Dom Robinson reviews
WWF Summerslam 1999
An Out of Body Experience
Distributed by
Silver Vision
- Cert:
- Cat.no: WWF 1003
- Running time: 180 minutes
- Year: 1999
- Pressing: 2000
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 9
- Sound: Dolby Surround (Dolby Digital 2.0)
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: None
- Fullscreen: 4:3
- 16:9-Enhanced: No
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £17.99
- Extras : Scene index, What's the Story, Talkin' the Talk, Out of Body,
Animated Menus
WWF Summerslam 1999
captures all the action from last year's WWF showpiece. The summer
extravaganza was made even more dramatic by the presence of Minnesota Governor
and World Wrestling Federation legend, Jesse "The Body" Ventura as the
special referee of the main event, the titanic "Triple Threat Match" for the
Federation Championship between Stone Cold Steve Austin, Triple H and
Mankind.
Also featured is the "Love Her or Leave Her" Greenwich Street Fight between
Shane McMahon and Test. On the line: Test's marital
future with Shane's only sister, Stephanie.
Amazing highlights from SUMMERSLAM '99 also include the battle for the
Hardcore Championship title between the BigBoss Man and Al Snow,
the Lion's Den Weapons Match between Ken Shamrock and Steve Blackman,
and a "Kiss My Ass" Match between the Rock and Mr. Ass.
On the female front, there is the Women's Championship Match between Ivory
and Tory.
For the uninitiated, WWF (World Wrestling Foundation) is the sport that
is sometimes featured on Channel 4 on a Sunday afternoon while Channel 5
opt for WCW each Friday evening. To me personally, I don't know a great deal
about the difference as, to me, they both seem like an excuse for actors
to throw each other about a lot and appear to cause a great deal of pain
as a result either with their fists, feet or any household implement they
can get their hands on.
Presented in a 4:3 ratio, the print is free of artifacts and while there are
some clips used that aren't all that they could be, the majority of what's on
view, including the interviews, looks like an excellent NTSC-to-PAL conversion,
much more so than what you'd expect in the ring on TV. I wasn't able to
determine the average bitrate.
The sound, presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Surround), fills the round
with sound, but if you watch the whole thing in one go, it might hurt your
ears :)
Extras :
Chapters :
There are just 9 chapters over the main 134-minute feature (the rest of the time
is made up with the extras). It's technically not enough - I prefer one chapter
per five minutes at least - but they're just used here to separate the different
fights.
Languages and Subtitles :
Shouted English in vanilla surround sound, but no subtitles.
And there's more... :
What's the Story takes you behind the scenes for five of the fights seeing
the stars talk big, showing clips of previous fights and dishing out threats to
kick each other's ass once again.
Talkin' the Talk sees "Triple Threat Match" contestants Stone Cold
Steve Austin, Triple H and Mankind have their say. The menu states that
you can change between them with the audio button, but that didn't work and this
section just appears to be split into the three chapters.
Finally, Out of Body is an exclusive look at Jesse Ventura, this
event's special referee.
Menu :
Most of the menus feature animation in the form of clips from the show, all
with music.
Overall, this is certainly worth a look for WWF fans and represents better
value than the previous DVD for The Rock as this one lasts three hours
including the extras.
The following is a list of all the The WWE/WWF DVDs and games review online to date :
2002 WWE Raw
2000
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
