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Lube Up and Get Ready for “Full Body Massage” on Blu-ray!

Nina, a middle-aged affluent art dealer, has just returned from a long business trip. Settling back down into her own nature morte decked home, Nina pampers herself with a hot shower, a glass of wine, elegant music, and a soak in her open aired, backyard hot tub as she relaxes before for her masseur, Doug, a handsome young man she finds herself comfortably attracted to outside their professional relationship, arrives to put his oiled up hands up and down her naked body but when Fitch arrives, Doug’s more seasoned stand-in, Nina finds herself blindsided by the change and slightly disappointed in her sudden erotic deflation. Fitch’s worldly approach to life conflicts against Nina’s narrow perspective on various topics, including art, happiness, and love. Willing to be fully open with each other during the intimate and unorthodox massage, Nina and Fitch debate deep into their session without holding anything back with flashbacks on their experiences that led them to this very moment of unexpected connection.

Director Nicholas Roeg, the late acclaimed English director, is known for his in-depth humanizing of flawed or downcast protagonists, often times surrounded by desire and obstacles, having helmed such renowned features as “Walkabout,” “Bad Timing,” and “The Man Who Fell From Earth.” Roeg has also dipped his directional toes in horror with films like “Don’t Look Now” and “The Witches,” running the gamut between adult and children thrills. Later in his career, Roeg slowly moved away from theatrical features and into the realm of television, shorts, and TV movies with one of those made-for-TV films being “Full Body Massage” for the premium cable network Showtime. Penned by “The Stranger’s” Dan Gurskis, “Full Body Massage” trades in a problematic mystery or obstacle for more of the unravelling of philosophical viewpoints of two strangers wounded in their own obvious way only to have the air purified each other’s different life paths and mere presence of mind. The 1995 released U.S. network movie is produced by erotic thriller operators Julie Ahlberg and Michael Nolin of “The Pornorgrapher” under the LLC of Full Body Productions and Showtime.

Though a made-for-television movie likely marketed for and airing as a late night skin flick for the premium network channel in the cable box era of the 1990s, “Full Body Massage” was anything but your ordinary after dark tits up production with two well-known stars substantially casted and not just for the headline attraction. “Ginger Snaps” and “Hider in the House” American actress Mimi Rogers is joined by Australian star and “F/X” leading man Bryan Brown who undertake the respective roles of world-weary Nina and worldly-candid Fitch. While “Full Body Massage” has the hallmarks of softcore programming, an titillating title, sexy sax soothing tones, and a very naked Mimi Rogers, the machinating devices have more bark than bite as Rogers and Brown never engage into sexual intimacy albeit a lot of sensual massage manhandling by Fitch on Nina’s more than happy to be naked body with a stranger she just met. The two mainstays are pundits for the story, verbally expelling their own viewpoints and experiences that have shaped their choices in life, molding them to who they are, and nearing the edge of gospel when in rhetoric with each other. Their conspicuous dispute is nearly all narratively all consuming but not as nearly all argumentative in it’s very adult approach to discussion of just two people seeing the world through two very different eyes. Other characters are told through mostly flashbacks and never interact in the same aortic piece with Rogers and Brown with Christopher Burgard (“Syngenor”), Elizabeth Barondes (“Night of the Scarecrow”), Gareth Williams (“Striking Distance”), Patrick Neil Quinn (“Swamp Thing” television series), Heather Gunn (“Ed Gein”), and Gabriella Hall (“The Erotic Adventures of the Invisible Man”) and Brian McLane playing younger versions of Nina and Fitch.

“Full Body Massage” is not an intense, edge-of-your-seat nail biter bursting with action and suspense. In fact, I struggle with film’s point and overall message to the world in what in essence boils down to a character study. Fitch’s disapproving father no matter how perfection Fitch achieved, Nina’s continuous search for approvals in love, Fitch’s losing love that sends him on a spiritual journey, and Nina’s failed marriages between fast-and-loose husbands and hard to connect with ones make the two underlyingly wounded adults rigid and confidence in that unyielding measure until they meet each other and experience pliability out of a long-winded dialogue in not only a face-to-face manner, but also in the healing power of touch and massage that’s feels erotic per Roeg’s direction but also works out every kink in their twisted, knotted pasts to where they end in an uncertain but good place, a place they’ve never been before or have long forgotten. By the course of two people talking, which most the world does every day, there had to be buzzier bright light to attract swarming audiences to the premium cable network’s thirst for viewership and that would be Mimi Rogers going nearly full-frontal for nearly the entire runtime and Roeg really plays into that erotic prance of unabashed confidence and comfortability while also, contrariwise, the dynamic progresses platonically.

A newly scanned 2K transfer of 1995 film comes from an unlikely boutique distributor known mainly for extreme horror, gore and shock, and controversial material. Unearthed Films proudly presents “Full Body Massage” on Blu-ray as title lucky number 13 on their Unearthed Classics label. The AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p, BD50 exhibits cable vision veneer in a television widescreen 1.66:1 aspect ratio. Roeg’s choice to go virtually without style really hinges on the substance for success. The natural approach consumes any low-lit or candle-lit warm interiors exclusively for flashback sequences. The 35 mm print has been cared for and it shows with pristine HD transfer that keeps the natural grain and doesn’t need to really sugarcoat any sour patches. The English lossless PCM 2.0 stereo mix offers exact fidelity of the original discourse and milieu ambience of an innate digital sound capture. With the dialogue heavy story, the discourse is clean, clear, and prominent, comprehensible in every which way. Depth provides expansion and echo inside Nina’s vastly roomy mansion, but range is limited to talking and not the sensual, sexy, arousing kind. English subtitles and SDH subtitles are available on this release. Special features include the television version presented in 1.33:1 aspect ratio, a minute still image gallery that’s mostly Bryan Brown behind Mimi Rogers giving her the massage, and the original trailer. While not a great selection of bonus content, the physical exterior succeeds slightly favorable with a cardboard O-slipcover with flat, yet beautiful, illustration of, again, Bryan Brown and Mimi Rogers in massage therapy that could be misleading as sensuality. The Amaray Blu-ray cover sports the same image on the cover art and even compressed even further on the disc art. The Blu-ray is rated R, locked in region A playback, and has a runtime of 93 minutes. I’m not going to try and kid you with what is and will be “Full Body Massage’s” immediate appeal, a very well-endowed and nude Mimi Rogers, but this anomalous Unearthed Classic brings a different highbrow criterion class to the extreme horror label in what is a brazen change of pace.

