No wonder they were pushing the Battle Beyond the Stars Blu Ray steelbook. Because it will be less valuable now that they offer that movie in 4K.

Artwork:

I haven't seen a lot of these HK films in over 20 years, I guess this will be the time for me to revisit some of my favorites!

I purchased Ninja 3 The Domination on bluray for $8.48 off of Amazon last night. It's one of those Cannon movies I've always wanted to watch but haven't gotten around to seeing.

Do you consume drugs or alcohol? If so it makes that movie pretty fun. Especially with friends over.

No but I love seeking out Cannon movies I haven't seen yet. It looks like it's on the same level of insanity as Lifeforce.

Ah, Cannon Films. I watched the Lou Ferigno "Hercules" movies last weekend. First time since I saw them in theaters as a kid.

Holy crap.

These fuckers were BONKERS. Nothing makes sense. No one can act. Hercules c*nt-punted a bear. The weird low-budget-cosmic-laser-fantasy aesthetic.

And Sybil Danning. My God.

Timecop 4K review. Barebones. Not even a trailer. Oliver Harper says it’s a half assed job by Shout. He says it’s not worth getting unless you can get it on sale. It’s $35 MSRP. That’s disappointing considering Kino did great discs with Hard Target and Sudden Death.

That’s a shame. Most of Hyams’ films have been kinda spotty in terms of special features, which is sad considering how much genre stuff he made. His own commentaries from the DVD days can be hit and miss, and the featurettes are often vintage EPK filler, but at least that’s something. This isn’t my favourite Hyams film by a long shot, but going barebones like this in 2025 is pretty sad. There’s a short EPK thing and a music video on YouTube and they couldn’t even dump those on it.

Yeah that's what Harper said in his review. A short EPK exists and is on YouTube and he was puzzled why they couldn't put it on here unless Shout decided to go cheap with this release.

Anyway, after watching Harper's review, it's a pass for me. Ridiculous that an already expensive boutique label like Shout wants to charge top premium price for a lazy production.

Does anyone actually still watch bonus features anymore? If that EPK fluff can be found on YouTube, is there really any need to put it on another disc?

I ordered Timecop from Target over 3 months ago with a B1G1 50% off sale, my final cost is around $24, and it looks like it's backordered. Hopefully it still shows up.

I know not everyone has the time or interest to watch bonus content. But movies produced by boutique labels aren’t cheap for the most part. I expect them to put some decent effort into making them and add value to my purchase, otherwise you might as well just go cheap and buy a digital copy.

YouTube videos come and go. If it's available and rights aren't an issue, it's nice to pack it onto the disc of the movie even as just a courtesy.

I’d wager that a good chunk of the audience that keeps these boutique labels alive watches them.

For a film with a sizeable following like Timecop, the YouTube EPK crap isn’t really the kind of supplemental content that I’d want to see by itself, but the fact that it exists along with the music video means both are worthy of inclusion, albeit preferably with some new or new-ish interviews from participants. Granted Van Damme rarely takes part in new material (he really should, frankly), Hyams might be iffy at his age now, but what about the writers, who created the original comic story as well? They’re still around. The composer turns up in countless interviews on boutique labels. The editor seems to be retired, but worked on four consecutive Hyams films in the 90’s. The art director went on to be a production designer on some popular sci-fi TV shows, and this was an early sci-fi picture for him. And there are probably a few of the more than fifty visual / special effects people who had or still have decent careers in that field. Same goes for some of the makeup and costume people, too, and plenty of the sound technicians.

I know supplements aren’t for everyone, and I rarely watch them more than once. Most times they’re interesting. Sometimes they’re dull. But the fact is, boutique companies like Shout have conditioned us to expect supplemental features on ‘major’ releases, and if they’re suddenly going to put zero (or little) effort into doing so on new releases of key genre films yet still expect fans to shell out top dollar for 4K combos, they should have another think coming.

The comments on the Shout listing itself are hardly surprising. Hopefully anyone who wants it just for the film will at least wait for a sale down the road, rather than falling into the tiresome “day one for me!” trap and signalling to Shout that they’re perfectly fine with more of the same.

