If you ever wanted to see Greek myths adapted into a more modern multimedia world, you’ve come to the right place! 1990’s Shredder Orpheus updates the story of Orpheus and and Eurydice to the 20th century.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world, Hades (Gian-Carlo Scandiuzzi) and Persephone (Vera McCaughan) run the Euthanasia Broadcast Network (EBN). They transmit programming that steals the souls of viewers.

In need of new material, Hades sends his minions to kidnap beautiful Eurydice (Megan Murphy) at her wedding to rocker/skateboarder Orpheus (Robert McGinley). This means Orpheus needs to fight to save his lover – and the world.

With Shredder, we find a movie written by McGinley, directed by McGinley, and starring McGinley. Does the end product justify itself as anything more than the vanity project that triple-billing implies?

Umm… maybe? I’ll give McGinley this: he created a movie with some ambition and not just an ego trip. We get a potentially clever futuristic take on the Greek legend.

However, that doesn’t make Shredder a good film, or one that ever makes a whole lot of sense. While I respect that McGinley tries to work wonders with a budget I will assume fell somewhere around $27, the end product never becomes especially engaging.

Much of that comes from the less than tight storytelling. Shredder’s attempts to place the Orpheus legend in a futuristic fantasy setting offers an intriguing notion, but the movie uses these choices more for random skateboarding shots and the like.

Although Shredder comes with a fairly basic plot, the film muddies the waters too much, partly because the movie feels like McGinley’s audition reel. The view of Shredder as vanity project comes into play here, mainly because it gives off the vibe that McGinley wanted to pack in as much as he could to show off his cinematic versatility.

This means a slew of influences in search of a coherent narrative. In addition to the story’s Greek roots, it can seem like it becomes Mad Max meets Repo Man meets Labyrinth.

As such, the end product feels like a mishmash, and it comes with pointless detours to “showcase” musical acts or other performances. None of these seem necessary in the overall arc and they seem like attempts both to fill space and also to allow McGinley to portray different styles.

The actors fare about as one might expect. No one puts out an embarrassing performance, but no one stands out as impressive either.

As such, we wind up with amateurish work but nothing horrifying. This matches the movie’s overall impression as the low-budget indie offering it is.

None of this makes Shredder an unwatchable movie, and you can find plenty of flicks from this era that fare much worse, especially given this one’s DIY roots. And as noted, we do get a level of ambition that allows some spark to emerge.

That said, I can’t find much to recommend here beyond Shredder as a curiosity. Shot in Seattle on the verge of the Grunge era, it offers a moderately intriguing viewing and that’s about it.

Shredder Orpheus appears in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. According to the disc’s liner notes, the image was “preserved from a 35mm blowup print created from the original 16mm, Beta SP and 1” tape master elements”.

Should one expect attractive visuals from a 33-year-old no-budget indie scanned from that source? No, one shouldn’t.

Sharpness became a persistent issue. Not a single shot offered better than VHS-level delineation, and most of the film seemed soft and mushy.

Jagged edges and moiré effects occurred but remained minor. No edge haloes appeared, and print flaws felt modest. Occasional specks popped up, but these didn’t become a persistent distraction. Black levels were inky and muddy, and shadow detail generally looked a little thick, as low-light situations could be difficult to discern. Objectively, this became a genuinely ugly image that I didn’t feel merited anything above a “D+”, but I admit this might be the best the movie can look.

On the other hand, the movie’s DTS-HD MA monaural soundtrack held up surprisingly nicely. While the audio didn’t transcend its origins and era, it still seemed more than satisfactory.

Speech felt moderately natural and lacked edginess. A little sibilance cropped up at times, but the lines always stayed intelligible and usually appeared well-depicted.

Effects lacked much range and occasionally came with a little distortion, but they fared fine overall. Music fared best, as both songs and score offered pretty positive range. Again, nothing here impressed, but the audio still seemed perfectly suitable for the project.

As we shift to extras, we find an audio commentary from writer/director/actor Robert McGinley and AGFA’s Bret Berg. Both sit together for this running, screen-specific look at the project’s development and influences, story/characters and the adaptation of myth, cast and performances, music, sets and locations, themes, and the film’s release.

Berg acts as a good facilitator and brings out useful information from McGinley. This means we find a largely engaging and insightful view of the production.

A Vintage Video Promo runs six minutes, 20 seconds. Apparently Bombshelter Videos was a local Seattle cable show that focused on that area’s rock acts in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

This segment promotes Shredder as well as other products and offers a minor slice of the era’s indie media. It’s too bad we don’t find a full episode, and much of “Promo” just shows clips from Shredder.

Next comes a Behind the Scenes Photo Gallery with 65 stills in a running montage. This turns into a decent compilation.

In addition to the movie’s trailer, we get a VHS version of Shredder. With a running time of 1:28:03, it lasts 20 seconds shorter than the main cut on this disc.

What difference does that 20 seconds make? I have no idea, as this marginal change in length makes it difficult to spy alterations. I wanted to mention this variation, though.

In a weird choice, the VHS edition comes with a 1.66:1 ratio, which doesn’t make sense for a circa 1990 videotape. Did the film run 1.66:1 on VHS? Perhaps, but I seriously doubt it.

Unsurprisingly, the VHS version looks terrible, but given that the feature presentation comes with ugly visuals, this seems like less of an issue than otherwise might become the case.

Finally, the set concludes with a booklet that includes a David J. Moore interview with McGinley, an essay by Amy Rose, photos and archival materials. It ends the package well.

As an alternative take on a famous myth, Shredder Orpheus comes with some intriguing elements. However, these fail to come together in a package coherent enough to make the movie work. The Blu-ray delivers ugly – though representative – visuals along with mediocre audio and a few bonus features. The movie turns into an ambitious effort that only sporadically succeeds.