Nightmare Beach - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

Skip and his friend Ronny head to Nightmare Beach for some much-needed R&R. Spring Break is upon them and the streets of Miami are flooded with horny teenagers looking to get drunk and laid. The bad news is that there’s a killer on the loose who may be the resurrected spirit of an executed prisoner who’s returned from the grave and is riding a deadly, souped-up motorcycle and electrocuting his victims to death.

Let me get this out of the way: Nightmare Beach is not as good as that amazing, briefest of synopses would have you believe. Even though it has a wealth of talent both in front of and behind the camera, it’s not as good as you would hope it would be. The film was directed by Umberto Lenzi (there is a long story about how he maybe didn’t direct anything, but definitely, probably did), the man behind such other Italian splatter classics as Cannibal Ferox, Nightmare City, and the oft-maligned-but-loved-by-me Ghosthouse. The original score was written and composed by Claudio Simonetti of Goblin, behind such amazing hit scores as Dawn of the Dead and Suspiria. Cinematography is courtesy of mondo shockumentary legend Antonio Climati.

Starring in the film you’ve got a veritable who’s who of horror stars of the era: John Saxon of Cannibal Apocalypse and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Michael Parks of Kill Bill and From Dusk Till Dawn. Former actor-turned-editor Nicolas De Toth (he cut Obi-Wan Kenobi for Disney). And Sarah Buxton, who has the distinction of being one of those young stars you’ve seen in about a dozen things from The Sure Thing to Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.

The movie itself is… it’s really not very interesting as a movie. It’s more interesting as a piece of film history than anything else. It’s an oddity that’s fun to study for the amount of connections it has to other films. It’s a study to watch for the professionalism that went into the film’s production. The writing is fun and plays with tons of conventions and serves as a tour of genres. The special effects and death scenes are well done, of course. And the actors are all well-cast and having fun. But the movie itself feels like it’s on autopilot, and that Umberto Lenzi is really taking a paycheck here. Lenzi has never been above paycheck movies, but it feels especially egregious this time around and there’s a certain nihilistic detachment from the goings-on that makes the whole feel thing more clinical than many projects he’s helmed before.

Nightmare Beach will be of most interest to film nerds with a knowledge of Italian exploitation films of the 70s and American slashers of the 80s. Italian Giallo films helped influence and create the American slasher movie we all know and love. And it’s in this self-digesting ouroboros from which Nightmare Beach is born: Nightmare Beach feels like a giallo that’s been inspired by American slashers. The tropes of both genres are all accounted for, with some other genres thrown in for good measure. It’s a teenage sex comedy. It’s a beach party movie. It’s a motorcycle movie. Plus, it has gratuitous violence and nudity. It’s everything that the filmmakers had time for to squeeze into its 90-minute run time, and everything an audience would want to see.

Sadly, Nightmare Beach never quite comes together, and the problem, I think, is that it’s just too derivative, without adding anything to the conversation. It’s a shame, too, because it does make good use of its location and there are some impressive deaths. Nightmare Beach is one of the many films released around the same time between 1988 and 1989 that all had the same basic plot of “a convicted killer has come back from the dead to kill again” (Prison, Destroyer, Shocker, The Horror Show), and although there is a nifty little giallo twist to the killer’s identity, it all feels very familiar and well-worn.  

Lenzi’s craftmanship does elevate the picture above tedium and is quite watchable, it just falls short of his usual output. But whenever the movie deviates from the horror, careening through teen sex comedy territory, it can get real boring.

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Nightmare Beach rides its way onto 4K in a two-disc case containing the film on both a 4K UHD Blu-ray and a 1080p HD Blu-ray. As is usual with Kino Cult, the case comes with a removable slip and the artwork inside is reversible. The film’s audio presentation is in both DTS 2.0 stereo and DTS 5.1 surround. The 4K disc contains only the film and audio commentary, and all other special features are found on the Blu-ray disc.

Kino Cult’s release of Nightmare Beach, using a SDR Master by StudioCanal, from a 4K scan of the original 35mm film negative, is impressive work. There is no HDR to be found on this 4K release, but you won’t miss it. The highlights are well-balanced and the shadows properly dark—but, this being a low-budget slasher from the 80s, expect to see plenty of warm, bubbly film grain throughout.

Nightmare Beach as a film may have never quite come together as a cohesive whole, but its technical aspects are all top-notch, including the cinematography courtesy of Antonio Climati (Mondo Cane). Neither the visuals, nor the camerawork, are excessively show-offy, but the dedicated craftmanship is really on full display.

Unlike his contemporaries, Lucio Fulci or Dario Argento, Umberto Lezni was a workmanlike director and didn’t put much visual flair into his features. They’re shot competently, with even lighting, but they don’t usually go beyond that. And what more could you ask for? The nighttime scenes are exquisite, with rich shadows enveloping the scene and bright highlights that don’t blow out or overlight the mystery of the darkness. The transfer on this release is great, quality work and laudable for its faithfulness to the original film, while making it something remarkable by today’s standards, too.

The sound mix on Nightmare Beach is not quite as laudable as the visual presentation. Through no fault of the Kino Cult team, Nightmare Beach falls short in some areas. The score is written and composed by Goblin’s Claudio Simonetti along with a very 80s rock/metal soundtrack, featuring the singularly-named “Kirsten” and Derek St. Holmes. Both the score and the soundtrack are very fun, and if you’re listening to the optional 5.1 surround track, the rear speakers and subwoofer get a lot of play out of the near-constant needle drops throughout the picture.

Nightmare Beach boasts a DTS HD-MA 2.0 stereo soundtrack in both English and Italian, with an optional DTS HD-MA 5.1 surround soundtrack also in English and Italian. I did listen to both the stereo and surround mixes and while the stereo mix is the more faithful to the film’s original release, the 5.1 is quite fun, making great use of music and ambient sound effects.

With both the stereo and surround mixes, there were a handful of scenes with particularly mumbly actors, whose line readings were unclear or hard to decipher. Many of my qualms with the soundtrack are present from the film itself. Kino Cult does great work with what they had and the lossless audio, when it works, works extremely well. You might just want to put subtitles on for those hard-to-hear dialogue scenes, which are few and far between.

Special features on Nightmare Beach are sadly scant, but the features that are there are quite good. Samm Deighan also provided audio commentary on The Belle Starr Story, and is a wealth of knowledge about all this Italian exploitation. Even if her commentary was the only special feature found in this release, it would justify it. Her commentaries are regularly rich in knowledge, succinctly explained and accessible to everyone, from genre veterans to newbies looking to learn a little more.

• Audio Commentary by Film Historian Samm Deighan
• Nightmare Rock: Interview with Composer Claudio Simonetti (HD, 15:56)
• Theatrical Trailers

Though the visual presentation of Nightmare Beach is impressive, the film itself drags and is not one of Umberto Lezni's best efforts. The audio presentation does an admirable job with the source material it's given, and it really excels in certain areas, like when the music is blasting and thumping some over-the-top 80s song. And even though the special features are a little bare, the audio commentary by Samm Deighan is excellent, as always.

Still, Nightmare Beach is a fun outing, and genre fans who decide to catch a wave with this one won't wipe out. This release comes Recommended.