CIGARETTE BURNS

Directed by John Carpenter
Written by Drew McWeeny & Scott Swan
Cinematography by Attila Szalay
Music by Cody Carpenter
Cast: Norman Reedus, Udo Kier, Zara Taylor, Gary Hetherington & Gwynyth Walsh

2005/59 mins/Color/5.1 Dolby Digital
1.77:1 anamorphic/English/US/NTSC Region 1

Review from the Anchor Bay Entertainment DVD

La Fin Absolue du Monde. In the wrong, or right depending of who you are, hands a film can be a dangerous weapon.

Desperate movie programmer Kirby Sweetman (Norman Reedus of BLADE II) just got an offer he can't refuse. Eccentric film collector, Mr. Ballinger (the ever great Udo Kier) is looking for the long lost copy of La Fin Absolue du Monde (The Absolute End of the World). This movie supposedly only played onced at the Sitges film festival and a terrible riot ensued driving people into homicidal, cannibalistic maniacs.

As Sweetman is on the trail of the lone existing print, he discover some of the shocking and brutal truth behind the story of the film. But is he prepared to deal with the madness and insanity that this film supposedly unleash upon its viewiers?

Much to my surprise, John Carpenter can still deliver the goods. After all the mess he made in the last ten years, Carpenter is back. Even with its limited budget and rather evident made for tv look, CIGARETTE BURNS is another worthy addition to Carpenter's work. I found the whole idea of a knowledgeable movie programmer travelling around the world to find a supposedly long lost movie was actually a very cool. The story nicely build itself and unveil the mystery in an interesting way. For some reason, this kinda reminds me of another Carpenter movie, IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS.

Still this has some flaws, the main one being it tries too much to be especially for horror geeks, much like Dario Argento's DO YOU LIKE HITCHCHOCK?. In the end it does hurt the movie. Overall an interesting episode in the MASTERS OF HORROR serie.

Anchor Bay have released CIGARETTE BURNS on DVD in its original 1.77:1 aspect ratio and it is anamorphic. The image looks very good with rich color saturation but has some grain. In the audio department, we get the choice of either a 5.1 Dolby Digital or a 2.0 Dolby Surround English tracks. Both of them sound very good but as expected the 5.1 Dolby Digital is clearer and makes better use of John Carpenter' son, Cody, first musical score.

Two commentary tracks are available on this release. The first one is with director John Carpenter. Like each of his movies released on DVD, this is yet another very interesting commentary track with the legendary director. He goes into all the details behind and around the making of the film. Still, Carpenter doesn't sound too please about the final product, especially due to the limited budget and lack of locations. The second commentary track features writers Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan who sound like they enjoy this one a lot. Not as interesting as the first one but cool nonetheless.

Celluloid Apocalypse: An Interview with John Carpenter is an interesting 18 minutes interview with the master who talks about himself, his background, his previous movies and CIGARETTE BURNS. Working with a Master: John Carpenter is a very cool 18 minutes featurette which features many actors and actress who worked with Carpenter through the years. This was nicely put together and cool to see some old familiar faces. On Set: An Interview with Norman Reedus is an ok 7 minutes interview with the actor. Behind the Scenes: The Making of Cigarette Burns is your typical rather useless DVD featurette which consist mostly of scenes from the movie.

We also get trailers for eight MASTERS OF HORROR episodes, a still gallery which feature lots of cool behind-the-scenes pix, a biography on John Carpenter and some DVD-ROM features. A promo trailer for MASTERS OF HORROR, trailer for ROOM 6, DEMON HUNTER and HALLOWEEN. The disc features nicely designed menus with music. The movie is separated in 8 chapters, an inlay card, a MASTERS OF HORROR card featuring John Carpenter. It comes in a keep case which itself comes in a beautifully designed, glossed and embossed paperboard package. A very nice edition from Anchor Bay.

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Review by Kim Dubuisson. All Right Reserved. 2006. ©