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The Key to EVIL is to Kill Each Other For It! “A Hyena in the Safe” reviewed! (Celluloid Dreams / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“A Hyena in the Safe” is on Black Friday sale! Get It at Amazon.com

Eleven months after a jewelry safe heist at the Bank of Amsterdam, a group of specialized international thieves from all over Europe reunite at an Italian mansion estate during a city carnival celebrate used as a distracting facade for their gathering.  Each have a key that form a coalescence to open the safe to ensure not one of them will swindle the others and make off with the jewels worth millions.  Their ringleader Boris, who’s now deceased, hid the safe in his mansion with this wife Anna overseeing his plan and portion of their lifted prize.  When one of the keys end up missing, a series of deceptions and murders begin a feisty vying for the each of the keys.  One-by-one, the criminals fall for inconspicuous laid deadly traps and engage in murderous rendezvous until there’s only one left standing as the old saying goes, there is no honor amongst thieves.

Italy director Cesare Canevari, notable for his contribution to the exploitation subgenre with “A Man for Emmanuelle,” “The Nude Princess,” and the notoriously renowned “The Gestapo’s Last Orgy,” wrote-and-direct a post-caper, bordering giallo in 1968 titled “Una iena in cassaforte,” aka “A Hyena in the Safe.”  Coming in on the incline toward giallo’s height of success, Canevari’s whodunit has less the conventional murder mystery elements but does have arouse that lack of trust amongst the principal characters, a high body count, a vaguely mysterious killer, and definitely a highly stylization of camera angles and visuals that’s correlates with the time period and give this giallo less of a terror firming shape and more of a “Clue” like profile.  Canevari cowrites the script with Alberto Penna and is a production of Fering SRL based in Milano, Italy where the film was shot.

“A Hyena in the Safe” is carried by an eclectic, ensemble cast of international actors and actresses playing the roles that are not of their respective nationalities.  Going around the horn first with the keyholding thieves begins with Stan O’Gadwin’s Klaus, the German, Ben Salvador’s Juan, the Spaniard, Karina Kar’s Karina, the Tangerine and the only non-European of the group, opera singer Dimitri Nabokov’s Steve, The Englishman, and “The Slasher … Is a Sex Maniac!’s” Sandro Pizzchero’s Albert, the Frenchman.  The aforementioned cast primarily reduces to Italian and German actors in a virtually performance only role to exact and exude their character personality types in with Salvador, who gives Juan a thinking man’s confidence within a patient self and has a way of seducing women to extract information, or with Klaus, who’s aggressive pressing as an authoritarian German leans toward pursuit efficiency, or Steve, who’s quietly plotting multiple reserved schemes to deploy later.  Those not a part of the heist crew from the Bank of Amsterdam is Anna, the criminal mastermind’s wife portrayed by Maria Luisa Geisberger, and she, too, is a keyholder but only because the attractive femme fatale takes over the helm with the storage of the jewel vault and implants her own brand of deception after announcing her husband’s demise from an illness.  Jeanine (Cristina Gaioni) and Callaghan (Otto Tinard) are the last two who round out the ensemble in their corresponding roles of Albert’s blonde bombshell girlfriend who’s folded into the scheme at the chagrin of the others, and boy does she take a humiliating beating when Albert comes up short on his key, and the jewel appraiser who watches all the backstabbing unfold from the sidelines and counts down the bodies with the metaphorical removal of their party favor baggies, ones that would have been used to split the jewels between them upon opening the safe.

What’s interesting about “A Hyena in the Safe” is the beginning of the story plotted at the act of reassembling the team and only provide expositional context to a heist well after it’s been done, eleven months ago in fact.  All the characters are fresh and unknown to the audiences, we don’t know their personalities, their skills, their habits, or their attitudes toward one another, and all that dynamical odds and ends has processed, forcing those new to the film to watch, listen, and learn their way through the personality types and the situation at hand.  The tension is quickly laid out amongst the already side-eying and suspicious group of sophisticated thieves that react no differently from the lower class of thief with same cutthroat intent.  Keeping up with Canevari’s edited pacing and unconventional angle shots that squeeze out the tension with taut framing on expression-filled cutting of eyes and fear-induced faces, the mounting intriguing factors wet story hungry appetites with playful catering of the imagery that also consists of fixed and tracking shots.  Considering the film’s more conservative decade, Canevari builds tasteful implied sexual acts between conniving characters and is only explicitly, in physical means, when the scene calls for it, leaving gratuitousness begging to be let in.   One aspect with the pacing that hurts the enticingly heightening pressure cooker between the first act’s slow trot through choppy seas of character dynamics to elucidate taciturn behaviors and backdoor alliances and the last act’s spit firing and cutdown of those who are left standing, there is seemingly no middle act to funnel the trepidation and mystery from one end to the other in an abrupt ease into a quickly diminishing situation that goes from murder mystery to battle royale with switchblade umbrellas, electrifying door handles, and an indoor garage that can turn into an asphyxiating fish tank in a matter of minutes.  There’s an early James Bond campiness to the story’s temperament that can’t be ignored while be positively and simultaneously interesting.

