MARQUIS DE SADE'S JUSTINE (Blu-ray Review) - Blue Underground

Italy, France/1969
Directed By: Jess Franco
Written By: Harry Alan Towers
Starring: Romina Powers, Maria Rohm, Klaus Kinski
Color/124 Minutes/Not Rated
Region FREE
Release Date:
Limited Edition 3 Disc BD/DVD/CD Combo Pack

The Film
Justine and her older sister Juliette are left orphaned after their father is forced to leave the country and their mother dies and are removed from their convent where they're training to be nuns. The sisters quickly take different roads in life as Juliette shacks up at a brothel and takes to a life of crime while Justine clutches on to her innocence and virginity while she's put through trial of physical and sexual abuse and torture, framed for murder, forced into a gang of fugitives just to name a few as told by the Marquis De Sade himself.

JUSTINE is Jess Franco's biggest production and it certainly feels and looks like it with lavish costuming, big sets dripping with gorgeous dressing and a substantial amount of locations and cast members. The film looks beautiful and despite a few "Franco being Franco" moments (including a needless quick zoom to a totally out of focus eyeball) this is a stylish and skillfully made production. Unfortunately the star Romina Powers is either totally disconnected from the material or blissfully (for her own sake) unaware that she's making a movie. She has a perfect look for the character of Justine as she has a naturally innocent look but she's as wooden as wooden can get and doesn't emote any of the tasteless brutality that she endures again and again.

The script can be blamed for that however as much of the straight forward mean spirited nature the original story has toward Justine is lightened and there is a moment of reprieve for Justine in the film where she meets a man who has a genuine love for her and wants to protect her. It leaves the film being a bit uneven and awkward at times. Jack Palance and Mercedes McCambridge play supporting roles who both kill it with their respective performances. As the story goes Palance was drunk on red wine by 7am each morning and that very well may have lead to his totally bizarre and off the fucking wall performance while McCambridge owns the screen during her scenes as a powerful leader of a band of thieves and swindlers. If Romina Powers had half the charisma or talent as McCambridge she could have won an Oscar for this film. The film still succeeds in adapting the De Sade story, with a performance from Klaus Kinski himself as the author locked up in a prison having hallucinatory visions of naked chained women bleeding from their necks and covered in sweat.

JUSTINE is worthy of praise as the good certainly outweighs the bad and will live on as one of Jess Franco's most attractive and lavish productions. It makes me think about how incredibly some of his horror films could have looked and how big their scope could have been had he had the budget he had on JUSTINE.


The Audio & Video
Blue Underground takes what is arguably Jess Franco's most visually stimulating and lush production and give it the Blu-ray release it deserves with a stunning anamorphic widescreen transfer keeping the film's original 1.66:1 aspect ratio. Colors are vibrant and vivid while there is excellent detail level in textures and surfaces. You can almost feel the scratchiness of the wool garb! Skin tones are fleshy and natural with no signs of waxiness or excessive digital scrubbing. The film's natural grain structure is kept gracefully in tact and there's really nothing that could have been done better on this disc from a visual standpoint. And the English DST-HD mono audio is largely the same with a crisp and clear track that is free of any background noise or distortions. The dialogue and beautiful score from Bruno Nicolai are beautifully complimentary and have a great mix.

Please Note: Screen shots are taken from the DVD copy of the film and do NOT represent the quality of the Blu-ray transfer.

The Extras
-"The Perils And Pleasures Of Justine" - Interviews with Co-writer/Director Jess Franco and Producer Harry Alan Towers (20 minutes)
-Stephen Thrower On JUSTINE - Interview with Stephen Thrower author of "Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco" (18 minutes)
-French Trailer
-Poster and Still Gallery
-Booklet by Stephen Thrower
-CD Soundtrack
-DVD Copy of the Film

The Bottom Line
This period piece adapted from the story of the same name is sometimes sleazy, sometimes excellent and sometimes a misfire. Those misfires are quickly followed up by more sleaze and excellence most of the time which lands JUSTINE as a perhaps under appreciated piece of Franco's filmography and one that will hopefully gain some attention from this gorgeous Blu-ray release.

MARQUIS DE SADE'S JUSTINE is available HERE

Hostel 3 (2011)

Every horror franchise I can think of reaches a point where it ceases to be any good. Hostel has reached that point.

Scott is soon to be married and on his way to his bacelor party trip with his best friend Carter, only to find out that their destination isn't going to be based around the golf links, but in Las Vegas with Scott's other best friends Justin and Mike. After meeting a couple of girls in a casino who tell them about a "freaky" place off the strip to party the real bachelor party is underway. A feeding tube 40oz, plenty of naked women and more random people than you'd know what to do with are the setting inside of this sketchy warehouse. After the night of partying Mike and the escort he was with disappear and eventually they get a message from his phone to meet them at a motel where they are gassed by masked men and brought back to a dingy room and housed inside of metal cages. Carter reveals his Elite Hunting Club tattoo and they free him where he has a meeting with the bigwigs of the club. It's revealed that this is all a setup on Scott because Carter wants his woman. Scott and Carter end up fighting with swords and a mace before all hell breaks loose at the club setting up a really cliched twist ending.

Scott Spiegel, best know for directing INTRUDER and for his various roles working on Sam Raimi films, directs the first HOSTEL entry to go straight to video and to not be directed by Eli Roth. Spiegel's direction is bland and uninspired but so is the rest of the film. The editing suffers from fast jumpy music video style editing at times that plagues many independent horror films. The photography looks plain awful on more than one occasion, notably during a couple of hand to hand fight scenes. There is a ghosting lag that looks like a shitty video game connection on the internet. The effects are cheaply done and don't really hide themselves. Look for a scene with cockroaches and sparks from a cane to see exactly what I mean. Aside from all of that the cast does a nice job for the most part. They carried a rather weak script and made it believable and aside from hamming it up on occasion the acting was the bright spot of the movie. I wish we could have seen more from Thomas Kretschmann though.

Obviously this movie had more budget limitations than the previous entries of the series had (which were by no means big budget films) but there wasn't much about Hostel 3 that really worked to make the best of it. The switch in setting from Eastern Europe to Las Vegas had pros and cons. It was cool to see a bit more of the EHC, and I suppose it works as a linked international organization, with different chapters or clubhouses but the real world sketchiness that Eastern Europe has provided in the not so distant past, along with the unknowing-tourist-in-peril aspect really added to the atmosphere of the first two movies for me. A seedy hostel in a small town of Slovakia would be scarier to me than anywhere in Las Vegas.

Hostel 3 doesn't have a whole lot going for it. Love him or hate him, it really would have benefited from Eli Roth behind the camera. It probably won't be the worst movie I watch in 2012 but this isn't exactly how I wanted to start out the new year.

4/10