(Contains portions of my review of the original DVD release) 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 a few months ago 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.

When I first watched the movie I ended up loving the hell out of it, so much so that I ended up watching a few more times. Though I was originally kind of put off that Sony / Columbia Tristar decided to put out a newer Director’s Cut of the film a scant 4 months after the initial DVD release, I was also kind of psyched to see what they would add. Watching this new version, I started looking for the additional and extended scenes (23 minutes worth). Having already watched the original cut a few times, they were easy to pick out. For the most part they just added to the overall plot, and in some ways actually improved the film. Already paced at a breakneck speed, these new scenes didn’t bog down the film one bit.

After watching this new Director’s Cut of “Underworld”, I immediately looked to see how the extra features compared to the earlier release. As it turns out, most of the original features are included here, with the exception of the two commentaries. An all-new commentary has been recorded for this version, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

Back 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.

And that was just what carried over from the original DVD release. Added to this new Director’s Cut set is an all-new commentary by director Len Wiseman and actors Kate Beckinsale and Scott Speedman. The original commentaries were very technical in nature, and while informative, were not really that entertaining to listen to. This new commentary is much better oriented for you average audience, with a lot of joking around. Wiseman is only present for the first half of the commentary, but the entire thing is well worth listening to.

Also new to this release are some lengthy ‘Outtakes’ and four additional featurettes. The first “Fang vs Fiction”, originally aired on AMC, and offers up a look into the myths and mythos (myths and mythsters?) surrounding vampires and werewolves. This is a very entertaining documentary; of course I’m a bit bias since (as I mentioned) I LOVE werewolves. The next three “Designing…”, “The Look of…” and “The Visual Effects of Underworld“, each focus on the different aspects of the overall production. These are nice follow-up features to the ones that carried over from the original DVD set. Taken all together, they paint quite a complete picture of the work that went into “Underworld.”

Sony / Columbia Tristar also upped the ante as far as overall value to this DVD set with the addition of a 48 page “Underworld” mini-comic by writer Kris Oprisko and artists Nick Postic and Nick Marinovich. The do a great job of re-creating the overall tone form the film. There is also a collectible 16 page production ‘sketch to scene’ booklet. Depending on your own particular interests, these little extras may or may not excite you, but I though they were pretty darn cool.

Again I think it was a little strange for Sony / Columbia Tristar to put out this 2-disc Director’s Cut hot on the heels of January release, but as much as I might chide them for hitting fans in their pocketbooks I cannot say that this version isn’t more than worth picking up.

As for the film itself, 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: 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”, Commentary with Director Dan Wiseman and Actors Kate Beckinsale and Scott Speedman, Outtakes, Fang vs. Fiction Featurette, Designing Underworld, The Look of Underworld, The Visual Effects of Underworld, Collectible Comic and Sketch Booklet.
Specifications: Widescreen (2.35:1), Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound
Studio: Sony / Columbia Tristar
Release Date: 5/25/2004
Region 1
MPAA Rating: R (Strong Violence/Gore and Some Language)
Website

We'll give Underworld: Director's Cut an A.