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“The Goldsmith” on DVD From Cinephobia Releasing!

Childhood friends and career criminals Stefano, Arianna, and Roberto plan their next heist of an elderly couple. Suspecting the older husband to be a jeweler with a hidden lab stashed with product, the trio work off a plan based off a third party’s overheard intel that the house is well worth the score. Successfully penetrating the home’s security system, securing the elderly couple, and discovering the jeweler’s hidden cache of priceless jewelries, the felonious friends believe they hit big in their home invasion scheme until the lab door suddenly closes behind them and they find themselves at the mercy of the old man, free from his confines and divulging intimate knowledge about each one of them over a videocam feed peering inside the lab. Trapped, relationship destroying secrets are revealed by their seasoned captor who has something more odiously consequential in store for them than just letting their skeletons out of the closet.

The age-old idiom of to have a heart of gold, used to describe person’s generous nature, does not apply to Italian director Vincenzo Ricchiuto’s 2022 home invasion and survival thriller “The Goldsmith” where the absence of generosity gives way to greed, treachery, and one jeweler’s search to see inner beauty. Known in Italy as L’orafo in the production’s native tongue, the writer-director’s debut feature tackling both sides of the creative spectrum in writing and helming is co-written alongside Germano Tarricone, co-writer of Italian horror thrillers “Eaters “and “In The Box.” Together, “The Goldsmith” does play on the idiom more than meets the eye with the immeasurable principal characters that twist to knife harder in their gutting revelation or deceitful explanation. From production companies Almost Famous Productions, Minerva Films, DEA Films (“The Perfect Husband”), and in association with Hurricane Studios, “The Goldsmith” is executively produced by Tarricone and the Ted Nicolauo directed “The Etruscan Mask” producer, Antonio Guadalopi.

The intimate casting provides a tight story primarily set at the older couple’s home with brief secondary story parallel and flashback sets confined to a mechanic shop, outside a bowling alley, and inside a nightclub. The three thick as thieves are the nervously confident Stefano (Mike Cimini), his oversexed girlfriend Arianna (Tania Bambaci, “The Perfect Husband”), and the careless drug addict Roberto (Gianluca Vannuci, “Lui non esiste”) who become ensnared by an enigmatic goldsmith (Giuseppe Pambieri, “Yellow Emanuelle”) and his wife (Stefania Casini, “Suspira” ’77). Cimini, Bambaci, and Vannuci favor ruffian routine but their performances are undercut by the script’s lack of development between Stefano and Arianna’s reclined relationship and the significance of why Stefano did a heist job on his own without his crew that seemingly had some unclear intensity in the backdrop on why he had to go at it alone. The confusion of the first fib explanation from Stefano is quickly swept under the rug by the second bombshell that involves Arianna and Roberto, one that clearly overshadows Stefano’s deceit tenfold with its more transparent and personal complexion, and Arianna’s fib is more he-said, she-said that throws more shade toward the triangle-friendship as lie-after-lie quickly devolves an already brittle relationship into a flatlining hate to where they turn on each other, or at least two of them do. The more interesting characters of the bunch are definitely the older couple with ulterior motives, luring bad people into their home just to trick them into being a part something far more sinister for their health. Pambieri and Casini show their veteranized chops, delivering distinct lines within their distinct character voices and mannerisms but working together as a unit in a deranged, but endearing dispositioned husband and wife, especially Casini with her semi-handicapped character’s lady of the house demeanor that wears a crooked smile underneath. “The Goldsmith” rounds out with Andrea Porti, Matteo Silvestri, and Antonio Cortese.

“The Goldsmith” might be inherently wealthy with its immeasurable karat of everyone is a villain in the story but the story itself isn’t as rich with its struggling with poor development to connect the pieces together in a coherent way. In the overall picture from a high-level perspective, the basics of the acts are evident to where we’re setup with these three criminals looting a home, they find themselves in a pickle with a couple not as enfeebled as described, and with the second and most rising threat plot point being the goldsmith’s eye on the prize for his captives. Yet, the ancillary scenes muddle up the support. Point in case, the opening scene of the three hoodlums running from a dressed down priest, and the only reason we know it’s a priest is because the actor is listed as such in the credits. The scene doesn’t explain much other than the troubled youngsters have presumably stolen a cross and have murdered the priest after a length chase on foot, setting up Stefano, Arianna, and Roberto as the antihero principals but the scene impresses more importance, like a moment to refer back to yet that moment never resurfaces into the grand scheme of the narrative. Other similar instances rear-up throughout, questioning the motivations and the associations often left unsatisfactory by absence of valuable fill-gap material. “The Goldsmith’s” themes of honor among thieves and attempting to see the good within come over clearly through a blanket of dark iniquities on both ends, leaving no good feelings for any of the antiheroic roles that flipflop for higher ground in this Italian-made home invasion thriller.

