Lovers Lane — Lovers Lane(Blu Ray)
From the late 1990’s Lovers Lane is a slasher-come-soapy small-town teen drama. And while it often plays up to the cliches-it has some effective moments chilling ‘n’ stalking, a fairly neat retelling of a classic urban legend, and some tension ‘n’ thrills in its last quarter. Here from Arrow Video- both in the UK & stateside- is a new Blu-ray release of the film, taking in a new 2k scan of the picture, a commentary track, and a few other extras.
Lovers Lane (aka I’m Still Waiting For You) is from the year1999. It was directed by John Ward- who had three other features to his name. These went from martial art-led action film Equal Impact(1995), Hollywood screenwriter documentary Going Through Splat: The Life and Work of Stewart Stern(2005), and drama thriller V3(2013). Lovers Lane is competently enough made low-budget slasher teen drama, though there is nothing terrible intense/ gory here- with much of the killing taking place off scene, and we mostly just see the aftermath.
The film opens with a thirteen-year flashback to the evening of Valentine’s day. In a local lover's lane, a couple are getting it on in their car, when they first hear a tapping, then hook scratching on their car. The pair escape the car and find another couple, slaughtered in the car next to theirs. In due course, psychiatrist Jack Grefe (Richard Sanders) arrives on the scene along with Sheriff Tom Anderson (Matt Riedy) and his four-year-old daughter Mandy- finding both couples dead. One of those murdered is the sheriff’s wife. The killer, Ray Hennessey (Ed Bailey) is caught and locked up in the local state institution for the criminally insane
We then flash forward to the present day late 90s, where Mandy (Erin J. Dean) is sat on the high school steps reading, and we find out she is a bookish loner with few friends. Fairly soon we get introduced to Chloe(Sarah Lancaster)- who is the daughter of psychiatrist Jack Grefe, and is also dating blond pretty boy Michael (Riley Smith), son of the school's principal, Penny Lamson (Suzanne Bouchard). The pair have a nasty break-up, and land up getting suspended from school.
Meanwhile, in the psych hospital, we see the face-in-shadow killer Ray straining at his ties with his one false hand, and fairly soon he’s free- stealing his steel hook from Dr Grefe, where it was bizarrely sat in a glass display case. High School has broken up for the term, and Michael and his buddies decide to head out to lovers lane- with one of his buddies asking Mandy to join the party. And guess what it seems the hooked killer is also leading to Lover's lane.
After the flashback, the film really plays like a soapy small-town teen drama for its first forty or so minutes, with things only really kicking into slasher gear in its last thirty minutes. For this part of the film we get some effective moments of folks walking around in the darkness to be suddenly killed, jarring sitting in car attacks, and more than a few false scares. As I mentioned in my introduction, the killings are largely done off-screen- with us just seeing the mainly throat-ripped aftermath, though we do get one rather effective knife-through-legs kill.
Acting wise I’m afraid there’s not much to report, as it’s all fairly standard low-budget just compete fare. And more than a few of the teen characters seemed rather similar/ difficult to tell apart. I’d say if you're already a slasher fan, and can tolerate the first rather soapy drama half- you will enjoy what’s on offer here, as the killer's get-up is kind of neat, and a good enough creepy atmosphere is created.
Moving onto this new blu ray, the film gets a 2k scan- this looks good, though of course as this is a 1990’s film- so you wouldn’t really expect any issues. On the extras front, we get a commentary track from writer-producers Geof Miller and Rory Veal. They start off by talking about how the pre-credits were originally going to be an overhead shot of the psychiatric hospital, but due to the costs, they had to scrape the idea. They point out their favourite lines of dialogue, and we find out the pair were trying to get films made in Hollywood for some time, with two films getting near to production. We find out how the film to hand came into production in their native Seattle, and how they raised half a million dollars from investors. We get talk about how the casting processes went, and how they had to bring in some know LA actors to appeal to investors. They point out bad wigs, and how some of the locations were used for several settings. Later on, they discuss the use of cutting & POV, and talk about how the film's only explosion was set up, and more. It’s an interesting enough track, which is certainly worth a play if you enjoyed the film. Otherwise, we get the archive featurette Screaming Teens: The Legacy of Lovers Lane ( 31.37) which takes in interviews with Geof Miller and Rory Veal and actors Matt Riedy and Carter Roy. Lastly, there’s a trailer and an image gallery.
The finished release comes with an Illustrated collector's booklet taking in new writing on the film by Lindsay Hallam and a double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Ilan Sheady.
Lovers Lane is an entertaining enough slasher/ teen drama blend. Sure it would have been nice if there had been a bit more stalking ‘n’ gory slashing, but for what it is, it’s fine. And I look forward to seeing what other lesser-known 1990’s slashers the folks at Arrow Video manage to uncover & reissue down the line.