BETTER OFF DEAD Blu-ray Review

Paramount Home Entertainment:

After Beth (Amanda Wyss), the girl of his dreams, dumps him for the school's arrogant ski-team captain, Lane's (John Cusack) prolific and dark imagination runs overtime. He wavers between bungling attempts to kill himself and inept efforts to win his ex-girlfriend back. All the while, Lane's also dealing with his quirky family, dodging a relentless paperboy who's out to collect, and meeting the charming French-exchange-student-next-door who just might be the unexpected key to his happiness

Among the canon of 80's teen comedies, Better Off Dead is an odd one.  There are definitely more obscure films out there, but this one didn't quite reach the epic heights of the works of John Hughes stuff either.  It sits somewhere in the middle, a quirky, but unrelentingly enjoyable and hilarious piece of crazy 80's nostalgia.

The director, Savage Steve Holland, was something of an unknown quantity in 1985, when he directed his first feature.  Prior to Better Off Dead, Wikipedia notes that he was probably most famous as the "designer and animator of the "Whammy"", on the classic TV game show, Press Your Luck.  That animation background came in handy when Better Off Dead came around, and Holland used his expertise in the field to provide one of the strangest asides in 80's comedy history, the Everybody Wants Some Van Halen Hamburger sequence.  That is only one in a series of memorable moments that Better Off Dead provides.

Better Off Dead knows that its job is to provide laughs, and on that front it delivers.  It may not be weepy like a Sixteen Candles, but it sure is written with gags in mind.  There are few comedies from this era that are as endlessly quotable as Better Off Dead.  I was live-tweeting my recent viewing, and couldn't help tossing off lines and they just kept coming and coming, the writing is really genius.

Better Off Dead is populated with brilliantly vivid characters, from Cusack's depressed Lane Meyer, to his partner in crime, the low rent dope local dope dealer played by Curtis Armstrong (Revenge of the Nerds' Booger), the overweight and undersocialized neighbor played by Dan Schneider (later seen in the criminally underrated TV series Head of the Class), the persistant paperboy, and on and on.  There is even an appearance from Valley Girl co-star, Elizabeth Daily, singing the theme song at Lane's school dance and dancing in a way not seen since 1986. 

At ninety seven minutes, the film flies by, but in spite of its sharp focus on gags, it doesn't feel particularly light.  One thing that I, and I'm sure romantics everywhere, appreciate, is the fact that the film doesn't go the Pretty in Pink route to resolution.  Everybody in the goddamned world knows that Andie should've gotten with Duckie, I mean, the end of that film is one of the world's great tragedies.  Holland showed Hughes how it should have happened, and Pretty in Pink doesn't have a single suicide joke.  Victory: Better Off Dead.

The Disc:

Well, I have good news and I have bad news: 

First, the good news.  Better Off Dead looks a ton better on Blu-ray than it ever did on DVD.  The film stock in the 1980's was notoriously shitty, and as such the entire movie is riddled with grain, but it is grain, and not mush, so that is a good thing.  There's doesn't seem to have been a lot of digital hanky-panky going on with the transfer.  There is plenty of good fine detail to be seen, and the colors are bright when they need to be and hazy when they are supposed to be.  There are a few sequences late in the film shot in slow motion that have what looks like excessive grain, but slow-motion has to be shot with extremely high speed film, so the extra grain is supposed to be there, no harm, no foul.  The music also improves quite a bit.  The film was shot with stereo in mind, but Paramount have given us a DTS-HD MA 5.1 mix for the disc.  Don't worry, the surrounds and rears don't get weird remixing, however, the front speakers sound great with good clean dialogue and the many pop songs give the low end a nice workout.  Overall is sounds pretty great.

The bad news: The only extra is a 4x3 theatrical trailer.  That's it.  This bums me out.  Cusack has historically been pretty hostile to this film, and so getting his participation probably wasn't in the cards, but Savage Steve Holland only really made two films that anyone cares about, this one and the follow up, One Crazy Summer.  Surely he would've been up for talking about it.  An opportunity lost.  Oh well.

I have to say, this is a great presentation of Better Off Dead, it totally delivered in the PQ/AQ departments, and if you're a fan, I encourage you to pick this one up. 

Paramount Home Video presents Better Off Dead in an ALL REGION Blu-ray disc.