) displays onscreen graphics in white without a dark outline, and the storyboards have a big white border so this made it difficult for me to know which angle I was using!

The last thing I`ll mention is the Director Commentary with Wes Craven. It`s interesting and far more enjoyable than the movie on its own but Wes doesn`t talk all the way through the movie which is a shame!

Conclusion

As the movie plays out, we find out a little more of the relationships between the various characters and some of it begins to make sense. Make no mistake, Shocker is quite predictable. We`re in a small town with a handful of stereotyped characters that go up against the evil in the film. It has similar themes to that of Wes Craven`s other movie, A Nightmare on Elm Street, with the exploration of the dream world and reality with visions and premonitions. Horace Pinker though isn`t bad enough to be a bad guy, certainly not as evil as Freddie Kruger was.

Shocker is a horror movie of the old school and it shows. The last time I saw this was on VHS back in the early 90s so I smiled at the prospect of seeing it again on DVD. Movies are sometimes not quite as you might remember a decade on however, and horror movies have moved on a lot since. Shocker is a typical movie of the era with its small town, dire rock music and highschool students who are always brighter than the adults. I liked one or two of Wes Craven`s movies, particularly `A Nightmare on Elm Street`, and he`s done a lot of average genre movies, of which Shocker is one. The casting here is average and somewhat wooden, with a poor script and even worse delivery. One thing for sure, I`ll never see Mitch Pileggi as Director Skinner (X-Files) again. The less said about the music the better.

There isn`t much on this DVD worth anything other than Wes Craven`s commentary which proves to be quite interesting. Shocker is dated and predictable and just doesn`t have the slick appeal of modern day horror/scary flicks. If you must see it, rent it, otherwise avoid!