BLOG Judge Minty For The Masses

Back in March I wrote a blog to draw a little attention to the Judge Minty fan film. Part of that blog mentioned the fact that the Minty film was doing the rounds of film and comic convention around Britain – and further a field – and also the fact that I kept being at the wrong conventions and hadn’t managed to get to see it.

And now, so can everyone else. Steven and the rest of the Minty gang always planned to release the film onto the internet after it had been round the convention circuit and now, after six months of very successful touring, that time is upon us.

Judge Minty is a 27-minute film and was the brainchild and labour of love of director Steven Sterlacchini, with special effects by Stephen Green, and with costume and props designed by Daniel Carey-George of Custom Crerations. Judge Minty stars Edmund Dehn as the title character and also has a small cameo appearance by 2000AD artist Greg Staples as Dredd himself as well as featuring a whole host of volunteers from the 2000AD forum. Minty concentrates on a short story first featured in 2000AD back in 1980 concerning an ageing Judge at the end of his career on the streets of Mega-City One.

Even if you managed to catch Minty at one of the many film and comic conventions where it has appeared over the last half year, director Steven tells me there’s been a fair bit of tinkering – but not to George Lucas levels – with the film and the version available online isn’t the original one. This new cut has lots of little tweaks and a revamped sound mix, so it’s probably worth checking out again. I personally love the reintroduction of the CCTV footage from the trailer at the start of the film as it gives a really good overview of Mega City One and a sense of the chaos of a judge’s life in the sprawling megalopolis.

As a fan-made film Judge Minty is a really ambitious piece of work and it really raises the bar; it has a great story, excellent effects, more Dredd references than you can shake a daystick at and it looks fantastic. Fans of Dredd and 2000AD will like it because it’s obvious that the film was made by fans for fans. People who haven’t seen anything of the world of Judge Dredd should still give the film a go because it has a great story and poses an interesting moral question. This is a very slick product and the creative team mark themselves out as people to keep an eye on in the future.

Judge Dredd is the creation of John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra.
Judge Minty is the creation of John Wagner and Mick McMahon.

Steven Ellis