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Surviving History
A&E Video // Unrated // November 18, 2008
List Price: $29.95 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
Surviving History, a mini-series that aired on the History Channel in mid-2008, takes you into the grueling, practical, and compelling expanses of pedestrian engineering throughout the ages. Primarily, this means the team at renowned prop house ScareFactory -- an eccentric crew of artists, welders, and other fabricators with a penchant for the gothic and ghastly -- recreated some of history's most chill-inducing torture devices, many that have little-to-no recorded usage. Working as a blend between playful engineering and respect for the brutality of the items they build, this series keeps a strong balance between condensed, insightful history and intrigue in their items' re-creation.
Shot in Columbus, Ohio at their workspace, ScareFactory have been taken to task by assembling a gamut of historical relics and tools, ranging from crossbows and early vending machines to some of the most haunting devices of lore -- like the rack and the gibbet, essentially an early guillotine. Instead of building inoperative scaled replicas, however, the team strives to create fully-functioning devices that, in a nutshell, achieve the same brutal results as their historical counterparts. Morbidity becomes a strong element while soaking in Surviving History, mainly because appreciating the structure and assembly of these horrendous devices requires a certain grasp on their effects. But ScareFactory is up to the challenge, showing a group of guys that can both respect the power behind these devices and keep the series' rhythm lighthearted in the process.
       | Surviving History tries to cram as much material as it can within a 45-minute span; instead of concentrating on one -- maybe two -- devices at a time, they assemble at least five per episode. In that they find a solid template to follow that keeps the episode structured, insightful, and entertaining without lingering too long on any particular item. First, the viewer is introduced to the gothic weapon, usually through a few sketches against a sepia page in faux-antiquity style. It placed emphasis on the history and general usage within the first couple of minutes, which leads into the intrigue behind recreating the device. There's a solid level of historical material utilized here, giving a glance into the essence of each device that includes famous historical figures that have suffered at the hand of those particular devices -- Giles Corey of "The Crucible" fame enduring the Weighted Press, Guy Fawkes suffering through the Rack, etc. After they've gotten their bearings on each device, ScareFactory gets to work on assembly from the ground up with welders, carpenters, and art department enthusiasts sprucing up the final product to near "show room" quality. Some of the recreations require little in the planning spectrum, like their recreation of Solitary Confinement or the Barrel Roll, while others like the Pendulum require some further upscale engineering concepts. Quality and assembly of their recreations differ equally between each item as well, as they concentrate on the holistic authenticity of aesthetics on some more than others. Take the Iron Maiden, which usually has a fully-wrapped metal casing all around its shell. Instead, ScareFactory recreates the device without the outer casing, which both alleviates some unnecessary usage of materials and talent on the items and allows the audience to watch inside the casing. But why would the audience need to "watch inside" these devices? Because Surviving History's big shock card comes in testing the devices for effectiveness, which will probably be a deal-breaker for enjoyment of the material at-hand for many watchers. Once they have built these devices to working properties through some minor preliminary tests, they then go through two separate "final" tests: on a dummy, and on a live subject. For the dummy, they release the viciousness of the device at full-throttle with one of ScareFactory's near-realistic creations. Utilizing textiles that recreate the texture of skin, tendons, and real bone, they make it possible to get at least a roundabout clue on what the devices will do to the human body. Throughout this process, as well as during the physical assembly of the devices, doctors and historians circulate around the workshop to give insight into their respected fields. ScareFactory even has x-rays taken of a few of their models, which add a nice modern-era touch to the viciousness. It's a great experience to watch these craftsman light up when they see their final product work to the effectiveness that many of them do -- especially with the amazing craftsmanship with the Chinese repeating crossbow, one of Surviving History's bigger successes. Finally, as a climax to the device's construction, one of the ScareFactory employees must suffer from the device. More times than not, the item's key creator will be the one to step into the device in creation of a "holistic" experience by suffering from the torture device that they created. Of course, they're not stretched beyond their means in the Rack or burnt to a crisp in the Brazin' Bull; for these more elaborate devices, they either test their effectiveness on a human body with a paramedic nearby for assistance, or weaken its potency for human trials by switching out real blades for fake ones, placing a harness on a guy dropping from the Gallows with a noose around his neck, and so forth. For things like the leather-bound flail, the Whirligig (think about a combo rollercoaster / birdcage from Hell), and the Pretzel, however, their near-full potency comes tested. It creates a humanizing imprint from the items and crafts a certain kind of tension in watching them suffer via these devices, though they do concentrate on the big tension-building money shot just a wee bit more than they probably should. Yet the whole package encapsulating Surviving History's steady gamut works as a semi-intelligent blend between Fear Factor / Jackass like bizarreness with historical significance and real-time construction intrigue. The crew continuously refers to the entire series as a growth and understanding experience -- a way of processing ingenuity through brutality. It transports you onto the floor at ScareFactory during their refabrications, which is absolutely the best place to be during this process. For history buffs, the material will seem like an earmark onto historical knowledge, offering a series of factoids to regurgitate during more elaborate discussions on time periods. However, the entire macabre experience in watching this fun group of craftsman think up, build, and operate these devices in Surviving History can be a mildly humbling experience as they tinker with the toys that carried both death and life throughout history.
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The DVD:
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History Channel and A&E Video presents Surviving History in a standard trayed keepcase presentation, containing a two-disc tray in the center that allows for all three discs to be fit in a slim package.
Video and Audio:
The History Channel's 1.78:1 transfer, though non-anamorphic and taken from lower-resolution source, looks relatively good considering its limitations. Color punchiness and detail both look decent at many times throughout the series. Though the wish will always be there that Surviving History were enhanced for widescreen televisions, it doesn't look too shabby when combined with a television's internal zoom function. It a utility-style transfer with a hunk tore out of its visual quality.
Audio comes with about as much serviceability, as the Stereo track sounds clean and clear for most of the presentation. Verbal clarity gets a little muffled in some of the more verbal parts of the series, but that's to be expected with a lower-budget rig. Subtitles are not available on this DVD release.
The Extras:
On the last disc, there's a bit of Bonus Additional Footage unused from all across the episodes. Total, this material equals around nineteen (19) minutes, which accounts for the same kind of deleted material normally seen for films -- stuff that's clipped for time constraints because it doesn't help the core material out that much.
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Final Thoughts:
Surviving History combines three very distinct elements -- enjoyment, morbidity, and history -- and throws them all in a blender to create a great 9-episode series that features some of history's most notorious devices. It's a great watch, filled with the testosterone that fumes from creating these devices and the historical essence that justifies them. It's a firmly Recommended purchase, especially at the $30 price tag, that'll instill plenty of appreciation for mechanical ingenuity and fear for the unnerving aspects of torture devices.
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