The Creep Behind the Camera / The Creeping Terror

[bigshot]

I received this yesterday and screened it last night. I'm a little underwhelmed to be honest. I've always loved Creeping Terror since I saw it as a kid on TV, and I grew up in Glendale where it was made. The print used here is in good shape. a few scratches here and there and a bit of dirt. Not too bad considering. The sound quality is a lot better than I remember though. When it would air on TV, they applied an audio limiter that would drag up the quiet parts and turn them into a loud bed of hiss. That didn't happen on the blu-ray. I think it was a little longer than the TV print I had seen. A few scenes were new to me. But unfortunately, the film isn't presented in the correct aspect ratio. It's full aperture, not cropped to widescreen. My Oppo player allows me to blow the image up 1.3%, which fixed that. A little fuzzier, but that doesn't really matter because this film is pretty crummy looking anyway.

The Creep Behind the Camera was a little disappointing too. It was competently shot and the surround sound was nice. And I can see what they were trying to do- their version of Ed Wood- but there was very little charm in any of it, the actors didn't have any charisma, and it was a bit sordid and ugly. No fun. It had a little bit of documentary style stuff, but it was mostly a bio drama and it just didn't work for me.

There are lots of extras that I haven't had time to go through yet. You certainly get your money's worth with this disc. Just not as much fun as I was expecting.