THE MOVIE

A young man called Ron Decker (Edward Furlong) is sent to prison for dealing marijuana. He soon has to come to terms with the harsh reality of his new environment and the constant violence that takes place on the inside. His size and age makes him an easy target, and its not long before he attracts the attention of the bad-ass rapists from over in West block.

Thankfully, Ron makes friends with prison veteran, Earl Copan (Willem Dafoe) and his group of prison mates. Earl takes Ron under his wing and offers him protection from the thugs, and things begin to look up. Ron's lawyer is working hard to get Ron out as quickly as possible, but when an inmate called Buck Rowan (Tom Arnold) tries to have his way with Ron in the toilets one day, you get the feeling that Ron won’t be leaving jail anytime soon and will instead follow in Earl’s footsteps. It seems his friendship with Earl could cost him his freedom…

Animal Factory is based on the novel ‘The Animal Factory’ written by Edward Bunker and it is directed by Steve Buscemi, who also acts in the film. Mickey Rourke also appears in a very interesting role. You can barely recognise him as Jan the transsexual. Interestingly, it’s probably one of his best performances I’ve ever seen. Danny Trejo also throws on the prison clothes again (he previously played convict Johnny-23 in Con Air).

THE TRANSFER

Video:

Animal Factory has an acceptable visual transfer. Detail is reasonably good and there were no glaringly obvious problems overall, well apart from the noticeable film grain, which is visible throughout the film. This film grain is most obvious during the well lit scenes shot against the stark white prison walls.

The film is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 widescreen and is 16:9 enhanced. Colours aren’t overly bright, but this is a prison film, muted colours are to be expected. At least the colours appear realistic and skin tones are well saturated. This is only a single layer disc, so there is no layer annoying layer change to be found.

Audio:

This film comes with a Dolby Digital 5.1 channel soundtrack. It is okay, but it’s a very front heavy mix. There are some occasional rear channel effects to be heard such as the background jailhouse banter which features quite a lot during this film. However, other than this, there isn’t a lot on offer, well apart from the thunder in chapter 14 (44.52 minutes) and the following rainfall. The front channels are well separated and dialogue is nice and clear, but low frequency output is kind of subtle. The musical score by John Lurie is also pretty ordinary, although it’s rough nature does suit the film quite well.

THE EXTRAS

This is a very bare bones DVD. The main menu is static with looped audio, and the only extra feature on offer is a Theatrical Trailer, and even this is rather ordinary. It is presented in 1.33:1 full frame (pan and scan) and has a Dolby Digital 2.0 channel soundtrack, which is incredibly flat. Running time is 1.11 minutes. I can’t believe they couldn’t even throw in some cast and crew biographies or filmographies.

SUMMARY

Animal Factory is an interesting prison drama, and there are some good performances to be seen in this film, namely by Willem Dafoe, Tom Arnold and Mickey Rourke, but personally I don’t think this has anything on The Big House, a short film written and directed by our own Rachel Ward. This film has a similar theme and stars Tony Martin, Gary Sweet and Kick Gurry (who you might remember from Looking for Alibrandi). An excellent piece of work which has just as much impact as Animal Factory but achieves it in 1/3 the time. Technically speaking, this DVD has a satisfactory, but there’s not much in the way of extra features.