Review of Octagon, The

Introduction

Chuck Norris` appearances on screen these days are sadly restricted to advertising exercise machines and similar equipment on home shopping channels. But once he was an action film hero...

(to be continued...read on!)

Video

After turning on all the equipment and putting the DVD in the machine and pressing play, I had to double take at the utter horror presented before me.

Not only is video presented in fullframe which in my book is a big no-no as I have a 16:9 television, but the image quality defies belief.

I am not joking when I say that having watched for five minutes, I fault tested my system by checking all the cabling and connections, and also putting in a "known good" DVD to check if it was ok. The white horizontal lines across the srceen at fairly regular intervals are not as you may think a loose connection at the back of the TV, but are actually encoded onto the disc.

If this were the only problem, it could be blamed on a mastering fault, but the lines are a minor problem compared to the dark, unfocused grainy picture. The lack of detail is actually quite staggering, and this is easily the worst DVD picture I`ve seen so far. I would say that I would return a VHS tape as unacceptable if it looked this bad.

Worse still, there are bits of the film missing, for example, people walking towards you suddenly advance say a metre due to a bad edit.

Wait - there`s more! - the contrast isn`t stable in some scenes, making the roofs of building adjust from dark to light grey.

Audio

Dolby Digital mono sound is on offer (I thought is was supposed to be stereo, but sound only came from the centre channel), and although the dialogue is clear the sound effects leave a lot to be desired. There`s the usual tire squeals on dirt roads, a great moment when the same "car door opening" sound is used for two cars about 5 seconds apart. Definetly a case of a very limited selection for the engineer to choose from.

It gets worse when you hear Chuck`s thoughts - there`s an amusing "voice from above" effect which really makes it very difficult to treat the "plot" seriously.

Features

Given that so far the disc has been awful so far, surely you didn`t expect any extra features to redeem it?

Conclusion

Before I sum up the video and audio, a word about the plot. I say this because there a number of old films out there that have bad video and sound but are classics and are eminently watchable. Sadly, "The Octagon" doesn`t fall into this category and is quite simply total garbage.

The whole plot seems to be based on a series of chance encounters for Chuck separated by astonishingly bad footage of a ninja training camp.

After watching for 40 minutes, I had no idea what was going on, there was no introduction to any of the characters so didn`t know why they were involved etc etc. You may not be suprised to learn that I eventually gave up watching as I just couldn`t bear it any longer!

As far as the video goes, quite frankly it is of such a low standard, it should not have been released on DVD in this condition. The film only dates from 1980, and surely there must be a better print available. Ultimately, perhaps it wouldn`t matter if there was, it really is such a load of rubbish that I wouldn`t watch it anyway. The sound is acceptable but is of TV feature level rather than cinema quality.

If you really want to watch this one, and I really can`t imagine why, buy it on cheap VHS, but don`t waste the money on the DVD.

Overall this is worst DVD I`ve yet come across. Unfortunately, I`ve also got Chuck Norris` "A Force of One" to watch, surely it can`t be as bad...