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8MM Eight Millimeter
DVD Review by Yanman |
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“Pops, you dance with the devil, the devil don’t change, the devil changes you.” The dark side. The sleazy world of illegal pornography, not the mainstream XXX stuff, but child pornography, hard bondage, and “snuff” films. More on “snuff” later. This is the world that 8MM plunges you into, and not lightly into it but all the way. This movie is dark and should not be viewed by anyone with a weak stomach. The darkness of this film and its lack of a dual layer DVD makes for a rather bad transfer here. Watch this one at your own risk, you have been warned. An old millionaire dies; his elderly wife has to pay someone to break into his private safe. What she discovers among her deceased husbands most personal things shocks and disgusts. What she finds is a 8MM movie, a “snuff” film. Now for those of you that don’t know, (I didn’t prior to seeing this movie) a “snuff” film is a video that starts off with a sexual content and ends in the horror of someone really getting killed on film much to their own surprise. Both in the movie and in the director’s commentary you are lead to believe that these “snuff” are mostly thought to be legend or rumors, and what few may be floating around are for the most part hoaxes. But just the fact that there would be any market for this type of film gives this reviewer a bad case of the “willies.” Now after finding this film the old widow hires a private detective Tom Welles (Nicolas Cage), to hopefully prove that this film is also a fake and to find the “actress” alive and well. In order to complete his mission however he will have to enter a underworld he never knew existed, and in the end it could change him for ever. The video on this was extremely disappointing. The dark scenes suffer from very noticeable compression artifacts. While it is a good thing that both a Widescreen Anamorphic and “full screen” version are provided, we would have preferred that made this one in Widescreen only and made it dual layer. Hopefully in the near future DVD-18 (DS/DL) will make problems (and choices) a thing of the past. The audio here is ok, but certainly nothing special. And I still can’t understand why some DVDs continue to default to the Dolby pro-logic track, when a 5.1 version is available. (Yes I know the reason is because they chose to put the 5.1 on audio track two, but why?) There are some extras here, like a short making of. And the director’s commentary that was very enlighten as to the research that went into the subject matter. But during this commentary the director comments a number of times on how much footage had to be cut from the film, both for time restraints and to keep from receiving an “NC-17” rating. Why not include some of these deleted scenes as extras. A weak offering at best. If you are looking for a movie that will make you think, or prefer the rare “ non-Hollywood”. Just remember that we warned you about the content. Get out that old film project , put up the screen, line up the sprocket holes and get ready for some dark eight millimeter viewing.
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8MM In order to complete his mission he will have to enter a underworld he never knew existed, and in the end it could change him for ever. Staring: Nicolas Cage Directed By: Joel Schumacher Running time: 123 min Bonus Materials
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