This film is an 80’s B-movie and a sci-fi hidden gem. It was directed by Steven Lisberger who wrote, directed and drafted visual concepts of the original Tron (1982), produced by Gary Kurtz who previously produced American Graffiti and the first two of the original Star Wars films, and it was filmed at Pinewood Studios as well as historic locations in Yorkshire in England and Cappadocia in Turkey. The Cast includes Mark Hamill (Star Wars), Bill Paxton (Aliens), Bob Peck (Jurassic Park), Ben Kingsley (Gandhi), F. Murray Abraham (Amadeus) and Robbie Coltrane (Harry Potter).
Sounds like a good recipe for a great sci-fi film, right? Wrong! There is a reason why you have never heard of this film before. If you are like me and love those 80’s B-movies, especially in the sci-fi genre, you will greatly enjoy this film. The story was inspired by Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. It has all of the fun sci-fi themes such as post-apocalyptic wastelands, bounty hunters, and cyborgs. There are no CGI but all cheaply done practical effects. Many of the shots are from the beautiful landscape of the historic Cappadocia region in central Turkey. I will say although the soundtrack is by no means a masterpiece, I enjoyed it very much. It gives the movie that grande illusion (but the film isn’t grande by any means).
Looking at imdb, this film perhaps ended the careers of the director and the producer. The lead actress in this film, Kitty Aldridge left acting and married Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits) a few years later. I would say this film is a solid 1.5 stars out of 5 for the general viewer. I would give it 3.5/5 for the 80’s B-movie aficionado.
For those who are interested, this isn’t an easy film to find on a good home video medium. It is not on the Kaleidescape store and I doubt it will ever be (but I wish it could be). There has been only 1 Blu-ray disc release for the US market by SGL Entertainment (link below). It is an absolute garbage. I am confident it is the worst Blu-ray disc release ever. They crammed Slipstream and 2 other movies onto a single 25GB disc. They didn’t bother to use the entire disc space. All 3 films cover just under 18GB space and encoded in mpeg-2. The picture quality is absolutely horrendous. The film is cropped, panned and scanned to be in 1.33:1 with black bars on each side. If you want to own a museum piece, the worst Blu-ray discs ever, this is it. I have the US Laserdisc release from 1989 which is open matte and has far better picture quality than the Blu-ray release (link below). I also owned the Japanese Laserdisc release also from 1989 (link below). It is framed differently than the full screen US release. It has a 1.78:1 aspect ratio with more information on each side but cropped from top and bottom. The Japanese release has some chroma noise and a different color timing than the US release. My preferred version is the US laserdisc release but too bad I can’t import that to my Kaleidescape Premiere server. I will look for the DVD releases and update here later. It looks like Tubi and a few other streaming services have Slipstream for free to stream. I tried Tubi for a few minutes and it looks very similar to the atrocious Blu-ray release.
I see a lot of reviews for good movies. I don’t see many reviews for bad movies and bad home video releases. I hope you enjoyed reading it. I will probably follow up with Moontrap (1988) next.
www.blu-ray.com
www.lddb.com
www.lddb.com
Sounds like a good recipe for a great sci-fi film, right? Wrong! There is a reason why you have never heard of this film before. If you are like me and love those 80’s B-movies, especially in the sci-fi genre, you will greatly enjoy this film. The story was inspired by Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. It has all of the fun sci-fi themes such as post-apocalyptic wastelands, bounty hunters, and cyborgs. There are no CGI but all cheaply done practical effects. Many of the shots are from the beautiful landscape of the historic Cappadocia region in central Turkey. I will say although the soundtrack is by no means a masterpiece, I enjoyed it very much. It gives the movie that grande illusion (but the film isn’t grande by any means).
Looking at imdb, this film perhaps ended the careers of the director and the producer. The lead actress in this film, Kitty Aldridge left acting and married Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits) a few years later. I would say this film is a solid 1.5 stars out of 5 for the general viewer. I would give it 3.5/5 for the 80’s B-movie aficionado.
For those who are interested, this isn’t an easy film to find on a good home video medium. It is not on the Kaleidescape store and I doubt it will ever be (but I wish it could be). There has been only 1 Blu-ray disc release for the US market by SGL Entertainment (link below). It is an absolute garbage. I am confident it is the worst Blu-ray disc release ever. They crammed Slipstream and 2 other movies onto a single 25GB disc. They didn’t bother to use the entire disc space. All 3 films cover just under 18GB space and encoded in mpeg-2. The picture quality is absolutely horrendous. The film is cropped, panned and scanned to be in 1.33:1 with black bars on each side. If you want to own a museum piece, the worst Blu-ray discs ever, this is it. I have the US Laserdisc release from 1989 which is open matte and has far better picture quality than the Blu-ray release (link below). I also owned the Japanese Laserdisc release also from 1989 (link below). It is framed differently than the full screen US release. It has a 1.78:1 aspect ratio with more information on each side but cropped from top and bottom. The Japanese release has some chroma noise and a different color timing than the US release. My preferred version is the US laserdisc release but too bad I can’t import that to my Kaleidescape Premiere server. I will look for the DVD releases and update here later. It looks like Tubi and a few other streaming services have Slipstream for free to stream. I tried Tubi for a few minutes and it looks very similar to the atrocious Blu-ray release.
I see a lot of reviews for good movies. I don’t see many reviews for bad movies and bad home video releases. I hope you enjoyed reading it. I will probably follow up with Moontrap (1988) next.
The Killer Sci Fi 3 Pack Blu-ray (Slipstream / Creature / Incident at Raven's Gate)
The Killer Sci Fi 3 Pack Blu-ray Release Date June 13, 2017 (Slipstream, Creature, Incident at Raven's Gate). Blu-ray reviews, news, specs, ratings, screenshots. Cheap Blu-ray movies and deals.
LaserDisc Database - Slipstream [ID6764VV]
LDDb.com - The LaserDisc Database - Collections, Wishlists, Marketplace of obsolete and niche video formats (LD/CED/VHD/D-VHS/HD DVD)
LaserDisc Database - Slipstream [SF047-1653]
LDDb.com - The LaserDisc Database - Collections, Wishlists, Marketplace of obsolete and niche video formats (LD/CED/VHD/D-VHS/HD DVD)