A happy medium shouldn’t be that hard to achieve, not with an entire supplement ‘industry’ still cranking out content. Obviously I don’t expect Shout to go overboard like, say, Vinegar Syndrome does on its special editions of far less inferior movies, and yet, when it comes to some of the no-budget, regional, even shot-on-video obscurities that VS digs up, often the bonus features are infinitely more entertaining than the movie itself, even if they likewise don’t bear repeat viewing any more than those on a Shout factory SE of some studio film. But at least they’re there. It’s just so odd – and frankly fishy – that Shout couldn’t be arsed to do anything on this one.

At this point, I only watch documentaries that appear to be well made and are interesting. If it appears to be fluffy or just a couple of long ass interviews with one or two people that drone on about stuff.... i.e. how great the crew was, how great the production was, how great the actors were, how great blah blah blah, I am out.

I will still listen to a commentary once in a while but only for a movie I really really liked and want to know more about and if the person speaking is not just narrating shit on the screen or again, talking about how great everything was. I prefer there to be a moderator who is asking probing questions and/or a historical commentary if it isn't too dry.

I need conflict and interesting anecdotes or I am out.

^Can’t picture anyone here who’d disagree with that. Personal choice is paramount . . . especially if we’re given a choice in the first place, which sure ain’t the case from Shout Factory on this one.

If we truly wanted to only watch EPK garbage nowadays, we could watch the short-form supplements that accompany probably 90% of physical media releases for brand new movies. The only saving grace with those is that they can now pack most of the crap you’re talking about into a six- to ten-minute low-calorie featurette like you’d get on Netflix (and undoubtedly created with that in mind). Because we now know so much about film production thanks to decades of special features, that’s more than enough sometimes for new pictures. And at least it’s there for those who want it.

I likewise rarely make it through many commentaries, new or old, especially the abundance of tracks by the relatively short list of ‘experts’, ‘historians’, and (sigh) podcasters who seemingly turn up nowadays on everything, no matter how undeserving a title may be, and proceed to blow through IMDb filmographies making ‘connections’ and rattling off movies similar to the one we’re watching to imply some sort of kinsmanship. I think several of them are overbooked, frankly, but keep getting gigs because of their ability to do this. Worse are the ones who prattle on about the symbolism in everything on screen (“This mirror represents . . . ” ) or spend two-thirds of a track essentially narrating the action in professorial tones.

But love it or hate it, it’s still something, and more than just a movie slapped on a disc.

As someone who works in a ‘creative’ field, I’ll admit I do enjoy interviews with visual/optical effects artists (physical and digital), make-up effects people, matte painters, production designers (if a film has notable production design), model and prop builders, DPs, costume designers, composers, etc. Not every interview needs to be about conflict and gossip unless a production was rife with it and enough time has passed that participants can speak frankly about it. On many occasions these interviews do turn up surprising little production nuggets, but we can’t possibly assume either way unless we watch. And even if they don’t contain any dirt, for some of us the discussion of the ‘fine arts’ creative processes on older productions can still be rewarding.

Timecop would be a decent picture for material like that, and no one would be obligated to watch it if they didn’t want to.

But thanks to Shout’s inarguably puzzling decision to include absolutely nothing on this high-priced 4K combo edition, we’ll never know either way, will we? Thus it remains a fishy decision, and one they’re rightly being called on. They literally made their name on ‘special editions’ of films just like this one.

Anybody remember years back when Shout announced they were releasing GHOST AND THE DARKNESS, a similarly effects-heavy action thriller from the same era? Folks were stoked at first, and eager to see what special features they’d announce. And then . . . nothing. Only a trailer. This is like that, only without the trailer. Perhaps certain licensing agreements forbid the inclusion of supplemental content?

- - - - - - - - - - -

On a related note, there has been some speculation recently in the Vinegar Syndrome thread that they might be releasing Peter Hyams’ THE RELIC at some point. Compared to TIMECOP it was a box-office flop but it has a sizeable (and I think deserved) cult following, and it certainly pushed the visual effects envelope as much as a mid-range Peter Hyams genre movie could at the time. I’m confident that if the rumour is true VS will probably go overboard in terms of interviews and featurettes, and may even throw in all the vintage EPK crap if they have access to it, just to make it as complete a package as possible. And they probably won’t charge too much more than Shout is asking for their movie-only edition of TIMECOP.

