the music kicks in, the directors have a marvelous knack for bond- ing this borrowed music to their own project with complementary sound effects, like ice being thrown into a glass, which are dis- tinctly musical complements. It’s in these areas where the film is both most troublesome and most tantalizing, but for viewers up to the challenge, the conflict leads to an engagement with the material that is quite rare. Strand Releasing’s region-free Blu-ray disc presents the film in 1080p 2.35:1, with a DTS-HD Master Audio French 5.1 track with optional English subtitles. You won’t find better demonstra- tion material anywhere in recent vintage; Manuel Dacosse’s HD cinematography is ravishing and, as mentioned earlier, the sound- track is alternately plush and as- saultive, not to mention fully directional. There are no supple- mentary contents aside from a 1m 43s theatrical trailer and trailers for other Strand titles. A film like this seems ideal for deconstructive commentary, so we look forward to subsequent releases and repackagings.


THREE BLU-RAY ANDY MILLIGAN FILMS


1969-70, Code Red, $64.99, BD TORTURE DUNGEON 1969, 79m 46s, BD


BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS 1970, 78m 40s, BD


THE MAN WITH TWO HEADS 1970, 80m 44s, BD By Tim Lucas


This release of three Andy Milligan titles on Blu-ray, utilizing elements found in the vaults of rights holder Films Around the World, is revelatory though not for the reasons one might expect. All three films look appreciably sharper and more detailed than earlier video releases suggested was possible, but they remain


68


John Miranda dallies with a prostitute showgirl in Andy Milligan’s version of “Sweeney Todd,” BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS.


recklessly framed and shot, a problem exacerbated by having images filmed in 16mm at open aperture 1.33:1 blown up to 35mm and cropped to 1.78:1. More surprising is what these pre-


sentations gain in terms of audio clarity, which, coupled with the sharper (and grainier) image, ex- poses more truth where the per- formances are concerned. There are some surprisingly good per- formances to be found in these films—utterly unsupported by the filmmaking, of course, but sometimes rising above their unfortunate circumstances. The earliest of the three films, the Staten Island-shot TORTURE DUNGEON, is the only one of the three titles whose origins are not explained on the disc packaging, though it appears to originate from a clean and more than usu- ally complete 35mm print. We originally reviewed the film in VW 53:37; in brief, it’s a bizarre mash- up of Elizabethan revenge play and Disney fairy tale in which the one-armed, sterile, epileptic, bi- sexual Norman, Duke of Norwich (Jeremy Brooks, aka Gerald Jaccuzzo)—illegitimate son of the deceased King—conspires with his


hunchbacked catamite Ivan to murder a path to the throne. Code Red’s presentation runs only 9s longer than our reported running time for the film’s original release on Midnight Video/Select-A-Tape VHS (79m 35s) yet the Blu-ray seems more fraught with nudity, including frontal nudity (male and female) than we remember. De- spite the title, it’s not a particu- larly gruesome film but what bloodshed and graphic horror there is, is more crisply and coherently rendered. Blatantly cribbing lines from Shakespeare and Marlowe, the script includes a lot of choice dialogue of its own, and the pre- vailing air of cosplay absurdity— exacerbated by a makeshift polka dot dress that barely covers hero- ine Heather MacGregor (Susan Cassidy) or holds together—is memorably interrupted for several minutes by a pair of surprisingly well-played soliloquies by Ivan (Richard Mason) and the Duke’s wife Rosemary (Patricia Garvey). But the real reason to see the film remains the jaw-dropping, uncred- ited performance by the unbilled woman who plays Magda, a kind of manic, ditzy, larger-than-life fairy godmother sent to advise


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