Celluloid Dream’s third release title today “A Hyena in the Safe” arrives onto a new high-definition Blu-ray for the first time that’s AVC encoded onto a BD50 and presented in 1080p and in its televised pillar boxed full screen 1.33:1 aspect ratio.  The restoration of the original, likely, 35mm film stock was done by Rome’s Cinelab Services from the original camera negative, which also included the color grading.  The resulting transfer is peak restoration quality with a fresh coat of brilliant paint, a clear coating of texture producing details, and a virtually flawless image within the spherical lens picture.  Perhaps slightly on the orange side, skin tones come through a variety of shades to match the nationalities of the criminal enterprising collective.  Juan’s dinner jacket evokes tweed textures while Jeanine’s high, golden hair style never loses individual strands in the near all-bright-and-golden wash.  The original Italian mono mix was secured from the optical sound negatives attached to the filmstrip.  The mix had processed the Italian ADR in post and attached to synch to the celluloid, creating a near perfect pace and synchronicity with the conversational action though the lips doesn’t exactly match the actual words being spoken.  Speaking of dialogue, for a mono track the nice and robust with clarity from an untarnished negative albeit it’s lack of depth and not from the true source, and that goes for ambience as well.  English closed captioning is available.  Special features pack the encoding with a commentary track by Celluloid Dreams found and film critic Guido Henkel, interview featurette 7 Guests for a Massacre with Cesare Canevari (misspelled Canevaro on the back cover), Albert actor Sandro Pizzochero, Nini Della Misericordia, journalist/critic Adriana Morlacchi, and journalist/critic Diego Pisati discussing the film’s influence and pizzas from cast, crew, and critic perspective, a video essay by Andy Marshall-Roberts Schrodinger’s Diamonds:  The Duplicitous Mystery of Hyena in the Safe, a location featurette of the shooting setting The Mysteries of Villa Toeplitz, an image gallery, and the theatrical trailer.  The two-faced cover art, same art of dead bodies falling out of a safe, is set with the primary English language on the cover with the Italian language title cover on the reverse side.  The cover art on the encasing O-slip with a character composition design of a shadow-induced, high-contrast illustration by graphic artist Thu-Lieu Pham of Covertopia.com has slip art similarities with same art on both sides but with the title in either in English or Italian.  In the insert is advert for Celluloid Dream’s previous two releases – “The Case of the Bloody Iris” and “Short Night of Glass Dolls” and its upcoming fourth release “The Black Belly of the Tarantula” while the reverse side gives credits and acknowledgement in regard to the film restoration.  “A Hyena in the Safe” comes not rated, clocks in at 92 minutes, and is region locked for A, North America.

Last Rites: “A Hyena in the Safe” is a no laughs, all bite giallo caper once obscured from the public view now brought to the forefront of our attentions with a new Blu-ray release worth backstabbing for!

“A Hyena in the Safe” is on Black Friday sale! Get It at Amazon.com

Cartagena’s Secrets are Mountainous EVIL Aliens! “Top Line” reviewed! (Cauldron Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

When Everyone’s Out To Get You, You Get “Top Line” on Blu-ray!

Washed up, alcoholic feature journalist Ted Angelo drinks himself into a stupor on the porticos of Columbia.  Having just been fired by his magazine editor for lack of content, Angelo scores big when led down the path of ancient tribal artifacts that proves the terminus of one of Europe’s famous new world explorers, rewriting history of the disappeared pioneer, but what he truly discovers is bigger, and more frightening, than history itself as he unearths a large alien spacecraft hidden within the Columbian mountains, big enough to enclose the explorer’s lost mast ship.  The discovery of a lifetime becomes the bane of Ted Angelo’s existence as he’s suddenly on a kill list and every organization, from the C.I.A., to the K.G.B., to former Nazis, is hunting him and wanting him dead.  Unable to trust anyone and nowhere to run and hide, the desperate writer is determined to expose the secret-to-kill-for to the world but not if the aliens have anything to say about it. 

Let’s talk about a film that is a bit of a smorgasbord with tapas plate tastings of just about every genre that exists.  That’s one way to serve the description of Nello Rossati’s “Top Line” with an inarguable action coating menu overtop the varietal lifeblood veins of science fiction, espionage, drama, parody, horror, and driven by a sensationalized historical context.  Directed under Rossati’s Americanized pen name, Ted Archer, and known alternatively as “Alien Terminator,” “Top Line” tries to appeal to western audiences with brazenly broad script cowritten by “The Woman in the Night” director and Roberto Gianviti (“Don’t Torture the Duckling,” “Murder Rock”) at the height of Italian ripping of popular American movies.  Filmed on site in Cartagena, Colombia, the Italian production was produced by Luciano Martino (“The Island of the Fishmen”) and productionally sanctioned under companies Dania Film, Reteitalia and the National Cinematografica. 

