The Kindred

The Kindred (1987), directed by Jeffrey Obrow & Stephen Carpenter, uncut Synapse 4k remaster, encoded in 10 bit HEVC with AAC sound, including 5.1 remaster, original theatrical dual mono, commentary track, and English subtitles.

IMDb : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091343

Video encoded in two-pass 13.0 Mbps x265 10bit with the veryslow preset for archive quality image. Audio encoded separately with Apple AAC for the highest-quality AAC sound available.

Text subtitles converted to SRT.

Note : Here's an oddball mix of body horror with the gothic, featuring dark family secrets and an old mansion as well as genetic experiments, tentacle monsters, and oh, so much goop. You have no idea how much goop. It's like Gwyneth Palthrow was selling vagina candles up in this joint. There's so much slime, it's as if this was produced by 90s Nickolodeon. You get the idea. It even runs off of Rod Steiger's hat like he's out on a rainy day at one point. It also has a surprisingly solid cast, which apart from Steiger includes Amanda Pays, Talia Balsam, Kim Hunter, and Peter Frechette, while the lead is relative unknown David Allen Brooks. It's not terribly coherent, but it's fun, and the ending is satisfyingly bonkers.

Scientist Amanda Hollins is dying, and her deathbed request of her also-scientist son John is that he destroy her lab notes. At her funeral, John runs into Melissa, who claims to be his mother's greatest fan, and they go to Amanda's house along with some others, where they find her last experiment, a mutated tentacle monster that's John's brother, somehow. But another scientist, Dr. Lloyd, is also interested in the dead woman's research, and it all comes to a sticky, goopy end one rainy night.

This 4k remaster es quite nice, but very grainy, so I applied a conservative degrain. Sharpness is good, color is punchy and saturated, generally very good, too bad it's 16:9 full frame, but it's a minor niggle. 5.1 remaster sounds good, although I think I prefer the original dual mono, commentary track is worth listening to.

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