Dylan Dog: Dead of Night – Blu-ray Review

The Film:

The Italian comic series created by Tiziano Sclavi received an adaptation once before in the last great Italian film, Dellamorte Dellamore (aka Cemetery Man) in 1994. Although it was a loose translation, director Michele Soavi’s film is a wonder. It’s creepy, sexy, and darkly humorous, a rare blend of genre-bending that horror fans have properly applauded. While Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is a more strict adaptation of the comic, and is tonally different than Dellamorte Dellmore, but that doesn’t make it a lesser attempt, just a rather different one.

While it has a feeling of being rather small scale in scope, comparisons will happen and Dylan Dog is no Dellamorte Dellmore. Of course the most glaring omission is the lack of Anna Falchi’s amazingly perfect huge breasts, Dylan Dog doesn’t strike that surreal cord, but comes off as a creature feature in the vein of Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer or Dead Heat. Not like that’s a bad thing either. It’s sort of refreshing seeing some old school creature FX – rubber, latex, and prosthetics – in the theater again. Director Kevin Munroe (TMNT) sets out to make one of those 80s B-movies we all know and love in tone, scope, and fun, so with this in mind, Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is kind of neat.

Despite this good will I think most genre fans will have towards it, the script comes off pedestrian in every regard, nixing any potential spontaneous fun of those films from the 80s. Plus, even those movies time in the sun has long passed, even if we clamor for them still, so after nearly 25 years Dylan Dog feels strangely like an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s not as clever or well-written as that show, but humor and creatures echo what they did for seven years.

Kevin Munroe did an admiral job, despite this. Brandon Routh is fine as Dylan, even though the script makes him a little one-note in speech and mannerisms, but his chemistry shines through. I think genre fans will want to love Dylan Dog: Dead of Night for its film noir creature feature aspirations, but in the end, they’ll probably just like it.

The Blu-ray:

Audio/Video: Fox Home Entertainment offers up a strong looking HD presentation. Colors and skin tones are strong, as is detail. Outside of the main menu, which features an extremely loud mix, the DTS track is pretty solid overall. Bass is defined, music is soft-spoken, and sound mix is average for a film like this.

Sadly, there’s no extras on this disc, except for two Trailers.

The Film: Rating:

The Blu-ray: Rating: