In 1587, 117 brave men and women set sail from Britain to establish the first English colony in the Americas. They landed on Roanoke Island, off the coast of Virginia. They built a settlement and planted crops. And then they disappeared without a trace. No one has ever solved the mystery of the lost colony.

This little history lesson is provided by Lost Colony: The Legend of Roanoke as a means of introduction.

A lot of theories have been bandied about over what happened to this lost colony - this movie presents one of the more outlandish theories. This outlandishness makes sense, though, since the DVD's cover art has a logo stating "As seen on SciFi." That's SciFi as in the SciFi Channel. Yep, Lost Colony: The Legend of Roanoke is yet another in the seemingly endless cheap film productions that first aired on the infamous cable channel before being dumped on home video in a slightly more R-rated format. What this historical action / horror flick has to do with science fiction, I'm not sure. But, it's loud and dumb and kind of entertaining in a Saturday afternoon B-movie way.

Lost Colony: The Legend of Roanoke introduces us to Ananias Dare (played by the Highlander himself, Adrian Paul) who has been placed in charge of the doomed colony. His very pregnant wife Eleanor (Frida Farrell, almost looking comically great in a supermodel way, given the time period and circumstances) has been suffering unsettling nightmares portending doom. This doom comes in the form of shaky CGI Viking wraiths who kill people in a variety of ways - including death by fake-looking CGI trees (I kid you not). Much swordplay and bloodspray follow as the wraiths randomly pick off the colonists while Ananias puzzles out what the colonists can do to stop them.

And that's about it in a nutshell. History says these characters are doomed from the start - so the ending should come as no surprise. Of course, one member of the lost colony is destined to survive in this movie. You'll figure out who about 10 minutes into the movie.

I've reviewed quite a few SciFi Channel movies in my tenure here at DVDTalk, and I can honestly say that this is probably one of the best. It's a dubious distinction, but there you have it. It wasn't good (the acting and aforementioned CGI are substandard), but it was efficient and mildly amusing in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 kind of way. Scenery and location shots were nice. Fans of low budget horror / sci-fi might want to give this one a look.

The DVD

Video:

Considering films of this pedigree, Lost Colony: The Legend of Roanoke doesn't look too bad. It's widescreen and anamorphic. Some minor artifacts and signal noise are present, but colors looked good and the image was sharp.

Sound:

The sole audio track is a surprisingly nice-sounding Dolby Digital 2.0. Dialogue and sound effects were effectively - if unimaginatively and uniformly - mixed together.

Spanish subtitles are available.

Extras:

The main menu has a link to the trailer for Lost Colony: The Legend of Roanoke. A Previews option provides additional trailers for The Unknown Trilogy, Call of the Wild, and Moola.

And that's it for extras.

Final Thoughts:

File Lost Colony: The Legend of Roanoke under "More SciFi Channel low budget nonsense." It's not awful if you're into movies like these, but with a lack of significant extras, this one's a "Rent It" rating at best.

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