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Ghost Canyon

'Cold Light Of Day' [Limited Edition] [Blu-ray]
(Bob Flag, Martin Byrne-Quinn, Geoffrey Greenhill, et al / Blu-ray / R / (1998) 2020 / Arrow Video - MVD Visual)

Overview: February, 1983. Detectives are called to a residential address in the London suburbs following reports that the drains have been clogged by human remains.

One of the property's residents, Dennis Nilsen a mild-mannered and unassuming civil servant is brought in for questioning, leading to the discovery of one of the most shocking and disturbing cases of serial murder ever to rock Britain.

Offering a grim and gritty retelling of the story of Des Nilsen, often dubbed the British Jeffery Dahmer , 1989's 'Cold Light of Day' stars Bob Flag (the face of Big Brother in Michael Radford's 1984) as Nilsen-cipher Jorden March, delivering one of the most chilling and credible portrayals of a serial killer ever committed to screen.

Blu-ray Verdict: Following smartly on the heals of the new British three-part television drama miniseries, also based on the 1983 arrest of Scottish serial killer Dennis Nilsen, and which premiered on the 14th September, 2020, this 1989 version also has just the right amount of "ick" associated with it for the killer.

To bring you up to date, between 1978 and 1983, Dennis Nilsen - an outwardly unremarkable former soldier and police officer turned civil servant - killed at least fifteen men and boys (most of them students or homeless) in gruesome circumstances, allegedly retaining the corpses for sex acts before disposing of the butchered remains by hiding them in cupboards, under the floorboards, or simply by flushing them down the toilet.

This grimy, clammy, little-seen independent film is a lightly fictionalized account of Nilsen's hideous deeds, with a standout performance from Bob Flag as the milquetoast murderer, here renamed Jorden March.

Fhiona Louise's film, clearly made on a shoestring budget, steers clear of exploitation tactics, choosing instead to cast its characters adrift in a singularly bleak, uncaring and desolate world of tatty pubs, squalid bed-sits, greasy cafés and grubby bathrooms.

The police interrogation of March is inter-cut with flashbacks that reveal not just his crimes (a living room disembowelment and the discovery of what's blocking the drains will send a shiver down the spines of even the hardiest souls) but also provide a window of understanding into what has tipped the apparently kindly loner over the edge.

Louise's direction is unobtrusive and detached, allowing the lengthy exchanges between the characters to play out in several lengthy takes, but it's this cold, flat, cinema-verité style that affords the proceedings much of their chilling power, conveying the sense that such horrors really could be unfolding in the street, or even the house, just around the corner.

In conclusion, 'Cold Light Of Day' is an easy film to admire - it won several awards - but it's not an easy film to watch, let alone enjoy! As a fitting footnote, a caption card dedicates the preceding horrors to "those too sensitive for this world" - which, in his own perverse and twisted way, Nilsen surely was. This is a Widescreen Presentation (2.35:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the Special Features of:

Brand new 2K restoration from the original 16mm camera negative approved by director Fhiona-Louise
Original uncompressed mono audio
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
Brand new audio commentary with writer/director Fhiona-Louise
Brand new audio commentary with film historians/writers Dean Brandum and Andrew Nette
Newly-filmed interview with actor Martin Byrne-Quinn
Newly-filmed interview with actor Steve Munroe
Original 'Cold Light of Day' promo film made to raise financing for the feature
Re-Release Trailer
Two short films starring Cold Light of Day director Fhiona-Louise and photographed by Star Wars DP David Tattershall, newly restored in HD: 'Metropolis Apocalypse' (1988, 11 mins) and 'Sleepwalker' (1993, 2 mins)
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly-commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx
Limited Edition Die-cut O-card
Limited Edition collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by Jo Botting and a look at how the press reported Dennis Nilsen's real-life crimes by Jeff Billington
Limited Edition of 2000 units

Amazon Purchase Link

www.MVDvisual.com





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