What’s likeable about Ted Angelo is he’s simply a writer.  He’s not a crack-shot, he’s not a world-class fighter, and he’s not one for conjuring up a complex master plan.  Instead, Ted Angelo is a flawed man under the influence of a bottle and is a low-level womanizer where the bedroom interests are more about local information than about the sexual activities.  Franco Nero (“Django,” “High Crime”) goes against his multifaceted ruggedness and muscular physique to be the more of an adaptable and instinctual hero that tries to make up for slouching about Columbia’s drink selection.  Nero’s the hero while Deborah Moore, of “Warriors of the Apocalypse” and daughter of former James Bond Roger Moore, tiptoes about the love interest trope after her character’s senior colleague, who is also Angelo’s good friend, is murdered in the plot and the two become intwined and more goal oriented in unearthing the reason in a minor ploy of revenge.  Yet, the trick is on them after discovering a U.F.O. right in their mountainous backyard and the hunt for their lives is on by a former Nazi and antiquities collector Heinrich Holzmann (George Kennedy, “Naked Gun”), a whole slew of clandestine organization spooks, and Rodrigo Obregón (“Savage Beach”) doing his best Arnold Schwarzenegger “Terminator” act as a large cybernetic man with a stoic and half-exposed face.  “Top Line” supporting cast includes William Berger (“Devil Fish”), Sherly Hernandez, Larry Dolgin (“Caligula:  The Untold Story”), Steven Luotto, Robert Redcross, and Mary Stavin (“House”) as Ted Angelo’s ex-blonde beauty editor girlfriend.

“Top Line” has one of those cinematic stories that’s all over the place pieced together by western inspiration like some sort of genre stitched together Frankenstein’s monster.  Unlike the flat top and bolt-necked creature born of electrical current and held together by suture and mad scientist sorcery, “Top Line” doesn’t have any hideous scars or an unfavorable attitude deterrent but what the Nello Rossati film does feature similarly are the monstrous best parts, such as unpredictability, a pendulum of excitements, and an everyone has grabbed their pitchforks and is out to get you sentiment.  “Top Line” is a wild, exciting, volatile ride set in the heart of a landscape and culturally showcased Cartagena and the ever game, Italian actor Franco Nero at the helm steering what at first appears to be an adventurous escapade of treasuring hunting and covert coverups in act one and two suddenly careens into an assault of astro-terrestrials forces to the tune of the fourth Indiana Jones film, “The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, by crescendoing third act.  “Top Line” is just as theatrically thrilling without the whipcrackin’, fedora-wearing, family friendly archaeologist with multiple blood squib shootouts, a superb tongue-and-cheek car chase down winding mountainside road, and the hydraulics-driven special effects transfiguration your eyes need to see to below.

Cauldron Films proudly presents “Top Line” onto Blu-ray for the first time, the resulting 2K transfer sourced from the camera negative. The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD25 decodes a clean, color stable picture that feels organic around the diffused color scheme, and that palette pops without being artificially enhanced. Grain appears in check, natural, and consistent throughout. Presented in the original aspect ratio, a widescreen European ratio 1.66:1, does capture the grandiose of a 17th century exploration ship inside the cavernous mountain without a squeeze of the frame, providing more depth with the help of the art direction to visualize and construct an actual set. Textures, fibers, and other tactile s are limited around the jungle setting that does offer a nice leafy and lush setting that depicts a thicket of a developing country without just being a smear of the same color arrangement but outside of that, what does source de facto is sumptuous textural material. Two audio options are available to choose from with an English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono and an Italian DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono. The Italian is done in post with ADR and has that nagging space between action and voice while the English track goes through less dubbing, or more exact dubbing, with Franco Nero, and other cast, having their voice heard in scene and in synch. The only issue concerning comes with George Kennedy’s dialogue which is dubbed to be more archetypical German of the Nazi-era; however, this route was not heavily travelled with very few lines being delivered by Kennedy, or rather Kennedy’s voiceover actor. Ambience travels amply and disseminates well for a single signal to travel through a stereo output and this jumps the eclectic range of action from the speakers to your ears. Granted, the action is very selective as you don’t every nuisance of jungle skirmishes and the other village landscapes, but there is enough and what’s not covered is often overlayed with Maurizio Dami’s tribal, tropical paradisio percussion and parallel synth with echoing vocal snips, such as whistling, and peppered with scene bytes – the chase sequence where the first batch of armed men running down Ted Angelo is audio composition gold. Special features on Cauldron’s standard Blu-ray contain an exclusive, new interview with lead man Franco Nero Black Top!, an interview with Eugenio Ercolani The Strange Case of Ted Archer, parapolitic researcher Robert Skvarla takes at examples of known alien sightings and speculations in Alien Terminated: The Alien Theories, an audio commentary by film historian Eric Zaldivar that includes interviews from Deborah Moore and Robert Redcross, and with additional insight on Italian cult films from actors Brett Halsey and Richard Harrison. The clear Amaray Blu-ray houses reversible cover art, both representing original artwork from the film’s release. The primary art is more adventurously exciting with Angelo’s arm wrapped around Moore and a rope, reminiscent of “Romancing the Stone,” while the interior cover plays to the science fiction side of the story, more “Terminator-y” to be exact. There are no inserts or other tangible items included. The 92-minute feature is presented unrated with a hard encoded region A playback.

