Not to be confused with the 1982 Steve Barkett film THE AFTERMATH, IN THE AFTERMATH took thirty minutes of footage from the 1985 Japanese anime feature ANGEL'S EGG by Mamoru Oshii (GHOST IN THE SHELL) – in which a child angel guarding a magical egg wanders a ruined urban landscape with a stranger exploring the artifacts of an extinct race – with forty minutes of California-lensed live action footage shot by Belgian filmmaker Carl Colpaert (DELUSION) of a post-apocalyptic Earth in which clean air and water are in short supply. Angel (voiced by THE MUPPET BABIES' Katie Leigh) becomes a literal angel who is sent to explore dying worlds and determine which creatures she will save with the power harnessed in her egg. The stranger becomes her older brother (voiced by ERAGON's Ian Ruskin) tells her fables of other worlds and creatures to test her judgment as she – in live action (Rainbow Dolan) – trails a wounded Frank (Tony Markes, DISTURBED) across after his air supply has been stolen by a psychotic soldier (Kurtiss J. Tews) who also murdered his buddy Goose (Kenneth McCabe, COHEN AND TATE). Still uncertain whether Frank is good or evil, she arranges for him to be rescued by fellow survivor Sarah (Filiz Tully), a doctor who treats his injuries and provides him shelter in the only room in an abandoned hospital with a constant clean air supply. Angel is able to connect to Frank through a drawing he does of her and observes the interaction between the two humans as they fall in love. Frank is drawn to find Angel and Sarah must decide whether to put her faith in him and leave the safety of the hospital in search of something he does not understand.

Less interesting as a bottom-of-the-barrel science fiction film than as a strange example of composite filmmaking possibly inspired more by Giorgio Moroder's pop reconstruction of Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS than low budget attempts to salvage unreleasable contemporary films or ones that had been sitting on the shelf from the decade before. The Japanese animation is deliberately stripped down in its color scheme yet still looks lavish next to the live action footage of overexposed arid landscapes heavy on the browns, reds, and yellows. Although the live action footage takes up slightly more of the screen-time, the narrative is as spare as the production values with a long digression of psychedelic opticals while Frank romances Sarah with a piano performance of Horatio Moscovici's "Carnavalito Tango" (the bulk of the synth and percussion score was the work of Pink Floyd collaborator Anthony Moore). One wonders what viewers thought of the production which New World tried to pass off as another post-nuke film with advertising which depicted a gas-masked figure holding the egg stamped with a haz-mat symbol, but it is great to have this decent-enough time-waster available alongside the original full-length "Angel's Egg" (available on Blu-ray in Japan but not English-friendly and as prohibitively expensive as other Japanese imports).

Released direct to VHS by New World Video, IN THE AFTERMATH made its digital debut on Blu-ray courtesy of Code Red two years ago 1.78:1 widescreen transfer derived from a new 2K scan of Lakeshore's vault elements. Arrow Video has undertaken their own 2K restoration of the same materials for their identical US and UK editions. For the Code Red disc, I felt the animated footage looked tad duller due than the live action due to the use of internegative elements for recutting while the live action had bolder colors and a warm bias to the post-apocalyptic exteriors while some of the opticals were grainier and dirtier. The animated scenes in the Arrow's transfer do not look significantly different while the live action footage looks shade more neutral, which has the effect of calling more attention to details of the real derelict locations and some of the film's lighting effects (a shot that I once thought had some subtle rotoscoping in which Frank's head wound seems to glow when he first sees Angel now turns out to be just the flashing light from a backlit spinning fan hitting the side of his face). There is no distracting dirt or debris this time around. The LPCM 2.0 rendition of the Ultra Stereo mix finds most of its separation in the scoring and the sound design of the animated sequences which emphasizes just how little action there actually is during the live action sequences. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided. It might not be a massive upgrade but the extras below and its general accessibility for purchase might make it the more worthwhile option, especially for fans of ANGEL'S EGG who are still denied an English-friendly release of that film but might like to know more about how IN THE AFTERMATH came about.

While the Code Red Blu-ray only had bonus trailers, Arrow has commissioned three new interviews. "The Path to Aftermath" (11:12) is an interview with producer Tom Dugan who had started out working as a sound editor at Cannon and moved onto New World around the time Corman sold it and a cash influx from the company's diversification into television and larger projects which he notes was still supported by the meat and potatoes of low budget exploitation films. He recalls that ANGEL'S EGG had been picked up cheaply and that the plot made no sense to them, and that he and director Carl Colpaert worked out the live action segments to build around the footage from the animated film. He recalls the era when the need for video product allowed for such projects, posing as student filmmakers to get cheap rates for some of the locations like the abandoned steel mill also used in THE TERMINATOR, and getting Moore to do the film's score. He also notes that Colpaert – who was also an editor at New World who had previously supervised the post-production of the much shorter American version of Roland Emmerich's MAKING CONTACT – moved on to the era's other side of low budget filmmaking as a producer of independent films like GAS FOOD LODGING and MI VIDA LOCA.