As the Vikings would say: “Dude! What the fuck?”
Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery Of America makes its way to DVD (unfortunately) from Magnet Releasing and Magnolia Home Entertainment, who probably should have accidentally dropped this one behind the filing cabinet. Nevertheless, it’s here, in all of its homemade camcorder glory. The image has been matted to a 2.35:1 ratio, so there is considerable information loss at the top and bottom of the screen — but it’s of no consequence seeing as how the whole picture is shaky anyway.
The Norse 5.1 soundtrack fares better with its music more than anything, while the awkwardly dubbed dialogue comes through sounding as canned as can be.
Burned-in English subtitles translate the ridiculous dialogue, adding to the nausea. Finally, in what I can only assume to be an attempt to disorient and disillusion our Latin American brothers and sisters, Spanish subtitles are included.
Why is it the really, really dumb films always seem to have more special features than the worthwhile ones? Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery Of America contains a bit of bonus material, but frankly, the movie is so fucking bad that I really don’t even care. But, for the record, there are some deleted scenes, featurettes, and trailers. Not much, really, but still enough to warrant such additions as an act of war against thinking people everywhere.
Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery Of America could have been a lot more. It should be more. Hopefully, someday, somebody with barely an inkling of talent will film their own version — and it will be ten times better than this. But, in the meantime, you can thrill to a couple of unkempt Renaissance Fair rejects chopping down trees (um, did the Department of Forestry know about this?), killing chickens with their bare hands, and even defecating on camera.
Does a bear shit in the woods? Who knows — but Barry sure as hell does!
Absolute rubbish.





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