Lube Up and Get Ready for “Full Body Massage” on Blu-ray!

When a deadly robbery strikes one of Darcy Security Services armored cars, the security company’s chief executives aim to crack down on the already rigorous operational security protocols by implementing vastly unpopular and Union-irritating measures. The hit not only induces change to security procedures, but also opens up a can of worms that forces the hand of the three internal company men, who’ve been planning to steal from inside Darcy Security Services over the last five years, to accelerate their timeline. Their carefully laid out plan quickly becomes complicated when the mob gets wind of their elaborate heist, compelling the small three man crew to work for the crime boss without much of a choice as life and limb come to stake. Now the only thing that can stand between them and millions of dollars are two new Darcy recruits, a highly trained former police officer with a penchant for doing what’s honorable and a gun shy bloke targeted to be a prime suspect in previous armored car robberies.

Based loosely on a pair of actual robbery events authored by novelist Devon Minchin, “Money Makers” bares a ruthless resemblance to hardnose acts of crime as filmmaker Bruce Beresford captivates as the maestro behind the orchestration of Minchin’s book that’s gritty and enthralling on the big screen. The “Driving Miss Daisy” and “Double Jeopardy” director also pens a script full of bloody encounters and unflinching greed that delivers “Money Movers” as the first R-rated feature to stem out of South Australian Film Corporation, a production company that, up until then, co-produced dramas, mysteries, and family films, such as Peter Weir’s “Picnic at Hanging Rock” and “The Last Wave,” with McElroy & McElroy and later co-produced the widely successful Outback horror “Wolf Creek” starring John Jarrett nearly 30 years later.

While numerous characters are subject to suspect and their roles’ intentions are guarded to the very end, the plot, for all intents and purposes, circulates around Eric Jackson, a former champion race car driver who now tenures as a 5-year senior security guard at Darcy’s, played by Terence Donovan. Donovan gives the performance his all with a wide range of subversive behavior. From cool, calm, and collective to feral gumption, Donovan race ends in drenching ferocity that’s fueled by his fellow costars who meet him at his level of performance. The most recognizable face, at least for me, is “F/X’s” Bryan Brown who portray’s Eric’s brother, Brian Jackson. They butt heads with former police officer Dick Martin and his no tomfoolery. The late Ed Devereaux had an old school acting method, very impersonal and straight forward like a John Wayne-type, and that worked perfectly in the role of Martin who befriends the projected patzy Leo Bassett played by “Quigley Down Under’s” Tony Bonner. Bonner’s able to capture Bassett’s unconfident, yet smooth persona that’s complete opposite of his partner Dick Martin, whose confident, but brash. What’s curious about the characters lies under the surface of a domineering male lineup – the women. Not one female character is apparent in a co-lead role and each role has a presumable flaw to them. Candy Raymond is an undercover private eye who uses her body and wits for information, Eric Jackson’s wife, played by Jeanie Drynan, has an absent and naive approach, and a handful of minor roles involving non-verbal girlfriends and late night secretary carnalities. The cast rounds out with Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell, Alan Cassell, Lucky Grills, Hu Pryce, Terry Camilleri and Frank Wilson.

“Money Movers” doesn’t scream perfection, but plays a major influential part in the infancy stages of violent crime thrillers that paved the way for such films like “Heat” or “Point Blank” and supplies another keystone in constructing the genre a solid foundation. “Money Movers” is bookend with graphic shootouts and peppered with conniving dealings and unsavory characters toward a shoot’em up heist climax that Bruce Beresford was able to depict visually and script confidently. In early scene, the storyboards could have been revised, restructured, or reordered to unearth a clear picture of establishing character backstories and setup that still process a puzzling connection between their nefarious intentions, but the ample storyline corrects course quickly without loosing too much time to ponder about the after effects of the early scenes.

Umbrella Entertainment re-releases “Money Movers” on a PAL DVD home video. The region free DVD is presented in a widescreen, 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Definition is key as the colors are, for lack of a better word, washed, but the clear cut outline that produces a sharp finish image grants this release of “Money Movers” a seal of approval that isn’t asterisked with blatant enhancements. The English Dolby Digital 2.0 track is on point with clarity in the dialogue and properly aligned, volumed, and untarnished ambiance. What’s interesting about “Money Movers” is the lack of a score that forces the viewer, subconsciously, to hone in more acute to the characters and their brazen actions. Bonus material includes “Count Your Toes – a making-of featurette with writer-director Bruce Beresford and cast members Bryan Brown, Terence Donovan, Tony Bonner, and Candy Raymond. There’s also the theatrical trailer and Umbrella Entertainment’s propaganda material. One of the first to be up on a prestigious pedastal of heist films, “Money Movers” is a violent, toe-cutting, experience armored with a great cast of acclaimed actors and filmmakers in this Ozploitation classic.