Last Rites: “Top Line” is a top tier title with a little bit of everything for everybody that’s accentuated by a on-the-run Franco Nero performance with a new, gorgeous 2K transfer Blu-ray packed with special features from our friends at Cauldron Films.

When Everyone’s Out To Get You, You Get “Top Line” on Blu-ray!

Feminism’s EVIL Plan Thwarted by CIA Hunk in “The Million Eyes of Sumuru” reviewed! (Blue Underground / Extended Edition 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Sumuru’s Eyes Are Everywhere, Even Here on Amazon! Purchase the 4K and Standard Blu-ray Set Here!

Tall, handsome, and witty CIA agent Nick West is about to go on a much-needed vacation.  As soon as he steps outside of headquarters, he’s approached by British agent Colonel Baisbrook to cash in a favor the CIA owes the British government.  Unable to refuse, West agrees to investigate the assassination plot against one President Boong of an unnamed East Asian country.  The assassins are nothing short of extraordinary as a bunch of femme fatale infiltrators have put themselves in positions of power all over the globe as wives and girlfriends of nation leaders and President Boong is the only one that has refused to take the bait.  West and his good friend Tommy Carter find themselves quipping and philandering amongst the most dangerous female-centric organization on the planet, led by the ruthless and beautiful Sumuru.  To protect President Boong, West must become friendly with Sumuru who uses his likeness in a new elimination plot that puts him front, center, and in between saving the world or watch the men become subservient by an ambitious woman seeking world domination.

Double agents.  Foreign places.  Secret lairs.  Suave operatives.  Sexy women.  These descriptors are the very spirit of a James Bond movie.  At the height of the Sean Connery 007 era, plenty of knockoffs were produced to capitalize on the action and sex appeal of martini-drinking covert agent that rules the 1960s.  One of those copies was helmed by Lindsay Shonteff in 1967, titled “The Million Eyes of Sumuru.”  The “Devil Doll” and “Voodoo Blood Bath” director had already an espionage thriller under his directorial belt with “The 2nd Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World,” I bet you can guess who the first was during that time.  Kevin Kavanagh pens the script from the original story by legendary B-movie producer Harry Alan Towers (“The Face of Fu Manchu,” “Psycho-Circus”) that would become an incongruously and acerbically witty-tale of pseudo-feminism with hot pursuits, sensual promiscuity, and a dart gun that can turn a person to stone.  Towers also produces “The Million Eyes of Sumuru” under his LLC and filmed in Hong Kong at the Shaw Brothers Studios. 

As Sean Connery heats up the screen with his double 0 escapades through all over the global to thwart the men of evil and with an astounding amount of carbon copy espionage reels rearing to chase the all mighty buck, “The Million Eyes Sumuru” desperately needed a cast to keep afloat in a flooded spy film market.  For the most part, Towers and Shonteff’s cast pull off exactly what the story needed, a caricature of crowning chuckles subdued only by its slivers of spy game ventures.  That’s not to say there’s an abundance of gun play and fight sequences with terrific tussling as “House of 1,000 Doll’s” George Nadar uses his tall stature and ear-to-ear smile to be a lover, not a fighter in the wise-crackin’ American CIA agent Nick West.  West destroys the all-women Sumuru arsenal with just his manliness in a satirical jab at Ian Fleming’s titular protagonist and, for all intent and purposes, it works in the story to see Sumuru’s plans become ruined by not a gun nor a fist but because women in her organization, even Sumuru (Shirley Eaten, “Goldfinger”) herself, throw themselves onto him at critical moments and Nadar’s timing and screen charm laps every second of it.  Frankie Avalon (“Horror House”) and Wilfred Hyde-White (“The Third Man”) play Nick West’s allies as friend Tommy Carter and cavalier British agent Colonel Baisbrook who both play in two totally different capacities.  Tommy Carter equals West witticisms but falls behind as the friend who must journey solo to find West in the middle of Asia while Baisbrook effortlessly shows up in the nick of time to be either a savior or West’s handler with another mission in his pocket for West to reluctantly tackle.  A pair of principals that are held at bay is the beautiful Maria Rohm (“99 Women”) and the eccentric Klaus Kinski (“Nosferatu the Vampyre”) whose swift takes leave more to be desired as Rohm becomes weak-kneed on her Sumuru femme fatale application and Kinski plays drug-addicted, politically incorrect, and perverse president of this untitled Asian country. 

“The Million Eyes of Sumuru” contests to be a smartly funny, exotically set, and action-invested covert operative film of the late 60s, swimming against the current of some of the hard to beats and who have more of a legacy in the subgenre.  While “The Million Eyes of Sumuru might be more Swinging 60’s with cavalierism rather than sophistication and intent, the production value could rival the best Bond film of it’s time but it’s the stunts that drive this one down below the bar as Shonteff looks toward George Nadar’s quick wit and budding personality to be the masculine sex symbol that drives the rabid female race to their supposed manhating knees.  Its quite comical to see a firm line of feminism course through the plot’s veins, a plot where deadly women penetrate and subvert men world leaders only to become a slave to West’s dunce charm and attractive appearance.  West really isn’t the smartest of secret agents as he’s not trying to evade capture with rapid haste or fool anybody of his intentions; instead, he’s just mildly clever with broad shoulders and, apparently, that’s what women droll over instead of carrying out their loyalty pact of a global coup d’etat.   

