While Big Budget movies cast the likes of Demi Moore in a Lead female role......our budget impaired film, cast the likes of Shannon Tweed and try to imitate these big budget movies....

Face the Evil, the uncredited sequel to No Contest, also starring Playboy's ex-playmate Shannon Tweed, in Die hard in an Art Gallery.......Sharon's (Tweed) little sister runs the art gallery in question and the film Sharon is working on wishes to use the art gallery as a location.....So while the film crew are there scouting out the place, a group of terrorists, headed by Lance Hendriksen, hold everyone hostage.....You see, the latest shipment in for the art gallery also has a Nazi Nerve Gas inside one of the statues..This deadly gas when in human contact eats away at the flesh and makes a right nasty mess (allowing for an excuse to show of some nice gore effects, with one particularly nasty sequence at the end of the film @ 1:25:30)

So How Does This Transfer Hold Up???

While simitar seem to go to some effort and re-mix movies into 5.1 sound for their DVD release, they are still releasing most of the DVDs as P&S...this film is no exception...Image quality of this transfer is actually pretty good...and only suffers from a loss of detail, which tends to make the picture look soft....this aside, the colour saturation is good, though on the safe side and a touch low.....there is a little bit of arifacting throughout, and a little aliasing, but nothing that really stands out.....overall the image is clean and not bad to look at......other than the first No Contest, this would be the only other movie where Ms Tweed doesn't take her close off..so the "not bad to look at " comment may not mean as much to some :-)

On the audio side of things, the default audio track is in Dolby Surround and sounds a little flat (like ALL simitar Dolby Surround tracks seem to), whereas the Dolby Digital 5.1 track is quite aggressive and fills the front sound stage nicely.....the credits list this film as being mixed in Dolby Surround, so it's not what you'd call a True 5.1 mix..but it's still not too bad.

Again, this Simitar DVD has only 9 chapters to its credit, which is about 8 TOO FEW.....and as extras all you get is a few film factoids....but it's an all right movie and worth a rent at least...

First Reviewed 3rd May 1999

Review Equipment
TV: Pioneer SD-T50W1 (16:9 RPTV)
DVD: Samsung DVD905 (via RGB outputs)
Receiver: Marantz SR870 & Sony SDP-EP9ES
Speakers:-
     Fronts: B&W 602
     Centre: B&W CDMC-SE
     Rears: Jamo Magic 14
     Subby: M&K V125