Blu-ray Review: Stephen Norrington's DEATH MACHINE, An Uncut Blast Of 90's Cyperpunk Horror

Editor, U.S. ; Dallas, Texas (@HatefulJosh)
Blu-ray Review: Stephen Norrington's DEATH MACHINE, An Uncut Blast Of 90's Cyperpunk Horror
The '90s were a terrible era for a lot of things. Popular music? Check. Awful fashion? Double check. Horror movies? Well, let's look at one of those...

Death Machine is the brainchild of Stephen Norrington. Norrington would later go on to make his biggest mainstream impression with the first Blade movie, however, in 1994 he was mainly an FX guy for hire. Death Machine is Norrington's cyberpunk version of Hardware, Die Hard, or Alien, only instead of terrorists and extraterrestrial monsters, the antagonist here is a mad scientist and his deadly attack robot. This is a film which could only have been made in the '90s, its aesthetic is very clear and shares a similar vision of the near future with films like Akira or Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis. It's that aspect of the film, the '90s time capsule, that makes Death Machine a film worth revisiting, especially in this new edition from Germany's Turbine Media.

In some alternate version of the near future, weapons manufacturer Chaank Armaments faces a crisis of conscience. Rumors of their using humans in their weapons testing in an attempt to develop the ever elusive super soldier have leaked and put them on top of the liberal citizenry's hit list. In an effort to clean up their image, a new chief executive, Hayden Cale (Ely Pouget), has been named to reform the company while maintaining profits. No one on the board is happy about that, and they do everything in their power to slow her down, lest their profits dry up.

Among the many systemic thorns in her side is a single mad scientist who runs the research and development department at Chaank, a loner named Joe Dante (Brad Dourif) who develops weapons of increasingly dubious necessity without oversight. When Dante is shut down by Cale, he doesn't go quietly, instead unleashing a super secret death machine. If he can't run the R&D at Chaank, no one can. What follows is a race against time as this nasty looking robot with the head of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and claws like knives tears through both the Chaank headquarters and any living thing that gets in its way.

I remember Death Machine from my teenage years not because I had seen it, but because I'd seen the VHS cover hundreds of times as I trawled the local Mom & Pop video stores looking for my next fix. For some reason I never picked up, though I can speculate that it was probably one of two things. Either (a), the iconic cover image of a knife-fingers robot hand slicing through a silvery liquid background was too good to be true, or (more likely) (b), I was too scared to grab it. Until right around the age of 17 I was terrified of horror films, and that would've been about the time that Death Machine entered my life. However, correcting that mistake of assumption as an adult was definitely a wise choice.

Stephen Norrington's film has had a choppy history on home video. Initially cut for UK home video, the film has suffered through cuts for violence for many years and has never been released on home video uncut in the US. Germany's Turbine Media has come to the rescue with this longest available version of the film with English audio on both region B Blu-ray and region 2 DVD.

Norrington's own project is packed to the gills with fun little Easter eggs, both obvious and obtuse. All of his major characters (apart from Hayden Cale) are named after famous horror directors or characters. Joe Dante, John Carpenter, Sam Raimi, Ridley Scott (or Scott RIdley as he's known in the film) all make appearances, alongside a pair of rebellious protesters named Weyland and Yutani. Norrington's heart and influences are clearly on his sleeve. While all of these little tidbits are fun, it's Brad Dourif's endearingly skeezy characterization of Joe Dante that makes the movie.

Dourif is probably best known to the layman as the voice behind the Chucky doll in the Child's Play series, but he's also one hell of a character actor. Subtlety is certainly not his forte, however, when you need someone to deliver the gonzo goods, Dourif certainly brings his A-game to every set, and Death Machine is no exception. His maniacal scenery chewing is definitely one of the highlights of a film packed to the brim with crazy nonsensical violence.

Death Machine
is 121 minutes of glorious gore, guts, and the ever fading practical FX that are so dearly missed. This Blu-ray collector's edition is definitely the one to get if you're feeling nostalgic.

The Disc:

Turbine Media has released Death Machine in a 3-disc collector's edition special digipack. The first disc is the film on Blu-ray, uncut in English for the first time. The image here is a clear step up from it's DVD predecessors, even though '90s film stock isn't exactly the best. I had no issues with damage, clarity, or color, so I think fans of the film will be very happy. The only disc-based extras in the package are three trailers (US, Germany, and Japan), and an Easter Egg with some bonus clips and artwork. The second disc is a DVD version of the film, and the third is an exclusive CD of the film's score by Crispin Merrell. The packaging is really nice, with a trifold digipack that slips into a beautiful slipcover with brand new art.

I fell in love with Death Machine before the end of the first reel, so if you're a fan, or even curious, I definitely recommend picking this up. Turbine Media has released the definitive home video edition of Death Machine to date.

The disc is listed as Region B/2 and it available for purchase through Diabolik DVD.
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