Swinging onto the 4k Ultra HD Blu-ray bandwagon is the Blue Underground’s 2-Disc combo set UHD and Standard Blu-ray release of “The Million Eyes of Sumuro.”  The HEVC encoded, 2164p resolution, BD66 has picture quality absolution with a stunning brand-new 4K restoration transfer from the original 35mm camera negative thought originally lost.  The rich and colorful picture hits all the important markers with balanced film density that diffuses the hues nicely into every aspect of depth and focus, from the background to the foreground.  This goes for texture too.  No matter where an object lies in the frame, there’s an accurate representation in the reproduction inside the immense range of color schemes, landscapes, and textures.  Delineation is quite pleasing; the close ups of George Nader’s face exhibit ever facial feature with precision without appearing overly bright or smoothed.  The AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, BD50 Blu-ray captures much of the same finer points too on a slimmer pixel count but still denotes Blue Underground’s improved restoration, complete with inky blacks and no compressional misses to sully the quality.  The extended cut adds approx. 10 minutes of additional footage, which in these cases can often be less-than-pristine upon discovery of the elements but the additional scenes are seamlessly blended into previous releases’ runtime, suggesting the print was greatly protected from all harmful exterior factors.  A single channel English DTS-HD mono is the only mix available. Though standard and not as dynamic as more modern audio designs, the uncompressed track provides superb fidelity clearness, cleanliness, and with an even-keeled throughout.  The snappy dialogue shows prominence amongst a wide-berth range of surrounding elements.  There’s a blend of ADR and live recording, much to the chagrin of the Asian actors who have their English post-dubbed with a more accented stereotype.  English SDH are optionally available.  Capacity limitations on the UHD keep disc one to just two audio commentaries:  Film academics David Del Valle and Dan Marino on the first commentary with usual commentary notables Nathaniel Thompson and Troy Howarth on the second.  These commentaries are encoded on the Standard Blu-ray version of the film, accompanied by a new feature-length documentary England’s Unknown Exploitation Film Eccentric:  The Schlock-Cinema Legacy of Lindsay Shonteff that has historian interviewees, such as Kim Newman, discuss the brilliance of Shonteff’s work amongst the espionage thrillers of the time, an exclusive RiffTrax Edition of the film, riffed by Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy, the theatrical trailer, and the poster and still gallery.  It’s always a pleasure and a thrill to have tactile elements on the Blue Underground O-slips, such as this release with the embossed title overtop and below the memorable packed compositional, illustrated artwork.  The slightly thicker black Amaray casing houses the same artwork with a reverse side of the original Blue Underground DVD artwork.  Each interior side contain each format disc, pressed individual with the same cover arts, with the Blu-ray on the left and the UHD on the right.  Encoded for all region playback, “The Million Eyes of Sumuru” now clocks in at 89 minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: “The Million Eyes of Sumuru” has a million positives – a farce of the espionage subgenre, cheekily acted, exotic locations, and an extended, clean-cut version from Blue Underground – to name a few that quickly surmises the Lindsay Shonteff film to be the golden gun of his repertoire.

Sumuru’s Eyes Are Everywhere, Even Here on Amazon! Purchase the 4K and Standard Blu-ray Set Here!

This Spy’s Sex Serum Will Drive Men EVILLY Mad! “Blue Rita” reviewed! (Full Moon Features / Blu-ray – DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Own “Blue Rita” on Blu-ray and DVD Combo Set Today!

Misandrist Blue Rita owns a high-end gentlemen’s cabaret.  Her renowned nightclub is also a front for espionage activities.  With the help of a Bergen, her handling, and her right-hand club manager Gina, she’s fed male targets that are affluent and powerful to kidnap and torture to extract sensitive intelligence information.  As a side hustle, a perk that comes with exploiting the naked and chained up men in her underground boxed cells, Blue Rita uses her chemical powers of seduction to sexually torture her captives into withdrawing their bank accounts dry.  When new girl Sun is hired in to not only titillate the nightclub client with her erotic Pippi Longstocking performances, the Blue Rita pledger works her first mission to reel in a wealthy, international boxer as the next target but Sun’s own conflictions collide with Rita’s sworn hate for all men, cracking the door open ajar just enough for Interpol and the Russian intelligence agencies to try and undermine Blue Rita’s confrontational spy operations. 

What’s renowned most about eurotrash filmmaker Jesus (Jess) Franco is his diverse contributions to the European and American movie-making markets.  Though most of his work is regarded as schlocky, beneath the sleaze and sordidness is a carefully calculating psychotronic director.  True, Franco may not be famously esteemed as, let’s say Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg, but his infamy should not be ignored amongst the present company of similar filmmakers like Tinto Brass or even Roman Polanski.  One of the late Franco’s few spy game theme films, “Blue Rita” is a hot house of sleaze and deceit, written by the director.  Filmed in Germany with German actors and actresses, the film went under the original title “Das Frauenhaus” translated as “The House of Women,” referring to the Blue Rita’s distaste for men and keeping an all-femme fatale, and mostly nude, workforce for her clandestine affairs.  Elite Film is the production company with Erwin C. Deitrich (“Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun,” “Swedish Nympho Slaves”) producing.

