MERIDIAN

U.S.A. | 1990 Directed by Charles Band Starring Sherilyn Fenn Malcolm Jamieson Charlie Color | 85 Minutes | R Format: DVD Double Feature Disc / R1 - NTSC Echo Bridge Home Entertainment

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		Review by Brian Lindsey Film:4 DVD:3

I hadn't seen the direct-to-video Meridian (AKA Kiss of the Beast) since stumbling across it while channel surfing nearly 20 years ago. It was playing on either HBO or Cinemax, at about one o'clock in the morning, and I was pretty blitzed.* All I remember of that particular moment was being stunned to see Sherilyn Fenn — the raven-haired beauty from Twin Peaks — being tossed onto a bed and having her clothes ripped off... in slow motion. Whoa, I mused in my cups, it's Audrey Horne — and she's nekkid! (I don't recall whether or not her Playboy spread had come out by then, but I hadn't seen her in anything other than David Lynch's groundbreaking psycho-soap opera, at the time just about the weirdest, coolest thing on TV.)

So it was purely on a nostalgic whim that I picked up this DVD. I suppose I wanted to relive my Sherilyn Fenn Moment from the dawn of the '90s. Only this time I wouldn't be (well, not quite as) wasted.

Fenn plays Catherine, a young American art student who inherits the Italian castle she lived in as a little girl before moving to the States. Having just arrived in Italy to take up residence there, she invites old school chum Gina (Charlie Spradling, billed here simply as "Charlie") to visit for the weekend. Gina can only stay at the castle for one night, though, as she must complete a restoration job on an old, possibly valuable painting. Catherine is giving Gina a tour of the castle grounds when they notice that a traveling sideshow has set up nearby and is putting on an afternoon performance. Intrigued, the girls join the audience to watch.

For reasons she can't quite fathom, Catherine is drawn to the show's handsome magician/master of ceremonies, Mr. Fauvrey (Malcolm Jamieson) — so much so that she invites him and his oddball company of players to dine with her and Gina at the castle that evening. During a series of toasts made by Fauvrey some kind of drug is slipped into Catherine and Gina's wine; the two friends quickly start feeling dizzy and disoriented. Unable to put up any resistance, Catherine and Gina are then stripped and ravaged by Fauvrey... or rather both Fauvreys, as it's revealed that there are actually two of them. Twin brothers, one of them conceals his face behind a mask while the other acts as front-man for the show.

The next morning Catherine isn't sure what she experienced. Was she simply drunk? Hallucinating? Was she raped — and yet liked it? She and Gina agree to just forget whatever happened, as the latter says good-bye to return to her restoration project. Then, although Fauvrey's World of Wonder show appears to have packed up and left, Catherine randomly encounters the man as if he can materialize out of nowhere. In a closed-off wing of the castle, she sees visions of a murdered woman who seems to be trying to tell her something. And after dreaming of making love to a hairy werewolf-like creature, Catherine learns about an ancient curse that haunts her family, a curse placed on a traveling company of performers by a sorcerous ancestor. Meanwhile, Gina is gradually uncovering another, much older painting hidden beneath the one she's working on — a painting showing the castle where her friend now lives...

None of this ends up making much sense.

Directed by low budget specialist Charles Band (Puppet Master, Trancers), Meridian is pure Harlequin Romance horror hokum, doubtless inspired by the popularity of the Linda Hamilton/Ron Perlman TV show The Beauty and the Beast (1987-90). It's an erotic tale of the supernatural aimed squarely at a female audience, yet its erotic component seems tailored for the male horndog crowd... Or is date-rape somehow okay with women as long as the perpetrator is a good-looking guy in a billowing poet shirt (who enunciates in perfect 'Brit' English, rolling his 'R's with much theatricality)? Fenn and the voluptuous Spradling (Puppet Master II, Wild at Heart) are pretty dang doable in this — it's just too bad that after the 8-minute 'ravaging' scene, there's only one brief flash of skin in the rest of the movie. This isn't exactly one of Fenn's better performances, either, although I really can't say I blame her; she has to do a love scene with a guy in a monster suit, after all. The story and script get rather silly at times and the whole curse thing is inadequately explained, but the film is helped immensely by the real Italian castello used for location shooting. Decent beast makeup (considering the budget) is undermined by scenes that are often too brightly lit.

* A common occurrence in those days, I must confess.

A double feature cheapie from Echo Bridge Home Entertainment, the DVD pairs Meridian with another Charles Band/Full Moon film, the 2005 vampire strippers horror-comedy Decadent Evil (not reviewed). Even though currently priced under $10 this is a pretty crappy disc.

Meridian is 1.33:1 fullframe, which appears to be the correct aspect ratio since the film was made expressly for the VHS/cable market well before the advent of 16x9 TVs. The transfer was obviously taken from a tape source, however; the pink and red gel lighting used in certain scenes is quite fuzzy-looking and there's very noticeable image instability during tracking shots. (It isn't flagged for progressive scan, either.) I've seen much worse, to be sure, but in the DVD format's second decade this is simply unacceptable — except perhaps in the case of dollar discs of the sort you'll find near the check-out register in discount drug stores. Audio is clear enough but low-level hiss is present throughout. Being of more recent vintage, Decadent Evil fares a bit better in terms of A/V quality but its 1.85:1 transfer is not anamorphic. There are no extras for either film. (NOTE: My DVD rating of "3" factors in the disc's value as a double feature.) 11/26/10

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