STAR TIME (1992) Blu-ray/DVD combo
Director: Alexander Cassini
Vinegar Syndrome

It's STAR TIME for "The Baby Mask Killer" in Vinegar Syndrome's Blu-ray/DVD combo restoration of this nineties noir slasher.

Schizophrenic Henry Pinkle (Michael St. Gerard, GREAT BALLS OF FIRE) lives for television, finding weekly guidance from "The Robertson Family" and his sessions with kind social worker Wendy (the director's then-wife Maureen Teefy, FAME). When the show is cancelled and Wendy leaves town for a month to stay with the man she hopes is Mr. Right, Henry is on the verge of committing suicide. He is stopped by the sudden appearance of talent agent Sam Bones (John P. Ryan, IT'S ALIVE) who tells Henry that it is his life's mission to be a hero, saving those unfortunates who fail to live up to the ideals of his favorite TV show. Hacking his way through suburbia, Henry becomes the media darling "The Baby Mask Killer" for the doll mask provided by Sam to give him a "competitive edge." He wracks up quite a tally in the month while Wendy is gone. She is eager to meet the man who is "managing" Henry without his medications. When she discovers that the address Henry gave her for Sam's swank Hollywood home does not exist, she believes that Sam is Henry's imaginary friend. Sam, however, is more desperate than ever to convince her that Sam is real when his agent demands that he choose between Wendy and him, and then decides to deal with Wendy himself when Henry cannot.

Less of an arthouse body count picture – despite some satisfying gore effects late in the film by Steve Johnson (NIGHT OF THE DEMONS) – STAR TIME is a pitch black Los Angeles neo-noir film that might be well-paired with David Lynch's more labyrinthine MULHOLLAND DR. While Henry is schizophrenic, the film does not demonize the mentally ill so much as depict him as the most vulnerable among an entire population who project their emotions and expectations onto television. We see nothing of Henry's favorite show, but we do see sensationalistic news coverage of the killer's crimes as well as a game show called "Second Honeymoon" patterened after "The Newlywed Game" but framing its conceit of couples competing to win trips with the question of how much their kids really "need" them at home. There is nothing surprising about the film's "twist" because it is all so familiar; however, St. Gerard's Henry is a sympathetic character, Teefy is able to make us believe that she accepts Henry's claims at face value that he has another corporeal influence in his life and then is afraid enough during the climax to still believe Sam to be real, and character actor Ryan makes the most out of what is essentially the third lead of a film with only three characters. The low-key cinematographer Fernando Argüelles (who moved from low budget horror like MIND RIPPER to major shows like PRISON BREAK, GRIMM, and HEMOLOCK GROVE) combines with the urban Los Angeles settings, stripped-down production design, and the scoring of Blake Leyh, a sound editor whose jazzy scoring weaves in and out of the film's sound design to turn modern Los Angeles into a believable "dark city."

Although the film played at Sundance and was intended for theatrical release, STAR TIME went direct to video in 1993 from Monarch, a division of Fox Lorber (now Kino Lorber) who tried to advertise the film as a straightforward horror film. That version ran slightly shorter compared to Vinegar Syndrome's director's cut (84:42), the difference being the moody opening title sequence which director Alexander Cassini thought ran too long and slow for video and television, a decision he has since reconsidered. Transferred from a 2K scan of the original 35mm camera negative, the image is immaculate and spotless, with crisp detail in the textures of skin and clothing, sharp delineation of detail between the light and dark parts of the frame, and bottomless blacks in the shadows of rooms and the neon-dotted cityscape against which the actors are lit so starkly. The Ultra Stereo soundtrack is rendered here in a clean DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track which gives spread mainly to the score and some effects, with the sound design appropriately pared down to reflect the isolation of the characters. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided.

Director Cassini appears on an audio commentary track with Vinegar Syndrome's Joe Rubin in which he suggests that comparison to Lynch came later and that his primary inspirations for the film were the style of Jane Campion's recent SWEETIE and Jean-Luc Godard's arty sci-fi noir ALPHAVILLE. He discusses his earlier, more comic short film version with Michael Jeter (EVENING SHADE) in the lead and his feelings about casting St. Gerard when others thought he was miscast, as well as the urban, post-industrial Los Angeles atmosphere he was pursuing with the choice of locations, sets, and photography. Spanish-born cinematographer Argüelles appears in a video interview (31:37) in which he discusses how the scholarship to study at the American Film Institute lead to him meeting Scott Spiegel who hired him to photograph THE INTRUDER, which indirectly lead to STAR TIME. Of the film, he discusses his attraction to the social aspects of the script, the lighting, and the use of negative space; but the most surprising revelation is that he shot eighty-five percent of the film with the remainder shot by Janusz Kaminski who photographed a handful of low budget genre films like GRIM PRAERIE TALES, Greydon Clark's gangster film KILLER INSTINCT (shot in Russia back-to-back for Cannon with Menahem Golan's HIT THE DUTCHMAN with much of the same cast and crew telling different aspects of the same story from different perspectives), as well as THE RAIN KILLER and THE TERROR WITHIN II for Roger Corman before becoming Steven Spielberg's DP of choice for everything from SCHINDLER'S LIST to READY PLAYER ONE. The disc also includes the film's theatrical trailer (1:44). The combo comes with a reversible cover while a limited run of copies ordered directly from Vinegar Syndrome come with a cardboard slipcover. (Eric Cotenas)

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