Much like Franco’s diverse dips into a variety of subgenres, “Blue Rita’s” cast is also quite an assorted lot in talent from sexploitation, horror, and the XXX industry.  The German production also garnered not just homefield advantage with German actors but also lured into the fold some of the French cast cuisine to spice up the affair.  Martine Fléty is one of those French foreigners, embodying the lead role of Blue Rita.  An adult actress of primarily the 70s, “Blue Rita” became Fléty only titular role but wasn’t her last Jess Franco feature, having continued her X-rated run with the director in “Elles Font Tout,” “I Burn All Over,” and “Claire.”  Either half or entirely naked for the entire narrative, Fléty’s comfortability bare-bottom relays power in her performance as an unwavering femme fatale agent that has men begging for sex and begging for their very lives.  Back then, the lines blurred between porn and sexploitation, often times melding into European coalescence hitting the same marquee theaters until it’s eventual separation.  Esther Moser (“Around the World in 80 Beds,” “Ilsa, The Wicked Warden”), Angela Ritschard (“Jack the Ripper,” “Bangkok Connection”), Vicky Mesmin (“Dancers for Tangier,” “Love Inferno”), Roman Huber (“Girls in the Night Traffic,” “Sex Swedish Girls in a Boarding School”), Olivier Mathot (“Diamonds of Kilimandjaro,” “French Erection”) and Pamela Stanford (“Sexy Sisters,” “Furies sexuelles”) rode, among other things, that fine line between grindhouse gauche and the taboo and certainly do well to incorporate both traits in Franco’s equally indeterminate genre film.  German actor and one of the principal leads Eric Falk (“Caged Women,” Secrets of a French Maid”) too dappled between crowds as a tall, dark, and chiseled chin but the actor chiefly sought limelight in sexploitation and as the haughty boxer Janosch Lassard, who karate chops at lightning speed, Falk adds to “Blue Rita’s” sexy-spy thriller.  Opposite the titular vixen is “Wicked Women’s” Dagmar Bürger who, like the rest of the cast, have crossed paths in a handful of exploitation exciters.  Bürger has perhaps the least built-up character Sun as she’s subtly folded into Blue Rite’s innermost circle without as much as a single ounce of doubt in her character, perhaps due in part to Bergen, Blue Rita’s handler, was once Sun’s direct-to, but Sun becomes the impetus key to everything falling apart at the seams and her role’s framework feels unsatisfactory just as her crumbling infatuation that’s more arbitrary than motivationally centric.

“Blue Rita” doesn’t necessarily broach as a film by Jess Franco whose typical undertakings are coated with sleazy gothic and historical context.  The 1979 feature, set around the extraction of international intelligence data by way of chemical approach, not terribly farfetched considering how the CIA once used LSD as a truth serum, is about as sordid and sexually graphic as any Jess Franco film gets but brings about a futuristic air laced with not just super cool spy gadgets and weaponry, to which there are really none to speak of as an example, there lies a more ultramodern verge upon unseen in much of the earlier, Spanish-born director’s work.  A futuristic holding pen with a capacity no bigger than an industrial-sized washing machine with a descending spiked barred ceiling, a hyper-aphrodisiac goo that makes men so horny it puts them on the edge of insanity and death, and the sleek, contemporary sex room with translucent furniture and stark white walls all in the routine hustle and bustle of Paris, France. “Blue Rita’s” contrarian patinas add to the film’s colorful charisma of avant-garde stripteases and a black operations nightclub, two of which combined play more into the “Austin Powers” funky 1970s ecosphere rather than in the high-powered espionage world of James Bond, the Roger Moore years.

