DVD Reviews

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night – DVD Review

By Jeff Swindoll Sep 1, 2011, 0:29 GMT

The adventures of supernatural private eye dylan dog who seeks out the monsters of the louisiana bayou in his signature red shirt black jacket and blue jeans. ...more

The adventure of the popular supernatural Italian comic hero tries to make a film franchise for a second time… and fails.  The result is rather bland and that’s odd considering its more colorful sounding source material which is still being published in Italy. 

Dylan Dog (Brandon Routh) is a private investigator doing the usual jobs of being a P.I.  However, he has a more colorful past since he had been involved in many supernatural relations until a tragedy made him turn his back on the unnatural world. 

That is until Elizabeth (Anita Briem) shows up and all that changes.  His partner Marcus (Sam Huntington) is killed but that can’t keep a good man down as he is soon up and about again as a zombie.  Now Dylan has to battle the vampire Vargas (Taye Diggs), werewolves, and for a powerful weapon that could destroy humanity as we know it.   

I don’t know if we’ll ever find out if the third time is the charm, but Dylan Dog’s universe was attempted to be brought to the big screen with Cemetery Man (Dellamorte Dellamore) starring Rupert Everett as a character from the comic (not Dylan Dog FYI).  This time around the big dog is the focus of the feature but several things sink the production.

The screenwriters seemed to be focused on keeping audiences up to speed or introduced to the characters.  Therefore the film has exposition galore and some of it is horribly written or at least sounds terrible coming out of the actors. 

The result bears little resemblance to the comic that inspired it (from the sound of it since I’m not a reader) and I’d imagine fans will cry foul. 

Some of the plot points even seem to bleed heavily from a certain New Orleans based vampire show, but don’t expect it to help.  Dylan Dog was a massive flop.  Unfortunately, Routh never makes us care about the character since he is lacking charisma.  It doesn’t help that his sidekick annoys with his “I don’t want to be a zombie” shtick. 

Dylan Dog is presented in widescreen (2.35:1) and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions.  There are no special features owing to the box office bomb that the film was.

Dylan Dog doesn’t catch fire and might cause outfight vitriol from fans of the original.  The film landed with a thud at the box office and doesn’t do much better on home video. 

For this type of hardboiled, supernatural private dick with supernatural overtones I’d suggest you dig up the Fred Ward starring HBO flick Cast a Deadly Spell.  It was at least fun. 

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