REVIEW OF THE CRITERION COLLECTION'S EQUINOX US REGION ONE DVD
If you had told me when I was twelve that someday I would own a copy of Equinox I would have laughed and then gotten a little teary eyed over the prospect. Created by a then unknown impossibly young Dennis Muren and a couple of friends Equinox was one of those legendary movies that you considered yourself lucky to hear about much less see. Through the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine and Denis Gifford Pictorial History of Horror Movies one could see stills and dream about such a prospect but even after the advent of DVD it seemed far fetched indeed that the film, if ever released at all, would end up on Criterion as a deluxe two disc set.
Muren of course grew up to become one of the greatest Special Effects gurus of all time. Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Dragonslayer, Close Encounters, The Abyss, Terminator II... going on would be pointless. Muren is simply one of the best ever. His othger friends who worked on this project add value to owning the set as well. Jack Wood went on to write Beware th Blob! and has worked in Hollywood sound for years on films like Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and the classic Roger Corman, Vincent Price, Poe pic Tales of Terror. Writer Mark McGee has had a less illustrious career but has had a career even having bit parts in TV shows like The Incredible Hulk and films like Tank. In short these guys all went out and lived the geek dream and they started out as kids in their backyards breaking all the rules. The film itself is a turkey but it remains an amazing one. With no budget, unknown actors and working mostly weekends the youngsters convinced prominent SF writer and sometime actor Fritz Lieber to take a role, and Forrest J Ackerman, publisher of FM, to provide a voiceover.
The plot is pretty ambitious and rather Lovecraftian in nature. In fact Lovecraft fans may want to pick this up. A lone survivor tells the story of four friends beset by a demon trying to retrieve a mystic grimoire. The fate of the world hangs in the balance and it’s a lot more unsettling than what one would expect from such clunky proceedings. .
What really makes this film worth watching are the effects sequences. Muren figures out how to achieve things that had stymied others in the industry for years and his creatures stomp across the screen with much the same authority as Ray Hrryhausen's . Harryhausen, responsible for the stop motion animation of the Sinbad films and Jason and the Argonauts among others, allowed Muren to bring the film over and screen it for a small audience. Ackerman introduced Muren and the company to a producer who bought the film added footage and released it under a modified title.
The extras offered here make this two disc set a must buy for anyone who wants to encourage their own kids in filmmaking. I’m only listing them here but after going through the discs you can see why. It would take forever to comment on all of it adequately. If the commentaries are as good as the docs and shorts then this is an astoundingly great value even at Criterion prices. You get the original, never-released The Equinox: Journey into the Supernatural, and the 1970 Jack H. Harris theatrical release, a commentary by writer/director Jack Woods and producer Jack H. Harris and a commentary by effects photographer/producer/director Dennis Muren, writer/co-director Mark McGee, and matte artist/cel animator and effects technician Jim Danforth. An aging but still showman like Forrest J. Ackerman gives a video intro, there are interviews with director Muren and actors Frank Bonner, Barbara Hewitt and James Duron. You get Deleted scenes and outtakes from the original 1967 version plus a Rare animated fairy tale The Magic Treasure by Equinox animator David Allen. Also present are David Allen's acclaimed "Kong" commercial for Volkswagen, including test footage. A Short film Zorgon: The H-Bomb Beast from Hell (1972) featuring Equinox cast and crew and an extensive gallery featuring rare stills and promotional material, a Trailer and radio spots and lastly an excellently put together 32-page booklet with tributes from George Lucas and Ray Harryhausen and an essay by Brock DeShane.
