At Home with John and Debbie

Last night’s DVD entertainment was on loan from Troy: Brotherhood Of The Wolf.

I’d heard of it, but didn’t really know what to expect. Was it a martial arts flick? A horror film? It was made in France: was it in French? With its English title and conspicuous evasion of the whole French aspect on the cover, I was half expecting one of those bilingual production where each scene was filmed back-to-back in English and French.

It turns out that it’s a great big mixture: part 18th century French aristocracy drama (all powedered wigs around the banquet table), part martial arts action (a Red Indian warrior brought by the hero from “New France”; he appears to know Kung Fu), part werewolf and part ripping yarn.

The King of France’s naturalist is sent to rural (and really rather picturesque) Gevaudan, to sort out the small matter of a Beast that is terrorising the region; hundreds of women and children have died at its hands. He finds intrigue and romance among the local aristocrats.

The DVD features a Dolby 5.1 English soundtrack and a stereo French soundtrack, but the English version is dubbed. We soon found the dubbing distracting, so we switched on the subtitles and the French audio.

As events got increasingly outrageous (to explain why would be something of a spoiler), Debbie joked “is this based on a true story?”. An interview in the Extras menu later revealed that it really was: albeit very loosely.

There are times when you wish the arch chat around the lords’ dinner table would hurry up a bit, and move on to the fun bits, but all in all it’s spectacular fun.

It joins Apocalypse Now, 28 Days Later … and The Descent in their exhilarating “going guerilla” climaxes; very enjoyable.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 14th, 2006 at 10:57 and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.