Product Description

Acclaimed director Lars von Trier (Dogville, Dancer in the Dark) delves into the world of the supernatural with the acclaimed series that inspired Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital. At The Kingdom, Denmark’s most technologically advanced hospital, a number of strange and otherworldly events begin to occur, much to the dismay of its doctors and patients. A ghostly ambulance appears and disappears, the voice of a little girl calls to a patient in an elevator shaft and a doctor’s fetus begins growing at an alarming rate.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63775 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-11-08
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, Content/Copy-Protected CD, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: Danish, Swedish
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 272 minutes

Amazon.com
The Kingdom defies categorization. This cult Danish miniseries plays like a nightmarish cross between Twin Peaks and Chicago Hope as directed by David Cronenberg, and even that hardly captures the giddy absurdity of Lars von Trier's soap-opera-cum-horror-tale. The setting is a modern hospital built on a medieval graveyard, but the most terrifying ghosts belong not to ancient history but rather to the hospital's own dark past. An egotistical, self-righteous visiting Swedish doctor, who abhors the Danes and screams his outrage in nightly rants from the hospital roof, presides over this ensemble of eccentrics; but he's hardly the strangest this hospital has to offer. ER has nothing on this delirious madhouse, where haunted ambulances, a Masonic cult, a devil cabal, demons, ghosts, and a most mysterious pregnancy lurk in the fringes of more earthly (though equally bizarre) melodramas. Shooting in video with a bobbing handheld camera, von Trier creates an otherworldly atmosphere with the dimly lit corridors and bland, drained color schemes, set to an eerily sparse soundtrack of echoing hospital sounds and electronic wailings. The mix of deadpan hysteria and spooky ghost story concludes with the most outrageous cliffhanger put on film (to be continued in The Kingdom II). (The home video also includes closing comments by a smiling von Trier himself, unseen in the theatrical version.) Simply put, you've never seen anything quite like this. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

after a long hunt for red october,finally...
WOW?!
Hey,I taped the whole entire series on vhs,when it originally aired on ifc,in the mid 90's. The whole entire series seemed to get on one tape,as far as I can remember? I state it that way,because I stupidly let a partner "borrow" my copy,even before I finished viewing it,believing that he'd safely return it? But of course he didn't,leaving me to wonder if I'd ever see it's kind again,argh/urgh?!

And as well as all import afficianados know,if you sleep on something,you might not get another chance at it,that's just the way that it goes,unfortunately? So for years,I wondered if I'd even hear of it being bandied about,yet nothing came to light. It got to the point where I couldn't even remember the title,as the original moniker was something dutch(and I really couldn't recall that one,not at all)?!

Then when Stepehen King's version came out(which pales in comparison to the original),I thought that the industry would release the Lars Von Trier version,but no dice,aw? I just happened to accidentally run by it on amazon,as I was just surfing around,and BOOM!,there it was,whoa? When it first came out,it was years before the ultra fast internet superhighway,so if you didn't tape it/have an international mail order connection(which would be criminally expensive),you weren't gonna come by it,not at all?!

As an educational tool/search engine,the internet rocks(as well as amazon,cheers you lot)?! But you won't find me playing games,or looking at people humiliate themselves online,just for the hell of it(I'll watch the news for those little tidbits of eduatainment)? And as for that former friend,when I last saw him,he was really close to officially going for a permanent visit to the funny farm,God bless 'em.

Happy hunting?!

Thy Kingdom Come...
Let me start off by saying, I read another review that mentions a glitch on the DVD, and I don't think I experienced anything like that. I just now finished disc 2 with no problems whatsoever, and the "hiccup" I had on disc one (when played on my playstation 2) did not repeat itself when played on my laptop.

The special effects are... ah... lacking, but over all, it's creative. We must keep in mind, this was released in 1994, so the visual effects we are used to now did not exist when this was filmed - on top of that, it was probably very low budget.

The plot moves very slowly at first, but still held my attention all the way through. Actually, it seems like each of the 4 episodes moves slowly at their beginnings, and then speed up at the end. Without me even realizing it, the suspense was building enough to make me jump at parts.

I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoys foreign films. (The acting seems to be really good, although it's hard to tell sometimes when you can't ACTUALLY understand what anyone is saying.) If you hate reading subtitles, then obviously this collection is not for you.

Apparently, Stephen King based his "Kingdom Hospital" off of this collection, and if it's good enough for King, it's good enough for me.
Can't wait to get my hands on Volume Two.

If you do buy this collection, make sure you stick it out 'till the end. This isn't an action movie or a slasher flick. You actually have to pay attention and finish it, or you'll get nothing out of it.

Aside from that, enjoy!

Watch this, not the American remake
After seeing "Kingdom Hospital", which I thoroughly enjoyed at the time, I decided to watch the original Danish mini-series upon which it was based, although I couldn't imagine the original being any better than the remake. Boy, was I wrong. "The Kingdom", set in a Danish hospital that is haunted by the ghost of a dead child and populated by doctors and patients who are a little unusual, to say the least, is now one of my favourite series of all time and I cringe to think that I ever thought the American version was good. Everything about the Danish version is better than the original (with the possible exception of the anteater - he was added in the American version and doesn't appear in the Danish "Kingdom". I really loved that anteater): the actors are better (especially Ernst-Hugo Jaregard as the Dane-hating, arrogant Dr. Helmer), the scripts are better written, and there are some fantastic sub-plots that were discarded when the remake was made (it is beyond me why the sub-plot about Helmer travelling to Haiti to obtain a poison that will turn his colleagues into zombies was discarded and yet snooze-worthy stories about butter-fingered baseball players and a Jesus-like social worker were added in). In addition, because of the shorter running time (a little over four hours), "The Kingdom" moves a lot faster than "Kingdom Hospital" and has a lot less unnecessary filler.

"The Kingdom" was originally intended to be the first of three mini-series, so ends with a cliff-hanger. The second mini-series was made (and is available on DVD as "The Kingdom Series 2"), but unfortunately both Ernst-Hugo Jaregard and Kirsten Rolffes (Mrs. Drusse) died prior to the making of the third series and the project was shelved indefinitely. As a result, like "Twin Peaks", a series to which this is often compared, it looks as though we will never get to find out just what happens in the end of this wonderful series.