War of the Stars: A New Hope Grindhoused

January 12, 2010 @ 8:51 am

This edit to my US mind completely has a European (mainly Italian) film feel to it. Let me delve into this a bit more and explain:

Picture if they brought over some old space movie from Italy (with the usual Italian exploitation rip off of some other major film) or some other European country that did not have a lot of money to produce it. Next, the US distributor decides to add in some minor headache inducing stock Library music (I like Library music, but not the type I found here) for certain parts of the film. Though it has that vibe, you can clearly tell it is too clean sounding to be originally on the film’s soundtrack and added in later. Make sure the film still looks pretty crappy (a plus) and this sums up my mood when watching this feature

I enjoyed this edit (though on a different level than Jaws) and I like it as a companion piece to TMBTM’s technically fan edit masterpiece of Jaws the Sharkspolitation edit. I can tell you now that this Star Wars grindhouse edition will cater more to fans of this sort of genre and not so much the broader audience appeal that his Jaws edition had.

I loved the use of Troops and other short features and deleted scenes that appear throughout the feature. The advanced cgi blood and Vader’s glowing red eyes were a nice touch and easily fit the pattern of the edit. I really enjoyed Vader’s psychotic ramblings (used from other films), and I also got a kick out of some of the re-worked and arrangement of scenes (which I will not spoil).

“Did you miss what he removed?”

“No, not at all.”

I like Star Wars (well really the first three produced films), but I do not consider it a holy grail like many do. What many might consider as some sacrilege offense to the integrity of the movie, worked fine for me. More importantly it worked for the type of edit this was presented as.

The use of the 16mm version is what visually really brought that true grindhouse feel to it and I am glad this move was chosen.

We have some nice menus and I loved the bonus material, especially the “laisse Tomber, Les filles” made to fit Princess Leia’s guest shot on Saturday Night Live music video.

In summing it up, I hated some of the stock library music used as it just gave me a headache and fortunately kind of disappeared right before Vader blasts through the rebel ship doors in the beginning. This music should have had some roughness added to it; more so to fit the source material we are being shown. Instead it sticks out like a sore thumb. To be honest if that music persisted throughout the whole feature I would not have been able to watch it.

Not as great as the previous mentioned Jaws, but still good nonetheless

This gets an 8.5 from me. The too clean music brought this score down from a 9

January 9, 2010 @ 5:13 am

I agree with much of Mollo’s review, though I did watch it from beginning to end. The Vader voice thing really threw me off, I couldn’t even tell till I watched the end credits that all were clips of James Earl Jones. I see what TMBTM was going for, but I really could have lived without the voice thing. On the other hand, I didn’t mind R2 ‘s subtitles at all, Also, the other effect used for Vader I rather enjoyed. I liked all the deleted footage put back into the film, but wasn’t so crazy about other material being added in. I felt it really stood out visually as being from different sources, as the picture wasn’t degraded/grindhoused to match the rest of the film. Overall, I enjoyed it, though nowhere near as much as the Jaws edit. Far from perfect, but not a total waste of time either, I give this a 7/10.

July 28, 2012 @ 6:51 pm

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

January 23, 2012 @ 9:36 pm

I was looking forward to watching this one since it had such great reviews. Unfortunately, it was a little bit of a letdown. There were parts that were brilliant and other parts that just weren’t.

Technical quality -10/10 –it’s supposed to be poor-ish video quality, so I can’t really comment on this section. All the downgrading of the video was done well though, so I’ll give it a 10.

Editing -9/10 – of course some of the editing was supposed to be sloppy. The added blood was pretty funny and some of the editing decisions were just amazing and pulled off very well. The music was too loud in a couple parts though.

Presentation – 10/10 – loved the menu and cover art.

Entertainment – 7/10 – let me start with what I liked. There were some parts that were just incredible – the cantina scene, the added music, Vader’s glowing red eyes, the deleted scenes, the Troops sequence (so amazing!), Owen and Beru on the twin suns, and best of all, the Death Star scene and ending with Jabba. These were the highlights, but there were other parts that weren’t so good. Half the time I just felt like I was watching the original, except with downgraded video quality. In order for this edit to really, really work, even more things would have to be changed to give it a completely different feel. Also, I didn’t really care for the R2-D2 subtitles.

Overall – 7/10

April 12, 2010 @ 4:34 pm

*This rating was given before reviews were required*