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Lady Death: The Motion Picture -ADV Films (2004)
Summary Hope springs eternal death. My Thoughts I have never read a Lady Death comic. I am only familiar with the character from the monthly comic shop Previews catalog and Moore’s line of action figures. I decided to check out the DVD in hopes of becoming a little more familiar with the story of the pale-skinned and big-breasted Lady Death. Lady Death is about a religious, innocent Swedish girl named Hope whose lover Niccolo, is taken away and eventually killed by her father. To make things worse, she finds out that her father is really the demon Lucifer. The townspeople find out and burn her as a witch. As it's seemingly the only way for Hope to save herself and possibly Niccolo, she renounces her faith before she dies and is taken to Hell. She finds her lover’s soul trapped by Lucifer, but is unable to do anything about it . She goes into hiding where she finds an ally named Cremator. Cremator trains her for the final battle with Lucifer so she can save the soul of her mother and her lover. The movie starts off alright with Hope losing her lover, father, and her faith but the whole story seems to be missing a middle. Hope gets sent to Hell, prepares for the final battle, and then the final battle happens. Innocent Hope seems to instantly turn into Lady Death through a training fight scene with Cremator. It’s only through the commentary track that you learn this scene is supposed to represent seven years of training. A little something like a “Seven years later” subtitle would have helped us realize this and taken away from the instant transformation. Although, good character development would also help. The animation is pretty bad and is just some of the worst I’ve seen (the Adult Swim shows are intentionally bad), and I watch a lot of animated stuff. For some reason the character lines get very jagged at times. Either the drawings were drawn too small, or the camera was zoomed in too much. Whatever the case, it becomes distracting when a naturally curved face looks like the side of a mountain. From the pictures I’ve seen, the movie Lady Death seems nearly identical to her comic image. She has an established look that needed to be retained. The character of Lucifer, which you would think as a fearsome, powerful figure, looks a bit too cartoony for this bloody, mature story. The voice acting is excellent and is really the best thing about the film. It’s just too bad the rest of the movie doesn’t match its quality. I was very disappointed with Lady Death. I would probably have been better off reading one of the comics than watching this. If you are already a Lady Death fan and need to see it, rent it. Extras The commentary track makes me feel bad for director Andrew Orjuela because you find out how long it took to make this movie, which was over three years. If something takes that long it should be of much greater quality. He sounds so proud and excited about the movie, but it really isn’t that good. “Animating Death” is a featurette of interviews with the Korean animators. It’s a decent watch, but nothing that spectacular. “Visions of Hell” is no more than an art gallery. Here you somewhat see the evolution of backgrounds and characters. Score: Film: 4.5 Extras: 5.0 Edition: 5.0 -Shawn
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