For the first time on Blu-ray in the North American market, Full Moon Features puts out into the world a fully remastered, high-definition, 2-disc Blu-ray and DVD set. The AVC encoded, 1080p, BD25 entails picture perfect image quality that sharpen “Blue Rita” with greater resolution in comparison to previous DVD versions with full-bodied color, in setting tones and in body tones, and a contour-creating delineation that establishes depth and texture better, presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Not flawless mind you with soft spots rearing up every so often in the variety of interior and exterior, organically and inorganically lit scenes but there’s distinct contrast that delivers a recognizing lighting scheme that deepens the shadows in the right places without signs of an inadequate compression, especially on a single layer Blu-ray, and the Full Moon release retains natural grain with no DNR or other image enhancements. The release comes with two audio options, a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 and a French Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, both of which have a horrendously acted burned-in English dub of not the original actors’ voices. Banal dub does take the quality of Franco’s dialogue down a good peg or two, which the original dub track was likely spoken in native German and some French judging by the cast list nationalities and where the bigger distribution market was for the planned; yet, though the dialogue is verbose and ploddingly straightforward to make do, losing some of the depth in the process, the quality is voluminous to ensure no mistake is made in underemphasizing the story’s outline when necessary. Ambience and other design markers hit more than well enough to sell the surroundings and the action to make those qualities palpable. English subtitles are option but not available on the setup; they will have to added in per your setup’s options. The Blu-ray extras come with a rare photo gallery, an archived interview with Chris Alexander with Peter Strickland discussing Franco circa 2013, and a vintage Jess Franco Trailer Reel. The DVD houses a different set of special features, separate from the Blu-ray’s, with Slave in the Women’s House interview with Eric’s Falk plus the DVD also offers Eurocine trailers. Those interested in supplementary content will be forced to pop in both discs to fully abreast of all bonus material. What’s eye-catching about the Full Moon Feature’s release is the erotic front cover on the cardboard O-slipcover, sleekly illustrated for your kink and perversive pleasure. The Blu-ray Amary inside has a NSFW story still of Dagmar Bürger walking down a spiral staircase in the buff. The same Dagmar Bürger image graces the DVD cover while a new illustrated luscious lips are pressed on the Blu-ray disc opposite side. There is no insert or booklet included. The region free release has a runtime of 78 minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: The late Jess Franco may have a cache full of sleaze in his repertoire, but the director had a sense of panache and intensity that’s sorely underrated outside his fanbase. “Blue Rita” shows Franco’s range, stylistically and genre, and Full Moon’s sultry release is now high-definition gold in the color blue.

Own “Blue Rita” on Blu-ray and DVD Combo Set Today!

Conman Bites Off More EVIL Than He Can Chew. “Impulse” reviewed! (Grindhouse Releasing / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Pre-Order “Impulse” Here at Amazon!

As a boy, Matt Stone had an altercation that resulted in the transfixing death of a man at his hands.  As an adult years later after a sanitarium stint, Stone seduces wealthy women as a sophisticated and well-off playboy, using the cultured guise as way to con women out of thousands of dollars, and then murders them when has milked them for all their worth or when their patience for his extravagant and philandering behavior has run it’s course.  When he meets widow Ann Moy, Stone begins his plan of deceit, eyeing not only the single mother for her riches but also Ann’s even more affluent and eccentric best friend Julia.   Stone’s scheme begins to unravel when a strong-arming ex-partner unexpected show up to force into his ploy, his mental instability flares into paranoia and near psychosis, and then there’s rambunctious Tina, Ann’s young daughter who even though doesn’t want Stone to replace her deceased father also witnesses firsthand Stone’s violent transgressions. 

Personally, when William Shatner comes into the conversation about anything, “Star Trek” inevitable pops into the mind first thing.  “Star Trek” and “Captain Kirk” have become not only a household name for Trekkies but also for the non-science fiction laymen who rather get lost in, dare I say, rom-coms.  Shudder.  Diehard horror fans know Shatner is more than just the charismatic space explorer seducing alien women, karate chopping the Gorn, and become inundated with the furry Tribble.  The now 92-year-old Canadian born Shatner has sporadically yet constantly been the star of thrillers for much of his career, such as 1966’s “Incubus,” 1975’s “The Devil’s Rain,” and even the more recent 2019’s “Devil’s Revenge” with fluctuating, polarizing success.  Yet, one of Shatner’s engrossingly more disturbing performances comes from director William Grefé’s (“Mako:  The Jaws of Death”) 1974 schizo-thriller “Impulse.”  Penned by “Blood Mania” and “The Killing Kind’s” Tony Crechales, “Impulse” was filmed in Tampa, Florida under Conquerer Films with Socrates Ballis in his first producing role.

What most don’t realize about William Shatner, from their limited scope of him inside just “Star Trek,” is the man has range and can accomplish more complexity than just being confident space captain.  “Impulse” really drives Shatner to split hairs and be a polygonal persona, one that goes into deep anxiety at the sight of blood or extreme violence, one that can polished and suave in charm and romance, and one that can be ruthless and cunning.  All these traits fit into Shatner’s performance bubble of Matt Stone, chiseling each angle of the traumatized encoded individual into a wolf in sheep’s clothing in constant conflict with himself and those around him.  With the exception of Tina, those around Stone are targets as he swoons Anne Moy (Jennifer Bishop, “Horror of the Blood Monster”) and Julia Marstow (Ruth Roman, “The Baby”) of their money.  Anne and Julie feed into Stone’s false promises and hidden agendas and, as characters, Bishop and Marstow play their diverse friendship with traditional flare that can be easily duped by a stranger from off the street and barely know.  Tina is the only wildcard.  With the look like Heather O’Rourke and a prickly preteen attitude, Kim Nicholas falls in tune with the boy who cried wolf but, in this instance, as the girl who cried wolf as she becomes the aware adolescent privy to a fault to Stone’s dangerous side.  Agitated by the loss of her father and her mother’s effortless slip into a physical relationship, not to forget to mention her impish naughtiness, turns Tina into an incredible source, labeled spiteful, and angry at the world despite her true knowledge of her own world burning down around her with Matt Stone at the wheel.  “Impulse” rounds out the cast with James Dobson (“The Search for the Evil One”), Marcia Knight (“Stanley”), Shatner’s then wife Marcy Lafferty (“Kingdom of the Spiders”), and James Bond’s Odd-Job himself, the former heavy weight wrestler Harold Sakata as the ex-partner Karate Pete crashing Stone’s scam.

