Kirby Sweetman (Norman Reedus of The Boondock Saints) is an ex heroin junkie who lost his girlfriend to the perils of smack. Before she went off into the great beyond, however, she convinced her father to loan Kirby the money to buy an old theater and fix it up. Now that she's passed, dad (Gary Hetherington) wants his money – unfortunately, Kirby's theater is hardly raking in the cash hand over fist as it specializes in obscure genre fare.

In order to make some real money, Kirby works part time as a sort of 'film detective' in that he's paid very well by private collectors to hunt down and acquire the rarest of rare films. He's quite good at it and as such he has a strong enough reputation that the mysterious Mr. Ballinger (Udo Kier of Blood For Dracula) hires him to track down a film that was only ever shown once entitled L'Absolute Fin Du Monde. Why was it only shown once? Because the crowd that was at the festival for the screening erupted into violent madness, people were killed, and the film was yanked. No one seems to know very much about the movie or the man who made it, but Ballinger offers to pay Kirby two hundred thousand dollars plus expenses if he can make it happen and he also goes to the point of proving, by way of an angel who is held captive in his inner chamber, that the film still exists – you see, the movie contains the ultimate act of blasphemy, which this angel played a part in, and as such he's part of the film itself so if the film had been destroyed, this angel would have gone with it.

Through some clever detective work and following some strange leads around France, Kirby tracks down the filmmaker's widow who allows him access to their apartment where she talks about the film. Will he unleash the power of the movie on an unsuspecting public or will he return it to Ballinger and take the cash? Does the movie really hold the violent power that everyone who has seen it attests to or is it all just a myth?

Like a few of the other entries in the series, character development gets the shaft in favor of turn around time in that at ninety minutes this probably would have worked better as it would have been more fleshed out - at fifty-five, it feels rushed. A lot of what Carpenter does here works really well, however. Udo Kier's character, despite lacking in motivation, is an interesting one and his obsession does lend some creepiness to the finale. Norman Reedus is alright in the lead, he's believable enough as a movie geek who has made a career out of his hobby and even if the subplot with his belated girlfriend feels tacked on, his conflict with her father feels genuine enough.

The script toys around with some interesting ideas, with the power of film as a medium and with the intent of the filmmaker being a very powerful portion of the way that the film is perceived. At one point the director of the movie in question is referred to not as a filmmaker but as a terrorist, as his intent was to cause the chaos that erupted out of the screening. Ironic then that his film became, according to his wife, his own undoing.

Lest it all sound rather pretentious and surreal (and at times it is), Carpenter doesn't stray too far from the genre he's known for. We're very much grounded in 'the horror movie' with this entry in the series, the finale reminds us of that even if we don't want it to. Cigarette Burns isn't a perfect experiment but it is a really interesting and, more often than not, quite effective one.

Video:

The 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer presents the movie in its original aspect ratio and for the most part, the image looks very good. There is some edge enhancement present in a few scenes as well as some shimmering and aliasing in spots but there's very little to complain about otherwise. Black levels are strong and deep, there are no issues at all with print damage, dirt or debris on the picture and there's a very pleasing level of both foreground and background detail present throughout the picture. Skin tones look lifelike and natural and the reds are well defined without bleeding through.