Why So Blu?

Brandon’s Blu-ray Wishlist – October 17, 2014

I’m gonna go pretty obscure with today’s title.  I’ll be interested to see who remembers it.  As a reminder, this month with the wishlist we are…of course…all about the horror.  The director of this one’s only notable achievement following this one is An American Werewolf In Paris, which, could be another “Who remembers that one?” title, but it was definitely high profile back in 1997, way more than this one.  I’ll just get on with it now and talk about a wonderful little surprise of a movie.

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Mute Witness (1994)

Well, one fateful day in 1995 (the film didn’t get released in the US til then), I rented this movie.  I was having a difficult time at the video store figuring out what I was gonna pick out for Saturday night.  Mute Witness, something I didn’t even remember hearing about theatrically, had a poster up in the store.  The poster and subsequent VHS box art was surely inspired by The Silence Of The Lambs poster.  But, that’s not what sold me or was the tipping point to me picking it up.  Nope, the quote on the box compared to the movie to that of Hitchcock.  On that day, that was enough to get me to pick it up.

To my surprise, this one wound up being a quite effective little slasher-thriller.  I can’t tell you much about Anthony Waller, bu the man directed some of the most suspenseful scenes of the 90s in this movie.  My nails were being chewed up as our heroine was doing her best to elude a couple killers and make her way out the warehouse that her production crew was shooting a movie at.  Oh, and the catch here, she can’t speak, so using the perfectly operable phones render it useless.  She’s a makeup artist in an American slasher film shooting in Moscow (so there’s already that “strange foreign land” concept) who witnesses a couple guys shooting a snuff film.  At my age then, there was just a lot of factors frightening me and keeping me on edge.  And in preparation for this inevitable wishlist article, I returned to it a few months ago for the first time in over a decade and man…the suspense still holds up.

There’s a funny little story that goes along with this movie.  As you’ll see this is the final released film of screen legend Alec Guinness (He only has one credit after this, a TV movie).  Obi Wan Kenobi plays the part of “The Reaper”.  He’s the only recognizable face and name involved with this production.  Note I said, final “released” film of Alec Guinness.  Guinness actually shot his scenes for this movie back eight years before this production began shooting.  Anthony Waller had wanted to do this film for a long time and ran into Alec Guinness at a film festival.  There, he cornered him and talked/begged him into just shooting a cameo for the film just so he’d have it for whenever he actually got funding to make the film.  So, when the film was finally made, Alec Guinness was shocked to see that he was in it.

I don’t have home video numbers or worldwide theatrical, but domestically Mute Witness didn’t really do much in the way of making noise.  It was only released on 284 screens and made just over a million dollars.  The film was pretty much liked by critics and even the more negative reviews seem to have some really strong positive things to say about it.  Rotten Tomatoes has it with their “Fresh” rating with a solid audience score.  And the middle schoolers who score films on IMDB have it with a favorable 6.8 rating (Or maybe it was able to achieve that score before the juveniles took over).  Personally its a film I’m not sure what friends and colleagues think about it because its a film that doesn’t really come up.  Also, I don’t know who aside from myself remembers or has seen the film to begin with to discuss it.

And now for who has the home video distribution rights to Mute Witness.  Its Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.  Its doubtful they have any interest in releasing it.  But, they are known to sub-license (with the stipulation of “no bonus features”) a bit.  One of their more regular sub-licensing partners is Twilight Time.  I think this would be an ideal release for that distributor with a Limited to 3000 pressing.  The movie likely isn’t that popular to begin with, but I think it could push that many units between folks who remember it, collectors and Twilight Time fans that pick all their stuff up.  So yeah, Mute Witness, lets upgrade you to Blu-ray and maybe many people can give this superb little suspense movie a second look or discover it for the first time.