The Corner Penthouse

Last Action Hero arrives on Blu-ray as part of Mill Creek Entertainment's Retro VHS Look Series, part of a growing trend of physical media releases with packaging designed to look like the VHS videocassettes of the 1980s and 1990s. I have reviewed several other titles in the series here on The Corner Penthouse.


Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien) knows the first three Jack Slater movies by heart and the fourth one is just about to be released. With the aid of a magical ticket, Danny gets to know the latest movie really well, literally speaking. While watching the opening action sequence during an advance screening, Danny is transported right into the movie! While on the other side of the silver screen, Danny becomes the sidekick of Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger), the toughest cop on the police force. Complications arise while Jack and Danny are working on the case, when one of the bad guys gets a hold of Danny's magic ticket and escapes out of the movie into the real world. Now Danny and his hero Jack Slater must chase the villain in the real world, a place where the bad guys can actually win!


Last Action Hero (1993) is a movie that was ahead of its time in how it deconstructed the action genre and pointed a satirical lens at Hollywood, three years before Scream did the same for the horror genre. The movie is considered the first box office failure of Schwarzenegger's career, but that's likely due to the audiences of the time not being able to appreciate the self-awareness, self-spoofing nature of the movie. Also, there's was this little film called Jurassic Park, released at the same time, that didn't do the movie any favors, either.


Over time, it would seem that Last Action Hero has come to be appreciated, and has even become an influential piece of cinema. The Disney XD animated series Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero (2014-2017) borrows concepts introduced in Last Action Hero (and Quantum Leap). In the series, the titular part-time hero and his friends leap into the bodies of other entities in other worlds through a movie screen in an old, dilapidated theater. A 2018 Nescafe commercial starring George Clooney features the movie star as a character in a movie who decides to come off the screen in order to get a cup of coffee.


For what it's worth, Last Action Hero has all of the right talent behind it. Director John McTiernan is no stranger to action films, having helmed Predator and Die Hard. Shane Black also wrote Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, and The Predator; while Zak Penn would later write the nostalgia-filled Ready Player One (reviewed by me here), which paid homage to Last Action Hero.


Joining Schwarzenegger on-screen is Charles Dance, later Dean Filmore in Ghostbusters (2016) (reviewed by me here) and Tywin Lannister in Game of Thrones, as scene-stealing, glass-eyed villain Benedict. This is the film that introduced me to Mr. Dance (who looks like Walter Peck's brother here), and I honestly consider him to be the real star of the film. He gets all of the best one-liners, including the declarative, "If God were a villain, he'd be me." Adding in a little eye candy to the proceedings is '90s babe Bridgette Wilson, later an actor star herself in Mortal Kombat. Veteran character actors Frank McRae, Art Carney, F. Murray Abraham, Tom Noonan, Robert Prosky, Anthony Quinn, and Mercedes Ruehl add some extra credibility to the movie. The legendary Ian McKellen even pops up near the end as Death himself. Oh, and be on the look-out for a lot of fun cameo appearances by the likes of Sharon Stone and Robert Patrick (both referencing their most famous movie roles), Angie Everhart, Jim Belushi, Chevy Chase, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Damon Wayans, M.C. Hammer, Tina Turner, Little Richard, Maria Shriver, Leeza Gibbons, Melvin Van Peebles, Danny DeVito as the voice of an animated cat, and even Humphrey Bogart!


If there were any real fault of the movie, it's that it's a little too long for it's own good. The first half of the movie drags on a bit and feels kinda long, but once Slater goes into the real world, it picks up the pace. It's a fun movie with fun obscure one-liners, such as Danny's line - "You know, tar actually sticks to some people." - which has stuck with me these past 25 years. As an example of how much I loved this film when it came out, I also used to own the complete Topps trading card set.


As a little bonus, let's sidestep the review for a minute to do a quick bit of filming location identification. In the movie-within-the-movie, Jack Slater IV, Slater visits his second cousin Frank's house in Los Angeles, only to find Frank inside with a bomb strapped to him. The whole house explodes, sending Slater and the cops flying. The house was at 1103 West Angelina Street, at the corner with Boylston Street, in Los Angeles, California - but that part of the road no longer exists today!


