Urban Legend: The Trilogy (Blu-ray Review)

Urban Legend: The Trilogy (Blu-ray Review)
Rated: MA/Region B (But will play on an A player)/1080p/Number of Discs 3
Available from Via Vision Films

Urban Legend (1998)
Directed By: Silvio Horta
Starring: Jared Leto, Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart
Rated: MA/Widescreen

Urban Legend tells the story of a group of pretty college students at a remote New England university. The focus of the story is Natalie, a beautiful, academically-gifted student at the fictional Pendleton University. Natalie and her friends are all involved in the Folklore class being taught by Professor Wexler. Wexler regales his class with urban legends, which include Pendleton’s own urban legend about a Psych professor who murdered six students at Stanley Hall 25 years ago. Natalie is the first one to suspect there’s a killer on campus, especially after she has ties to all of the victims. No one, including her friends, Wexler, Dean Adams and security guard, of course, believes her until it’s too late. Now she finds that she and her friends are part of the killer’s ultimate urban legend.

Coming off the heels of the slasher resurgence that was brought on by Scream, Urban Legend would be part of the wave of then “new age” slashers that came out in the mid-90’s and early 2000’s. This time around the film uses (you guessed it) urban legends for the theme of each death that is brought on by the movie’s mysterious killer. Dressed in a very large winter’s coat, we watch as this killer stalks and slashes and very young cast that was made up of some pretty big named young actors of the time. We eventually have to try to figure out why as our leading lady and residential final girl played by Alicia Witt is chased around and being forced to at times watch her friends die after she survived an early attack. This is perhaps a slasher that like most the 90’s slashers and unlike the 80’s slashers hasn’t aged as well as one might hope. Some of it still comes across as entertaining and some of it does still kinda work, but there is a whole lot that doesn’t. For one, if you really think things over, the plot and twist that comes in the last act of the film kind of lacks a whole lot of common sense. In also keeping up with the Scream movies of the time the film also tries to place the killer tag on different people from time to time, some of which are ridiculous while others might have actually worked better than the actual person who we get as the killer. Anyway you want to cut it, Urban Legend plays as a nice throwback to what horror was at the time and maybe even just a little bit to what was wrong with it as well. We have at least one really cool kill while most the action and gore is kept off camera. Our last few moments holds a performance from our killer that might either be genius or a disaster depending on how you look at it. Regardless, I’d suggest you at least give this one a watch anyway and see what you think. It could have used more blood, but it is far from awful.

Extras

– Director’s Commentary
– Making of Featurette
– Sony Trailers at the start (This is the same disc as the US Sony release)

Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000)
Directed By: John Ottman
Starring: Jennifer Morrison, Matthew Davis, Hart Bochner
Rated: MA/Widescreen

Urban Legends: The Final Cut follows Amy Mayfield (Morrison), a student at Alpine University who struggles to complete her thesis film on urban legends – only to have her crew members fall prey to fatal ‘accidents.’ Suspicious, Amy investigates and discovers a much more sinister hand at work. Now she must unmask the killer before she, too, becomes an urban legend.

It might not seem like much of a shock now to say that Urban Legend got a sequel, it might, however, shock you just a bit to learn that the sequel was co-starring Joey Lawrence. In fact, Urban Legends (now with an “s” on it), is a bit of a whole other animal than the original was. We are keeping the theme but outside of the security guard character from the first film (played by Loretta Devine) and a cameo by the previous film’s killer at the end of this one, there isn’t much left over to connect this to the other film. They even get rid of the overcoat for the killer this time around and go for a whole new look. They also have someone play the killer during the movie that totally doesn’t have the same build as the actual person it gets revealed to be at the end of the movie. That might be a bit nitpicky seeing as how when this came out we didn’t have this Blu-ray from Via Vision to watch the movie on, but now having seen things as clearly, I did notice it and it does bug me. We have a little bit more violence this time around and we have another cast of people who would go on to do much bigger and better things, but despite being a theatrical release this one seems more like a video offering coming off the heels of the original. It had its moments but it never did have enough of those moments and the people behind the film seemed to totally stop caring about what they were making by the last act with some so bad you can’t help but laugh about the moments. I also think this one could have used a bit more of a body count, but that’s just me.

Extras

– Director’s Commentary
– Gag Reel
– Deleted Scenes

Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (2005)
Directed By: Mary Lambert
Starring: Kate Mara, Robert Vito, Tina Lifford
Rated: MA/Widescreen

On Homecoming night, Samantha, Gina, and Mindy are having a slumber party at Sam’s house due to being black-listed by the sexy football players. Since the dance and game are out of the question, the trio stays up and entertains themselves with Urban Legends..all leading up to BLOODY MARY. With nothing better to do and a whole night to waste, Sam chants “Bloody Mary.” Her friends laugh… “Bloody Mary.” More laughter. On the third and final “Bloody Mary,” the friends are kidnapped by three jocks and return soon thereafter, shaken but well. Sam begins having hallucinations and soon bodies turn up – is it all a high school prank taken to grisly extremes or is it Bloody Mary, who’s youth was taken far too early?

Mary Lambert, who directed Pet Sematary would be the director who would take over the directing for the 3rd and final Urban Legend film, Urban Legends: Bloody Mary. Taking a whole new approach this time around we’d drop the traditional slasher style altogether for a supernatural horror film that deals with the legend of Bloody Mary. We see what has Mary’s spirit so restless at the start of the film before we got to a slumber party after where our leading lady (played by Kate freakin’ Mara) said her name and unleashes her spirit to take revenge on what happened to her years before. We add a few different elements to it to just mix things up a bit more and we have our straight to DVD at the time film. Now, I will say this much about it, the movie turns up the kills a lot more this time around and we have some that would have probably be known as classics now had it they not totally been ruined by the awful CGI that comes with them. I mean, it IS cool to have spiders hatch and come out of some girl’s face, but when those spiders come with the graphics of a PS1 game, it kind of kills the effects. Whereas the second film was just a theatrical one that felt like a straight to disc affair, this one is just that and very much lives up to the title and if you were familiar with all the stuff hitting the racks around this time in 2005 you’ll have a pretty good idea of just what I mean. So, no, you can’t call this film or any of the Urban Legend movies the greatest horror movies that have ever hit the market, but if you want to collect them like everything else you probably collect as a horror fan, then this is what to get from Via Vision. After all, if you live in the US you can’t get any of these films besides the first one in HD at all unless you get this and it will play on your region A players.

Extras

– None (Lists a “Making of” on the case but it isn’t actually on the disc)