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Bad Channels
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (24th September 2025). |
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The Film
 When Pahoota's AM radio station KDUL discovers that they can transmit nationwide at 666 MHz, station owner Vernon Locknut (The Shadow's Aaron Lustig) ditches the "All Polka" format in favor of hiring rock DJ Dan O'Dare (Bad Lieutenant's Paul Hipp), recently fined by the FCC for the on-air broadcast of his sexual encounter with another radio talent. Stuck covering the fluff assignment is Cable World News reporter Lisa Cummings (Dead Heat's Martha Quinn) who finds her own citing and other local reports of a UFO more interesting and runs off with the sheriff (Victor Rogers) to investigate a report. The reports turn out to be true as an alien and his robot partner take over the station with DJ Dan and his engineer Corky (John Carpenter's Vampires' Michael Huddleston) huddling in the control booth as the alien beams hallucinatory images of a rock band (in extended musical numbers) to capture hot women. As DJ Dan tries to warn the public, the sheriff and the media believe it is all a publicity stunt (or a hostage situation) as the alien continues to collect more rockin' babes (including Meridian's Charlie Spradling as diner waitress "Cookie"). Editor-turned-director Ted Nicolaou's Bad Channels for Charles Band's Full Moon Entertainment feels more like extended music videos for Fair Game, D.M.T., and Sykotik Sinfoney a la Albert Pyun's Vicious Lips for Band's Empire Pictures - than one of the studio's usual monster efforts. Although Nicolaou is better known for Full Moon's Subspecies franchise, the film's comic and media satirical elements have more in common with TerrorVision for Empire, especially in being more dependent on the cast of character actors than necessarily the Criswell Productions (Creepozoids) creature effects or the visual effects to carry the film. Hipp, Quinn, and lantern-jawed Rogers simply barrel along in their roles throughout the expository lulls and the music videos are catchy as photographed by Adolfo Bartoli (Netherworld), but this slight film is perhaps best enjoyed as a weekend rental than as a Full Moon sci-fi creature flick. Blue Öyster Cult provides the film's original score which is understated but occasionally effective including a moody title theme. Dolls' Ian Patrick Williams turns up as the town doctor. 
Video
Bad Channels went straight to VHS and laserdisc in 1992 from Paramount and was relatively late in coming to DVD originally as part of Full Moon's 2007 Full Moon Classics: Volume One followed by a single-disc release in 2012, both of which were derived from the existing NTSC tape master (as was the 88 Films British DVD). Earlier this year, Full Moon released the film on Blu-ray and 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen Blu-ray comes from the same remaster. The new transfer easily blows the DVD, VHS, and laserdisc releases out of the water from the start with radioactive green title lettering on black, well-lit studio interior and night exterior sequences (sometimes covering a large area), the addition of smoke and back-lighting to the music video sequences, and the color green creeping into and gradually overwhelming the production design in some scenes from décor accents and gel lighting to sentient fungus. The creature effects hold up with the HD resolution from the alien's space mask which looks like a meteorite with a glass window to its animatronic form underneath the suit. Visual effects are old school and less ambitious than the David Allen Productions work on other Full Moon titles, but this is perhaps for the best given the CGI that Full Moon would utilize in some of their later films. 
Audio
Unlike the U.S. release, the Ultra Stereo mix is presented here in uncompressed LPCM 2.0 along with the 5.1 upmix here in lossless DTS-HD Master Audio, and both options are accessible via set-up menu along with SDH subtitles. The discreet surround gives some spread to the score and a few directional effects which only really gets gimmicky during the alien scenes while an authentic 5.1 mix like the ones Full Moon did on some titles once they went fully-digital in post-production a few years later might have given the musical numbers a bit more umph. 
Extras
Extras encompass the Full Moon Blu-ray package and expand upon it. First up is the recent audio commentary by director Ted Nicolaou who reveals that Band had brought the project to him right after Terrorvision and he resisted it multiple times because he wanted to do something different, only agreeing to it after Subspecies ended his development hell and he was eager to follow it up quickly. He brought in Jack Canson – writing for non-union projects like this and Seedpeople under the name "Jackson Barr" – who was a friend from his days in Texas and had already done rewrites on Subspecies in addition to having insider knowledge of small-town radio and TV stations along production designer Cecily Hughes and some other crew he worked with recently in Santa Fe on an episode of the Italian-produced/U.S.-lensed Terence Hill Spaghetti Western television minseries Lucky Luke. He discusses the film's casting coups – including Quinn who was one of the original MTV Vjs, Hipp who had played Buddy Holly on Broadway and London's West End, and Rogers who was not an actor but an investor who was surprisingly good in his role – the film's simplistic visual effects (after the budget was spent mostly on the practical effects), the locations around Los Angeles, getting stoned and scouting bands with Full Moon's music supervisor Pat Siciliano (who brought in Blue Öyster Cult during post-production for the score), and shooting the music video sequences. New to the 88 Films edition is an audio commentary by film journalists Dave Wain and Matty Budrewicz which is something of a companion piece to their commentaries on 88 Films' releases of Seedpeople and Shadowzone in giving Nicolaou the same treatment as Peter Manoogian and J.S. Cardone, discussing his largely unheralded role in helping shape both Empire Pictures and Full Moon, helming the second-tier Terrorvision for the former and being fully responsible for the Subspecies franchise for the latter as well as having worked as an editor with Band pre-Empire Pictures. The pair also discuss Nicolaou's Texas film education and how he became involved with Band, his intended directorial debut on The Concrete Jungle and how he ended up persuading Band to let him director a segment for The Dungeonmaster, an anthology film that functioned as a sort of proving ground for others who would subsequently direct features for Empire. They presumably recorded the track without access to the Nicolaou commentary since they observe that the director has rarely spoken about Bad Channels.  "The Making of Bad Channels" (11:33) is a promotional featurette that was later slighlty re-edited into the VideoZone featurette included after the film on VHS and laserdisc and as a bonus feature on the DVDs. It features Quinn, Hipp, Lustig, and Nicolaou joking around and some behind the scenes looks at the effects and music video. 88 Films has also included the re-edited VideoZone making-of (11:26). Also ported from the Full Moon edition is "Ted Talk Bad Channels" (27:45) which is a more focused, sometimes more-detailed version of the commentary was he recalls how reviled his debut Terrorvision had been and going back to editing while trying to get other scripts through development hell, the casting which included some of his other Austin, Texas acquaintances like Sonny Carl Davis who appeared in a number of other Full Moon productions, the film's effects work with an emphasis on staging the film's visual effects in-camera and working with cinematographer Bartoli. New to the 88 Films release is an archival interview with director Ted Nicolaou (19:21), a technically rough on-set interview from which EPK clips were meant to be extracted. Plenty of set noise interrupts the discussion and it is obvious that only Nicolaou was meant to be heard in the final product as he is mic'd up while the off-camera interviewer is not. Subjects include finding the bands with Siciliano and how the location and studio work compared to his previous experience in Romania on Subspecies. Also included is the original video trailer (1:42) and an alternate rare trailer (2:15). 
Packaging
The first pressing includes a rigid slipcover with new artwork.
Overall
An extended series of music videos surrounded by an intergalactic creature feature, Bad Channels in HD is still what it was upon release: a Saturday night video rental.
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