Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on January 31, 2007, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
It’s not often that the most revealing part of a DVD’s supplemental section isn’t the audio commentary or behind-the-scenes footage, but the blooper reel. Yet that’s the case with the Starz/Anchor Bay disc of Devil’s Den, in which the collection of outtakes, with the actors becoming visibly frustrated over flubbed lines and the offscreen director evidently trying to hurry things along, bespeaks a production with at least a fairly high stress level. Of course, it could be that those moments just captured rare moments of anxiety on an otherwise untroubled project—but they provide rare bits of interest amidst a movie and a supplemental package that lack much in the way of excitement.
On the other hand, something about this project clearly didn’t sit well with director Jeff Burr, whose moniker is visible on the slates in the bloopers section but not on the feature itself (where it’s replaced by the pseudonym “Andrew Quint”), and who is never mentioned by name by his collaborators in the extras. It might have something to do with the fact that the true “auteur” behind Devil’s Den was writer/producer/2nd unit director Mitch Gould, whose background is in stuntwork and who says on the disc that he wrote this script during downtime on shoots he was working on in that capacity. Though it doesn’t appear on his résumé, you could be forgiven for thinking that one of those films was From Dusk Till Dawn, as Devil’s Den owes a large debt to that movie’s trapped-in-an-isolated-strip-club-of-death scenario.
Gould’s script tries to fudge that issue by having creature hunter Leonard (Ken Foree) make a point that the club’s sexy/vicious denizens aren’t vampires, as in Dusk, but “ghouls,” though their appearances and m.o. are pretty much the same. And on the commentary, Gould refers to “strip-club vampire movies” as if he’s taking part in a longstanding tradition rather than echoing a particular genre favorite. But the real difference between Devil’s Den and Dusk is that instead of Quentin Tarantino’s crackling dialogue, the spaces in between vamp…sorry, ghoul attacks are filled with time-killing exchanges in which the characters debate what to do and why they should do it and what they shouldn’t do and why they shouldn’t do it, plus assorted wisenheimer lines and pop-culture references that, an odd but amusing Zatoichi homage aside, elicit more groans than laughs.
The humans battling to stay alive also include a tough gal named Caitlin (Kelly Hu) and wannabe Spanish Fly dealer Quinn (Devon Sawa, unrecognizable from his Final Destination days with bleached-blond hair and a few extra pounds). Her reserved, all-business oil and his joke-cracking water are clearly destined to mix by the movie’s end, but the latecoming revelation of a connection they share, and the dialogue that follows it, may well have your eyes rolling right out of your head. Gould’s martial arts and swordplay staging is technically well-done but overly familiar, and the final reels attempt a weighty character dilemma that the previously camp-infused storyline can’t support.
The disc’s 1.78:1 transfer is crisp and colorful enough, though the characters’ faces distractingly disappear into shadow at numerous points in the movie. A making-of featurette is full of the usual mutual praise, but contains enough behind-the-scenes footage of makeup FX creation and fight choreography to be lively enough. Not so the commentary, however—though it features the trio of Gould, his fellow producer John Duffy and composer Jon Lee, it’s marked by frequent gaps of silence right from the start and consists mostly of generic observations about how hard everyone worked, and reminiscences from the set that just aren’t unique enough to hold the interest. About the only thing this writer really learned from the track is that actors and stuntmen get paid extra for those days when smoke is used on the set.
