Since the late eighties, filmmaker Philip J. Cook has brought his brand of genre cinema to audiences with micro-budgets and immense imagination. It’s easy for his work to be overlooked, but his feature film Despiser has amassed a bit of a cult following, deservedly so.
Visual Vengeance has swooped in to rescue it from Purgatory and give it new life. They give Despiser their signature Special Edition treatment, which is always welcome for a film I’d only heard of in passing years ago. With such attention given to this release, one would wonder if it is even worth it.
Gordon’s (Mark Redfield) life is turned upside down when he loses his job and wife. If things couldn’t get any worse, he gets into a car accident and wakes up in Purgatory. After fending off deadly, enslaved souls, he’s rescued by a band of freedom fighters, comprised of people from various time periods, all ready to fight the Despiser.
It’s a crazy cause, but Gordon joins them on their adventure across the surreal nightmare of Purgatory to find the creature that threatens all of humanity. They want to destroy it once and for all.
Despiser may be micro-budgeted, but imagination and determination prevail. The visuals might not be for everyone; we are talking about low-grade CGI, but it works within the story’s context. The visuals have style, and since he’s trying to create this other dimension, the effects work and are charming.
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The movie is full of energy; every passing minute feels like a means to an end. The acting feels much more natural than what these films usually project, and Cook does well putting his budget in the right places. I prefer the animated troll in this film to the massively budgeted Trolls (2016) from DreamWorks.
This is the first time Despiser has been available on Blu-ray, and the care with which this release was handled should be the last. Cook supervised this SD transfer from the original tape elements, and it’s a huge step up from the cruddy version, which you can find on YouTube. The disc also sports two commentary tracks, a making of, deleted scenes, a blooper reel, outtakes, a storyboard to animation segment, the original animated DVD menu intro, a photo gallery, trailers, and more.
The packaging includes a slipcase, sticker set, reversible sleeve featuring the original VHS artwork, folded mini-poster, and two-sided insert with alternate art.
Visual Vengeance keeps obscure SOV films in the spotlight with their work. This high-concept, thrill-a-minute action/horror hybrid is waiting to be discovered by audiences who missed it two and a half decades ago.
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