Lovers Lane (1999) from Arrow Video - April 25, 2023

[drownsoda]

"Passions are aroused and old wounds reopened in this sassy post-Scream teen slasher based on the urban legend of "The Hook".

A steamy secret tryst that was brutally cut short on Valentine's Day an unlucky thirteen years ago comes back to haunt the teens who linger around the lovers lane where the double slaying took place. The County Sheriff Tom Anderson (Matt Riedy) has just about come to terms with the fact that it was his wife who died in another man’s car on that fateful night. His daughter Mandy (Erin J. Dean), who as a four-year-old saw her mother’s corpse carried away from the scene, has a different take on things. It doesn't help that her classmate Michael (Riley Smith) lost his father to the same hook-handed homicidal maniac in that night's incident. To cap it all off, as another Valentine's Day comes round, reports come through that the man arrested as "The Hook" has just bust out of his asylum.

Prepare yourself for the ultimate hook up in a scream-a-minute rollercoaster that marked the film debut of Anna Faris (the Scary Movie series; Lost in Translation).

Product Features:

• Brand new 2K restoration from a 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative
• High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation
• Two versions of the film: the widescreen 1.85:1 version and the full-frame 1.33:1 version
• Original lossless stereo audio on both versions
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
• Brand new audio commentary with writer-producers Geof Miller and Rory Veal
• Screaming Teens: The Legacy of Lovers Lane featurette with Geof Miller and Rory Veal and actors Matt Riedy and Carter Roy
• Original trailers
• Image gallery
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Ilan Sheady
• FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by Lindsay Hallam and double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Ilan Sheady

I picked this up today and watched it this evening—it's one of those films from the early-2000s video store era that I never saw, but remember frequently seeing on the shelves as an adolescent/early teenager. I knew it was Anna Faris's first film before she hit it big with Scary Movie, but that was about it. I had long assumed it was Z-grade garbage, but the Arrow release was too tempting for me to pass up.

This film actually surprised me. It is actually a reasonably good indie slasher that very much has an '80s feel to it. Certainly no masterwork by any stretch of the imagination, but there are much worse films of this type that hit the rental market during this era. I found it quite a lot of fun. It was shot in Seattle, so there is a familiarity for me, having been raised in the Pacific Northwest. I am sort of surprised Arrow picked this up, but I'm glad that they did. If only they could have gotten an interview from Faris on it—I know she met her first husband on this movie, so maybe it's not something she wants to revisit.