I love werewolves. Well, I should say I love wolves and being that I work occasionally on horror special effects it stands to reason that werewolves should be my favorite ‘creature of the night.’ There’s been a long-running battle between me and some of my friends as to who really is better, vampires or werewolves and this is somewhat the premise of “Underworld.” It seems there is an ancient war being fought on the fringes of our reality. A war between vampires (known as Bloods) and werewolves (known as Crips… I mean Lycans). No one even seems to remember why they’re fighting. I guess you could consider it horror’s answer to the Hatfields and McCoys. “Underworld” takes the legends of these two monster movie favorites and presents a new twist where their battles consist of guns, hard rock soundtracks, guns, Olympic Medal gymnastics and more guns. It stars Kate Beckinsale as a centuries-old Death Dealer. Clad in extremely tight leather and armed to the teeth (pun intended) she is a vamp on a mission to hunt down the Lycans and destroy them one by one.

But when she finds out the Lycans are trying to locate a particular man for reasons unknown, her priorities change as she sets out to discover why they need him.

I finally caught “Underworld” on DVD the other day and wasn’t sure what to expect from it. To be honest I had listened to some of the negative press during the film’s theatrical release and expected to be ‘under whelmed.’ I thought it would probably be like watching a brawl at a Goth bar, where CG effects outweighed any good old-fashioned ‘men in suits’ affairs. As it stands “Underworld” held quite a few surprises for me. Though I was right about the Goth bar look to some of the characters, the storyline and pacing of the film was far better than I expected. The action sequences, which I was led to believe would be “Matrix” rip-offs, were anything but. Granted, the filmmakers used a lot of slow motion but there was no sign of any ‘bullet-time’ effects. I found the film overall to be a highly creative effort.

I was extremely pleased with the transfer of the film. The look of “Underworld” is extremely dark, as one might expect. Even when there were well-lit scenes, the film’s overall blue cast made them look dark. In spite of all this darkness I never had any problems seeing every detail. As the film is so action heavy, the sound is also very important to the home entertainment experience. In doing a transfer to DVD, if the balance isn’t right you often lose the dialogue in the midst of all the gunfire and music. Here I found no evidence of this. All the dialogue was kept at just the right level and was always clear and easy to understand.

After watching “Underworld”, I immediately turned to the extras on the disc. There didn’t seem to be many, but what featurettes were available were actually pretty lengthy. First up we have two commentaries, one by director Len Wiseman along with writers Danny McBride and Kevin Grevioux (who was also a Lycan in the film). This particular commentary was great, if for nothing else but the fun all the speakers had with the material. There are a lot of jokes around mixed in with the stories and background info. The only thing you have to get used to is Grevioux’s very unusual voice. When you hear him in the movie, it’s rather off-putting and listening to him in the commentary is also just a little ‘off.’ I can’t think of any way to describe it, you just have to listen to him.

The next commentary is by creature designer Patrick Tatopoulos, executive producer James McQuaide and sound designer Claude Letessier more technical in nature and would be perfect for those who are into the this type of information. The only problem you might have is that Tatopoulos and Letessier have such strong accents that it takes a while to attune your ear enough to understand them. I actually had to restart the movie about 5 times to find out who I was listening to. Once the commentary gets going, however the information presented is actually very good.

There are four main featurettes that you can play separately or all together. “The Making of Underworld” covers most of the basics of the filming and offers up a ton of interviews with cast and crew, with some of the footage showing up on the other featurettes. Next up is the best of all the featurettes, “The Creature Effects.” It was here I learned just how little CGI was used to create the werewolves. For the most part it was used during the transformations, but almost every shot of a werewolf is done with either a highly articulate animatronic or costume. Having built werewolf costumes, I was highly impressed with the level of quality shown here. The last time I was this blown away was when I saw the design used in “Dog Soldiers.” The fact that they had perfected ‘back-bending knee’ leg extensions that could be walked on was a challenge we had worked on for years. Their design is awesome. If you have ever worked on creature effects you have to watch this one.

The next best featurette involved the stunt work of the film. There were even more surprises in store for me here in regards to how many of the stunts were done and the fact that the actors did a lot (though not all) of their own. There was tremendous amount of wire work, and here we get to see some of the preparation and rehearsals. In the movie there is a scene where Lucien (Michael Sheen) is running after a car driven by Beckinsale. Being a Lycan he can run reaaallly fast and I was impressed by how it looked, but I had no idea how it was done. I tried to figure it out how they made it look so fluid, but in the end the simple solution was one I never would have thought of.

The final featurette “Sight and Sounds” is for the most part an edited montage of behind the scenes footage and a few bloopers set to music. It’s fairly entertaining but runs a little too long. If you are so inclined, the disc includes a music video of the song “Worms of the Earth” by Finch. The song works great within the context of the film, but when you see the group it’s kind of a turn-off. The lead singer (?) delivers his lyrics (?) in that new style that seems more an epileptic attack than singing. There is also a storyboard comparison of some of the key visual scenes of the movie, and several versions of the trailer.

I’m really not sure why “Underworld” received such flack during its theatrical run. I ended up liking the movie a lot more than I thought I would and actually looked forward to watching it a couple of times for the commentary. Once I watched the great extras, I had to go back and look at some of the scenes that I thought were done with CGI just to see how good they actually looked. Hardcore horror fans may not like the style, but I personally thought it rocked.

Directed by: Len Wiseman
Starring: Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman, Michael Sheen, Shane Brolly, Erwin Leder, Bill Nighy
Extras: Director and Writer Commentary, Technical Commentary, Creature Effects Featurette, Making of Underworld, Sights and Sounds Featurette, Stunts Featurette, Storyboard Comparison, Bonus Trailers, TV Spots, Music Video: Finch “Worms of the Earth”
Specifications: Widescreen (2.35:1), Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound
Studio: Sony / Columbia Tristar
Release Date: 1/6/2004
Region 1
MPAA Rating: R (Strong Violence/Gore and Some Language)
Website

We'll give Underworld an A.