Dylan Dog: Dead of Night [Blu-ray]

Hampered by budgetary constraints, inconsistent tone and a plot less interesting than its characters and the world they populate, Dylan Dog: Dead of Night would work better as a television pilot than as a feature film. Essentially, this is a variation of the buddy cop formula, by way of winking genre satire. Dylan Dog (Brandon Routh, the George Lazenby of the Superman franchise) is a private investigator that specializes in the supernatural: vampires, werewolves, and zombies –classic corporeal creatures of the night. Between grieving for his murdered lover and quipping his way out of sticky situations, Dylan takes on these unusual cases alongside his buddy Marcus (Sam Huntington). Dylan's newest investigation – of a woman whose monster-hunter father was murdered – involves a power struggle between werewolves and vampires (because that isn't a tired conflict at all…), with both sides searching for an obscure artefact that will unleash an apocalyptic big bad something. The plot could be used just as effectively as an Underworld instalment, a follow up to the lacklustre Constantine, or any number of B-list monster-clash flicks. It's the humour with which the undead experience is depicted that gives Dylan Dog a little life of its own. As one of the characters adjusts to life as a zombie, we're treated to some clever humanization of a creature that's seen many popular incarnations; few of them brainy, except in their diets. They have support groups and replacement part shops, day jobs and secret meal codes at fast food joints. Their brains are fully functional (at least at first) their bodies are just slowly decaying and they feel no pain – kind of like extreme leprosy. That's part of the rich environment that keeps the film from collapsing under its crappy creature suits and a few egregious digressions from its soft-boiled noir-camp that bloats the run-time. Sly performances by Brandon Routh and Sam Huntington, along with decent support by Taye Diggs and Peter Stormare also help keep things going. Maybe in a serialized format, this would have found its footing, but as a feature, Dylan Dog fumbles hard enough that it was dumped to video one-hundred percent feature-free.