Arcade — Arcade( Blu Ray)
From the early 1990s, Arcade focuses on a VR game that is figuratively and literally hooking a group of teens in. The film blends Sci-Fi, light horror, and John Hughes-like teen drama. It’s an entertaining enough ride of movie, and if if like me, you dig retro tech and old computer graphics, then you’ll enjoy what’s on offer here. This recent region-free Blu-ray from Full Moon Features offers up a new commentary, and a few archive features.
Arcade ( Cyber World ) is a US production- filmed in both LA and Santa Monica- it was released in the year 1993. It was helmed by San Diego-born Albert Pyun, who has around fifty features to his name; these span mostly the more action-focused side of exploitation. Moving between post-nuke action comedy Radioactive Dreams (1984), through to a waitress involved in crime caper film Down Twisted (1987) onto low-budget superhero caper Captain America (1990), over to the sci-fi action/ cyberpunk thriller Nemesis (1992), and it’s three sequels Nemesis 2: Nebula, Nemesis 3: Time Lapse, and Nemesis 4: Death Angel.
The film has a fairly tight runtime of one hour and twenty minutes, and remains fairly shifting in it’s plot/ action. It focuses on a group of older teen friends, taking in troubled Alex( Megan Ward), whose mother committed suicide/ her fathers depressed. Shades-wearing and skateboarding Nick(Peter Billingsley), who looks like a wider-faced Anthony Michael Hall, and floppy-haired Joker Stilts- played by Seth Green, who is the most notable/ known face here.
The group find out their underground video game hangout- Dantes Inferno- is getting a new VR game, simply/ rather confusingly called Arcade- it’s a sit-in-booth game, with an eye viewer and white cable-lined black gloves. At the start of any game session, the players meet ‘Arcade’, who looks somewhat like a glowing green-eyed transformer- he is rather maniacal, at points sweary nod towards Freddy Kruger.
To begin with, the game takes place in a blocky stone corridor, lined with constantly twisting and turning spikes, with the player being chased by a malevolent yellow light. While Alex and her friends are hearing about the offer of taking home a plug into the TV version of the game system, her boyfriend is playing the game, gets snapped at by a massive chrome skull, and property disappears.
As the hours tick on, Alex gets more and more concerned about her boyfriend, and in time finds out her other friends who were also at the introduction of the VR game are not answering her phone, so it comes down to her and Nick to investigate.
The in-VR/computer graphics world, of course, look very blocky/ dated now- we move from the previously mentioned spiked lined corridors. Out into a set blue/psychedelic scaped sky dotted with pyramids and flying with chrome beaked creatures. Though to a Tron-like race track, and beyond. The purely inside the VR section only runs about twenty minutes, and remains fairly eventful/suspenseful- if you can accept/ take the very retro graphics.
The largely teen/ early twenties cast is fine/ largely passable, but I say the most entertaining / engaging is Jonathan Fuller, as the voice of Arcade- nicely hamming it up/ going OTT. So Arcade is an entertaining enough mix of Sci-fi, light horror, and teen drama.
This recent Blu-ray features a nice HD scan of the film, which is largely bright and bold, aside from the murkier/ dry ice-edged scenes. On the extras side, we get a few things- most of these are archive, but even these are worth a look.
So, the only new extra on here is a commentary track with lead actresses Megan Ward, and script co-writer/ producer Charles Band. The pair start off by commenting on the names in the credits- with the pair touching on memories of some of them. We find out Ward wore her own clothes for the film, and they point out actors as they appearing, touching on where some of them are now. We find out Mr Band has never gone on social media, and doesn’t do Hollywood parties. They touch on the great character actors brought in by Pyun. We find out the film was shot at the same time as the film Dollman, and that the director was very focused- filming 12- 15 pages of a day, normally in big Hollywood films it would take a few weeks to film so many pages. They touch on the film's tagline, ‘ Kiss Reality Goodbye’, and Band declares that effects movies should be no longer than 90 minutes, which I wholeheartedly agree with. Later on, he talks about Wizard Video Games- the company he set up to release Atari likes games, he made two games one based on Halloween & one on Texas Chainsaw Massacre, sadly the company was flop- with him not selling any of the 1000 copies he pressed- these arr now selling for a lot on eBay, with one copy selling at fifty thousdand $’s. Band talks about still having CDs and a CD disc changing- they discuss the CDs he gifted Ward around the making of the film. She talks about visiting Bands’ castle in Italy around this time. It’s a rewarding enough chatty track, though they both do often drift off focusing on the film, to discuss other things.
The archive extras taking in an episode of the 90’s videozine Videozone( 9.43) this takes in interviews with the director & leading actress. Clowning around a set of footage and effects setups. There’s an on-set interview with character actor John de Lancie(15.42), and a rare VFX reel(18.03).
This reissue of Arcade is well worth a look- if you either enjoy 90’s sci-fi with a teen focus, or retro tech/ PC graphics. With the disc featuring a well-defined print, and a decent selection of new/ archive extras