In what is one of the most unique location changes I've ever seen in all of my years doing movie location identifications, most of West Angelina Street and several of the surrounding blocks have been replaced with a couple of baseball fields for the newly-built adjacent Edward R. Roybal Learning Center (formerly known as Belmont Learning Center), and Vista Hermosa Park. The only reason I was able to determine all of this is because seconds later the bad guys drive onto Boylston off of a clearly-marked Colton Street, and this is the only area where these three streets (Angelina, Boylston, and Colton) could have possibly existed together. Also, the skyline in the background matches exactly, and this is the only spot where the white building on the left with the rows of windows that look like black "stripes" could be close enough for that to happen. This is what this shot would look like today, courtesy of Google Maps.


Also, there are a lot of on-purpose "goofs" in the movie. If you frame-advance during the ending explosion, you'll find a body double for Schwarzenegger shooting at an armless, headless dummy.


At a runtime of 2:10:52, Last Action Hero is presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. On the audio side, there is only an English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track. There are no subtitles. For some reason, for such a long film, Mill Creek chose to give it just 4 randomly-placed chapter marks. (The original 1997 Columbia TriStar Home Video DVD had 55 chapters!) As is the case with most Mill Creek Entertainment releases, there are no special features - just like the original videocassette!


The real "bonus feature" here is the vintage-looking VHS-inspired slipsleeve, with faux wear and tear, and fake "rental stickers" on it, while giving the appearance of a videocassette being pulled out from the right side (though the original VHS may have been in a bottom-loading box), complete with tape label side on the right spine. Here's a complete look at this special slipsleeve. Click on it to get a better look.


The front artwork is based on the original U.K. VHS box art (and the original movie poster), as seen below. The back of the slipsleeve seems to be a new creation done in vintage style, and not meant to resemble the original back VHS artwork. (Credit for the original VHS artwork goes to various eBay listings.)


The case artwork underneath is of a modern style, which means that the VHS-style slipsleeve may only be available for a limited time. In the photo below, the slipsleeve cover is on the left and the case artwork underneath is on the right.


I'm quite pleased that Mill Creek decided not to use the horrible U.S. VHS artwork for the slipsleeve and the regular case artwork underneath. As you can see from the image below, it's a half close up of Arnold while he holds a gun next to his face. Mill Creek is using that image for the disc art, but the case art is the awesome movie poster drawing that better reflects what the movie is all about.


Columbia TriStar Home Video reused that same crappy VHS artwork for their 1997 DVD release, which was the fourth DVD I ever purchased (after Beetlejuice, Mars Attacks and Demolition Man). I did a quick comparison between this new Blu-ray and that 21-year-old DVD, and (as expected) the Blu-ray blows that DVD out of the water on nearly every front. The Blu-ray colors and picture quality are far superior. The DVD is a flipper disc with widescreen on one side and a heavily-cropped 4:3 pan-and-scan version on the other. Thankfully, that kind of nonsense is no longer necessary for Blu-ray. In regards to the English language, the DVD has a 2.0 audio track that isn't on the Blu-ray, but with both discs containing a 5.1 mix, there's no need for the stereo, so you're not missing anything. The DVD has no English subtitles, just like the Blu-ray, so nothing is lost there, either. I have no need for foreign languages on English-language films, so I don't find it to be an issue that the DVD has Spanish, and French audio, and Spanish and Korean subtitles, which aren't on the English-only Blu-ray. Being that the DVD was one of the first released by the company, there are no special features, and a really basic generic menu. The DVD does have a chapter list booklet in the case with a few movie photos on it, which is nice, but not important. As long as you don't need the foreign subs and audio, there's nothing of substance missing from the Blu-ray that's on the DVD. I'm very happy to upgrade that old DVD to this improved Blu-ray. It's well-worth owning on Blu-ray.


If you're not already aware of Mill Creek Entertainment, they are a budget company, which results in their products having a lower cost than the big studios. Right now, Last Action Hero is listed on Amazon for a mere $7.50. The movie was previously released on Blu-ray in 2010 by Sony. If you absolutely need English subtitles, or foreign language audio/subtitles, then you'll have to buy that release, which features that crappy old VHS box art with Arnold's face. You'll miss out on the cool VHS slipsleeve and the poster artwork on the cover, of course.


As of the time of this writing, the Retro VHS Look Series includes the following Blu-ray releases.



Images used come from the Internet Movie Database gallery of the film, as well as my gallery of framegrabs. The Blu-ray has been provided by Mill Creek Entertainment for review on this site.