Coming in as release number six on the spine for Cinephobia Releasing, “The Goldsmith” comes to DVD for the first time in North America. The MPEG-2 compression encoded DVD is presented in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Unfortunately, the Cinephobia release has a substantial artefact issue with the higher information rate on format’s compression encoder, resulting in a contouring blob during the first act’s darker scenes. The front and center macro-blocking ring produces a lighter shadow that becomes more of a visual obstacle to see past. Once the compression levels out, we do see some seesawing delineation details in a rather hard-lit, noir-lite cinematography from Francesco Collinelli (“Demon’s Twilight”), but the majority of details come through nicely, especially on skin textures and tones. The Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound offers forefront dialogue with cleanness and clearness. No apparent issues with the digital recording as the sound design forks up good depth between medium and closeup scenes and through the video-com as well as a selective range with some of the gorier moments with squishy-scoops and hammer-bashes. English subtitles are available with good pacing and a flawless, accurate translation from what I can tell as I don’t understand or speak Italian but understand the roots of Latin-based language. Bonus features a feature-length behind-the-scenes raw footage of the principal photography and trailers for Cinephobia Releasing films, such as “Brightwood,” “Emanuelle’s Revenge,” “The Human Trap,” and “Amor Bandido.” Physical features include a standard DVD amaray case with the titular character in a dark black and gold yellow closeup one-sided front cover, peering into the metaphorical windows of your soul with the jeweler’s head mounted magnifying specs in an eerie image of individuality prospecting. Inside there is no insert included and the disc art is a downscaled version of the front cover image with title underneath on top of a black background. The 89-minute film is not rated and though not listed on the back cover, playback is suspected to be region 1 locked. “The Goldsmith” aims to pull the wool over one’s eyes, or more accurately, replace the eyes altogether, with the deluding lustrousness of a home invasion thriller turned into an eyeful scoop of insanity.

“The Goldsmith” on DVD From Cinephobia Releasing!

Nicola and Viola attempt to escape their dismal past involving losing their child at birth, traveling to an isolated cabin in the woods to rekindle and reconcile their bitter relationship. Once there, Viola feels a menacing presence lurking amongst the trees ever since arriving. As the strain on their past and present union becomes nearly too much to bare, tensions overflow with jealously and bewilderment that turn the delicate situation into an explosion of violent behavior. A cat and mouse game of carnage and death follows the couple through the dark woods toward a bizarre and psychological ending that reveals the true nature of their disturbing affliction.

Director Lucas Pavetto’s “The Perfect Husband” is an Italian psychological horror film from 2014 starring “Nightmare Code’s” Bret Roberts and Gabriella Wright and based off Pavetto’s short film of the same title. Even though “The Perfect Husband” is an Italian birthed film from Italian production company DEA Films, “Il Marito Perfecto,” the Italian title of “The Perfect Husband, has a crew, aside from Pavetto hailing from Argentina, that maintains the country’s native ethnicity. London born Gabriella Wright, who masks her English accent very well, co-stars alongside the Alaskan-American Bret Roberts; both actors could certainly pass having Italian heritage with their olive skin tone and dark features elsewhere and with filming location set in Catania, Sicily, the actors fit right amongst the rugged and mountainous Sicilian landscape. Roberts has a low-raspy articulation that makes him seem always out of breath that transitions beyond the catalyst, but Roberts plays villainy insanely well. Wright maintains a cryptic temperament from start to near finish. However, the duo’s dynamic is quirky at best as the couple treat themselves more a boyfriend and girlfriend than husband and wife, which might be a product of the writing.

Lucas Pavetto and Massimo Vavassori go fairly formulaic with their script, writing about strife-stricken couple working out their marital issues alone in a remote cabin surrounded by a dense forest. The setup screams horror premise clockwork and attempts to shift gears after lengthy character development that takes some time to build into something concrete, or at least halfway tangible. The shift in disposition is, however, so rapid and so sudden with unwarranted ferocity, that the effect goes from a scale of a tense filled two to a run-for-your-life ten in a matter of microseconds. The series of events portray Bret Robert’s character Nicola as a jealous misogynistic ready to snap at any given moment while Viola’s mysteriousness and her unconscious readiness to break with reality puts an undisclosed strain on her psyche that what she experiences may or may not be real. A twist ending tries to fill in the Nicola and Viola omissions, but misses the mark that still leaves gaps here and there, especially conveying more about the events that took place at the refugee station between Viola and the Ranger, played by “Apocalypse Z’s” Carl Wharton. Perspective becomes surreal; a fantastic journey that terminates toward a twisted unveiling, leaves more questions than answers about Viola and Nicola prior to their weekend getaway.

Plausibility. Probably “The Perfect Husband’s” fiercest enemy as the story tries to turn itself upside to throw the audience for a loop. The disillusion feels cheaply thrown together to try and wrap up, what could have been, a thoughtful psychological thriller and that’s where plausibility doesn’t formulate, frustratingly feeling like an square box with only three sides and a gap left carelessly open. I wanted to like “The Perfect Husband” because I thought the mayhem was present at the beginning moment of the snowball effect. Everything went down, fast and furious style, with unforgiving brutality that was surprisingly gory at times.

“The Perfect Husband” has been honored an unrated Blu-ray release in a 1030p transfer presented in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio from the ever bold Artsploitation Films. The video has a slight grayscale imbalance that contrasts scenes a bit heavily, but other than that minor issue, the image looks solid. The English 5.1 surround with optional English subtitles is also solid with a balancing the appropriate tracks. Bonus features include a behind the scenes segment that exhibits the takes of scenes in and outside of the cabin. The original short “Il Marito Perfecto” is included along with trailers for upcoming films from Artsploitation Films. Turns out “The Perfect Husband” wasn’t perfect, but raw, exploitive barbarity is a must see for any violent hound in need of a good scratch.