William Grefé steers childhood trauma to be the root cause that shapes Matt Stone into a cold and calculating killer.  While not driven to be a rabid dog seeking to kill on sight, the sweet and innocent child only protecting his mother from the potentially rapist hand of a drunken brute had not only been scarred by the incident but also incited his mother to institutionally commit him as if assigning him blameful wrongdoing, extenuating his reality into a woman hating deviant.  And the worst part of it is, and the part that Grefé is able to define and make Stone be sympathetic to audiences, is Stone knows he shouldn’t have been deinstitutionalized, as he more than once referred to his situation as a puppy left out in the middle of the street.  Then, does “Impulse” become more of a tragedy for our principal villain as an unfortunate byproduct of a catastrophic situation, an ill fit mother, and a system that have all let him spiral down to this point in the story?  The only individual to see through his ruse, in fact, is another child, Tina, with a child’s sixth sense in their melting pot of developing emotions.  The social niceties and grown-up cognitive reasoning shield Anne Moy, Julia Marstow, and others, and even to an extent the unscrupulous brute Karate Pete, from Stone’s devious nature and his will to survive at any cost, no matter who he has to kill whether be a lover, former partner, or a little girl. 

The new Grindhouse Releasing, the first through the distribution firm MVD, is a 2-disc Blu-ray release restored from a rare archived, 35mm film elements.  The original negative was unfortunately destroyed and the restored, 4K scanned print comes with a prologue disclaimer that some elements may not be up to quality standards.  However, the print, on the March 12th Blu-ray release now available for pre-order, looks stellar, stored on an AVC encoded, 1080p High-Definition, BD50, and presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio, with only a few noticeable scratches, faint to the eye, in a few brief frames within the natural grain.  Grading can appear monochromatic gray in some exterior scenes but the overall grading pops and are distinct in natural-looking shading. We can also look at Grefé’s direction and Edmund Gibson’s cinematography as just as striking as the picture quality with brazen, worth-while shots that include an interior car shot aimed toward the windshield heading toward a watery grave. The English language original mono track, for a single channel output, clears the bar with room to spare with intelligible, comprehensive dialogue, capturing every word and sentence distinct and syllabized to great detail without too much interference, technically and from layering. Slight popping and background electronic interference never engulfs or take the reins over the layers. Decent spacing and a good range, supported by the Lewis Perles lingering unhinged musical composition, adds value to Shatner and the casts’ performances. Grindhouse Releasing Blu-ray also comes with the original mono French soundtrack. English subtitles are optionally available. Loaded with special features with a William Grefé audio commentary, Shatner Between the Treks a Ballyhoo produced documentary regarding Shatner’s various projects before, after, and in-between, Kingdom of the Shatner is a William Shatner live interview in Santa Monica in Oct. ’22 after a Shatner triple feature, Shatner promo shorts, William Grefé shorts “Thumbs,” “Iceman,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “Underwood,” a making-of “Impulse,” the 40th anniversary screening at the Tampa Theater with William Grefé post-film discussion, the raw footage of Shatner saving Harold Sakata from accidental lynching with two commentaries from Grefé and Shatner, still gallery, two theatrical trailers, and other trailers from Grindhouse Releasing titles. Also included are bonus Grefé features, including “The Devil’s Sisters that has its own special features with an introduction, Grefé audio commentary, radio spot, still gallery, and a revisiting of the film from the director, plus “The Godmothers” with only an intro by Grefé. Grindhouse Releasing’s “Impulse” is truly a lovefest of the two Bills, Grefé and Shatner, and the label really goes the extra mile with a deluxe edition and restored release with a character and title embossed, fully colorized, and rigid cardboard sleeve with a clear, dual disc push lock Amaray Blu-ray case sporting the originally illustrated, composition cover art that’s also reversible with the same sleave cover design that’s utter madness on printed cardboard. Inside, the discs are locked in on the right, one on top of the other with the top disc snuggly in behind the feature disc in a vertical layout, and both disc arts are rendered with pulpy aesthetics and primary colored, yet darkened feature stills for full fear effect. Opposite in the insert section, a 4×6 illustrated liner portrait of Matt Stone painted by artist Dave Lebow, and a 6-page linear note booklet with color pictures, grindhouse posters, and an essay by Jacques Boyreau. The 87-minute Blu-ray comes region free and is not rated.

Last Rites: The tale of two Bills, Shatner and Grefé, is a match made in heaven, or, better yet, a match made in demented evil with “Impulse” and Grindhouse Releasing stuns with a fully loaded, supersized, and Shatner-stuffed 2-Disc release that puts the film rightfully up on a grandstand pedestal.

Pre-Order “Impulse” Here at Amazon!