Tag Archives: Roger Moore

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!

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!