I burned out on audio commentaries a long time ago and it's very rare I listen to one. I made an exception recently for the Arrow release of Barbarella, because the commentary is by Tim Lucas, a critic I respect a great deal. I was a big fan of Video Watchdog magazine back in the day, and he wrote about Barbarella several times in there. It's also such a ridiculous movie, I felt like it would definitely provide lots of fodder to talk about.

Sadly, the commentary is very "academic" and dry. I left it on as background noise while I worked, but didn't find it terribly interesting. However, Lucas turns up again in the bonus features for a two-hour conversation about the film with his friend Steven Bissette, who'd worked with him on Video Watchdog. With the two of them playing off each other, that's a much more lively and interesting discussion.

This is the way I typically listen to commentaries these days if I want to hear one.

I also listened to that Tim Lucas BARBARELLA commentary and found it pretty dry. He’s generally among the more reliable ‘historian’ commentators, but he does miss on occasion, or slides a little outside his wheelhouse. Honestly, most of them do. Just depends on the film, I guess. I find folks like Kay Ellinger, Samm Deighan, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Nathaniel Thompson, Howard Berger et al have similarly grown inconsistent the more gigs they’ve signed up for (which seem to be endless). Sometimes they bat it out of the park on a decent title, other times you can tell there just isn’t much there for them to work with, but the boutique wanted a track anyway. I don’t last long with those ones.

(on a TIMECOP sidenote, that’s the kind of light popcorn action movie where I don’t need a commentary from one of these folks telling me everything I could already glean from IMDb, Wikipedia, and some old Variety/THR articles. Even Hyams could be hit or miss on a track like that.)

Commentaries have always been background noise for me as well. Back when DVDs were new-ish and all the rage, and computers had optical drives (particularly Macs, which I’ve always used), I’d go to work each day with two or three discs that I could load up and just listen to the commentaries (and many of the interviews) without needing to see the video. In most cases I was already well-acquainted with the films, or had at least seen them already if they were new, so I could just hide the player in the background and zone out with headphones while I worked, seeing the movie in my mind’s eye. Once Blu-ray came along, I kinda lost that option on most of my office computers unless there was a DVD in the pack.

I suppose I could use an external DVD drive in an office setting these days, but if I listen to them at all, I mostly just put them on the TV in the background while I’m doing freelance work and/or puttering at home.

I disagree and I think Timecop could use a fun commentary from some guys who know the movie and are fans. Mike Leeder has done some fun commentaries and he did the tracks on Hard Target and Sudden Death with different partners. And he's done a lot of action movie commentaries. I don't need a film scholar to educate me on technical aspects of the movie. Just someone fun and can point out locations, actors I might be familiar with and fun nuggets. Obviously Shout went cheap and chose not to hire anyone to produce extras.

^You’re right, and I’m not saying there shouldn’t be a commentary on it, just that I find these ‘expert’ folks – including Leeder and Venema – can come up dry on occasion. Sometimes, after listening to an entire track, I realize that the amount of ‘practical’ information in it would all fit in a 15 minute sit-down interview with them, or a video essay. (It’s kind of like how, say, Kim Newman sometimes does commentaries, and sometimes does interviews (possibly even self-filmed, as I suspect Stephen Thrower’s often are), and the interviews often give you all the relevant info/trivia/context without the time commitment.

Still, I firmly believe that anything is better than nothing, full stop, even though I’m sometimes critical of what boutiques do provide. Again, at least it’s there for us to choose and/or debate the merits of, etc. The fact that they couldn’t even source a trailer for TIMECOP is just sad, especially when it’s no cheaper than other Shout editions that do come with bonus features. The whole thing just smells fishy to me. Timecop is from Van Damme’s peak ‘studio’ period and yet they couldn’t do anything for it? It must be some contractual thing, surely? Even Van Damme’s last collaboration with Peter Hyams, ENEMIES CLOSER, featured a fluff featurette and a director commentary track, and that was indistinguished DTV fodder. Like I said, I’m not the hugest TIMECOP fan, but I do like it, and it deserves better treatment. Unfortunately the ‘day one-ers’ have probably already justified Shout’s lack of investment.

