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Meridian
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Full Moon Features Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (21st October 2025). |
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The Film
 Catherine (Twin Peaks' Sherilyn Fenn) returns to Italy to her family's ancestral castle. Her former nanny Martha (Don't Look Now's Hilary Mason) neglects to inform her that the inherited "responsibilities of the castle" include a family curse. After witnessing an impressive performance by visiting gypsy carnival act "Fauvrey's World of Wonders", she and her American friend Gina (Twice Dead's Charlie Spradling) invite charismatic ringmaster Lawrence (Victor Victoria's Malcolm Jamieson) and his performers to dinner at the castle. The girls are drugged and Lawrence leaves Catherine to his twin brother Oliver (who literally turns into a beast while bedding Catherine) while he has his way with Gina. After the troupe have left, Catherine starts having ghostly visions of a murdered girl in a white dress (whom she used to see when she was a girl). Reluctantly, Martha reveals that the girl was Catherine's aunt and that she was murdered years ago by someone from the visiting "Fauvrey's World of Wonders." Catherine soon fears that history will repeat itself; but she cannot help but feel alternately drawn to and repulsed by Oliver who tells her that he only way to end the curse is for her to kill the beast. Meanwhile, Gina returns to town to uncover the secret of an ancient painted-over canvas that depicts the castle and, possibly, the fate of its current inhabitants. Phil Fondacaro (Troll) and Vernon Dobtcheff (Catacombs) also star. Empire Pictures/Full Moon Entertainment producer Charles Band's fleshier version of "Beauty and the Beast" has gorgeous cinematography by Mac Ahlberg (Hell Night), a beautiful orchestral/electronic score by Pino Donaggio (Carrie), make-up effects by a pre-Bram Stoker's Dracula Greg Cannom, production design by Giovanni Natalucci (Spellcaster), and attractive Italian locations including Band's medieval Castello di Giove also featured in Castle Freak and The Pit and the Pendulum. Fenn, Spradling, Mason, and Jamieson give sensitive performances to rather thinly-etched characters; however, the sight of a naked Fenn doing the "beast with two backs" with a man in a cuddly monster suit (stunt double Alex Daniels, who also donned Cannom make-up for the short-lived TV series Werewolf) is chuckle-inducing, especially since some publicity material poses seem to be patterned after Fenn's previous erotic role in Zalman King's Two Moon Junction. The brief flashes of skin may not be enough for viewers expecting an erotic thriller and the scares are non-existant for horror fans but it has an importance as one of the first Full Moon Pictures productions dating back from the glory days of their lucrative distribution deal with Paramount which also produced the first three Subspecies and Puppet Master films and a handful of other horror and sci-fi entries considerably slicker and better-made than later works under the subsequent Full Moon Pictures and Full Moon Features banners. 
Video
Released direct to video and laserdisc by Paramount in 1991, Meridian's video master eventually found its way to Full Moon on DVD – first as part of the "Australian" Kangaroo Video The Charles Band Collection Volume 1 and then individually – while the PAL video master turned up in the U.K. from 88 Films where the film had previously been released as "Phantoms" on VHS with cuts. Full Moon's HD remaster first turned up on streaming as "The Ravishing" and then on Blu-ray in 2016 from Full Moon in the U.S. and in the U.K. the following year from 88 Films. Full Moon's 2025 Blu-ray appears to be identical to the 2016 edition even though the file dates are all 2025. No new material has been added to the promos or extras so it may have been that the original Blu-ray reproduction master went missing and they had to recreate it. In any case, the 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen transfer while imperfect was otherwise a massive improvement over the earlier editions. The widescreen framing compared to the DVDs revealed that the fullscreen transfer was only partially open-matte, punching in most shots for greater readability in analogue NTSC and PAL while shots featuring credits and the burnt-in subtitles for Italian dialogue exposed the entire frame. The negative utilized for the transfer appears to have had the opticals cut into it as transitions and other opticals look particularly dirty and grainy – likely a mark of the original post-production more so than archival issues – and one shot in all transfers during Spradling's drive up to the castle has been punched in closer mid-shot (possibly to hide a light leak or visible crew, although it might have been a better idea had they enlarged the entirety of the brief shot). Ahlberg makes use of a lot of available light and the exteriors and some interiors augmented by additional electrical lighting fare best in terms of rendering facial details and textures of clothing with a bit more highlight while blacks are always crushed or on the verge of it. A lot of the moodier sequences inside the castle have always been dark – looking only brighter on the old analogue transfers because of the compromised grading with slightly grayish blacks – while scenes shot with heavy red or orange gels as well as more backlighting are more limited in detail (compare this film by Ahlberg to its Full Moon contemporaries shot by Vlad Paunescu or Adolfo Bartoli). The Region B British and all-region German Blu-ray might have better encodes but given the master you are probably better off with whichever edition is most affordable. 
Audio
The original Dolby Stereo-compatible matrixed Ultra Stereo mix is presented here both in lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 and a 5.1 upmix – unlike other Full Moon discs from then and now, this one actually has a setup menu – that overall sounds a bit louder and gives a bit of spread but is nothing like a discreet remix or even a rechanneling of the dialogue, music, and effects stems. Dialogue is always clear and Donaggio's score comes across effectively enough. There are no subtitle options. 
Extras
Extras include the "Videozone: Making of Meridian" (5:23) piece that looks at the make-up effects and shooting locations – including the Park of Monsters in Bomarzo and camcorder interview snippets with cast and crew, the trailer (1:20), and other trailers (some of which use streaming titles rather than the physical media release titles). 
Overall
One of the earliest Full Moon Pictures productions, Meridian plays like a fleshy fusion of "Beauty and the Beast" and Two Moon Junction. 
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