Steele and Ardisson in a climactic moment with the film’s “wicker man” construction.
that it’s about a domineering man who is dominated by his own sexual impulses, and Ardisson pants his way through his romantic scenes without much heat or conviction. This script needed to be as volcani- cally erotic in execution as THE WHIP AND THE BODY and it isn’t, even with the odd tit on display.
Raro Video’s Italian import disc, produced in association with Horror Club, is not quite as satisfying as it is welcome. The film is presented in its origi- nal 1.66:1 screen ratio, but the image is without anamorphic enhancement and the positive print source is witness to scratches and other markings. The contrast is wildly uneven from scene to scene, the pic- ture brightens at the extreme screen right throughout, and
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the black mattes above and be- low the picture are never darker than a chalky gray. Audio tracks in Italian and English are pro- vided, the Italian one having superior sound quality and syn- chronization. Unfortunately, there is no English subtitle op- tion to encourage non-Italians to select the original soundtrack. The English dub, with Dan Sturkie handling most of the male roles single-handedly, is acceptable. There is no trailer, but interviews with the director’s son Eduardo Margheriti (10m 40s, filmed in the cellar at Profondo Rosso) and critic An- tonio Tentori (6m 17s) are in- cluded, again in Italian without English subtitles. Fortunately, the accompanying illustrated book- let with text by Tentori—includ- ing a peculiarly fannish list of “The Best Scenes”—is bilingual.
SAM’S SONG
aka LINE OF FIRE, THE SWAP 1969, Carrefour, DD-1.0/ST, 89m 5s, NSR, PAL DVD-0 By Brad Stevens
SAM’S SONG is among the great “lost” works of American cinema. The sole directorial ef- fort of Jordan Leondopoulos (subsequently an editor on THE EXORCIST and WOLFEN and author of a book about D.W. Griffith’s INTOLERANCE), this remarkable film would almost certainly be long (and unjustly) forgotten had it not starred a young Robert De Niro in his first lead role (shot just before Brian De Palma’s HI, MOM!). De Niro plays Sam, an editor working on a documentary (containing foot- age of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan) who is invited to spend a weekend in Long Island by
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