A few extras would be nice, but it sounds like the 4k's real failure is a sub-par 5.1 soundtrack. As long as the A/V is good, I'm usually good. That's the whole point of the format.

I don't want to necessarily play devil's advocate here, but just provide some additional context. There are plenty (most?) boutique label 4K catalog releases that simply include all of the previously released bonus material from Blu-ray and/or DVD and that's it, and we don't complain about that. By that metric, Timecop is no different, as all previous Blu-ray and DVD (and HD DVD) releases had zero extras on them. Edit: Looks like the DVD had the theatrical trailer on it, though it's not listed on the artwork.

You know it's not financially feasible to produce new extras for most catalog reissues. Would you have been satisfied if they'd scrounged up the trailer and this EPK?

^ Not financially feasible for Shout? Hmm.

And no, the trailer and EPK crap (and the music video) would not have been satisfactory, but at least they would’ve been something (I probably sound like a broken record on that point, but tough )

But to play devils advocate to your devil’s advocate . . .

Kino scrounged up some ok extras for the Van Damme films HARD TARGET and SUDDEN DEATH, neither of which were as successful as TIMECOP at the boxoffice originally (and yes, I know they were successful, but TIMECOP was more so). They also got Hyams to do new commentaries for his films RUNNING SCARED and NARROW MARGIN and added some vintage extras to both, some of which were previously on YouTube. They also got Hyams (on one track) and two stars (on the other) to do commentaries on BUSTING. Hyams has done a number of commentaries over the years on his other films as well, but as I mentioned earlier perhaps he’s too old to bother now, or maybe he had issues with the film (I don’t know).

Furthermore (and this is key) . . .

In skimming through Shout’s other new and upcoming releases, I noticed that the following titles have new special features (sometimes with old ones ported over, sometimes not): PRIMARY COLORS (new commentary, new interviews) ALEXANDER (new commentary, new interviews), ABIGAIL (new commentary, several interviews), BLAXSPLOITATION COLLECTION (feature length documentary) WHAT LIES BENEATH (feature length documentary), FAR AND AWAY (feature length documentary), SCENT OF A WOMAN (two new interviews, one with the reclusive Martin Brest, of all people!), RENFIELD (new documentary), THE HUNT (tons of new stuff), NIGHT OF THE CREEPS (new and old), GHOSTS OF MARS (new and old), SICK (all new), HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP (new commentary), LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER (new commentaries, interview), SHAW CLASSICS 5 and 6 (commentaries, interviews), HUSH (tons of new stuff), THE BOY (ditto), WOLF MAN (new and old), ALFREDO GARCIA (one new interview). MONKEY SHINES (new commentary).

(and before anyone chimes in that many DVD commentators work for free, which on occasion I doubt, so be it; all the more reason to rope one in for TIMECOP)

Basically, there’s ample evidence in Shout’s own listings to confirm that they can very much afford to produce new supplementary material. The fact that TIMECOP – one of JCVD’s biggest box office successes, if not the biggest – has absolutely none is beyond curious. In all fairness, I don’t think I or any others who’ve commented on this are out of line to wonder about it. Shout normally doesn’t do this with pictures of this stature, or even with pictures of lesser stature on occasion (and yes, I know it happens), so one is left to wonder if some sort of contractual obligations forbid them from including anything at all in the package at this moment in time. Surely I’m not the only person on a forum heavily supportive of boutique labels who’s curious about it?

I can’t help but think the acceptance of a barebones release like this is in itself justification of the purchase for a lot of buyers (as in, “Well, I still love the movie I don’t really care about extras so full price on day one for me!”). Fair enough; if the film alone is all that matters, by all means grab it, but maybe consider waiting for the inevitable sale? Also, don’t think for a second that this couldn’t have been a much more comprehensive release, particularly from this label.