HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN: RARITIES COLLECTION VOL. 2
Synopsis from Severin Films: In this second collection inspired by her “groundbreaking” (Screen Anarchy) book that “forever changed the landscape of film analysis” (Bloody Disgusting), producer/curator Kier-La Janisse presents a new quartet of international classics – along with nearly 11 combined hours of Special Features – that explores startling depictions of female neurosis on screen: Amanda Plummer gives a searing performance as a disturbed drifter on a cross-country killing spree in BUTTERFLY KISS, the breakthrough debut from director Michael Winterbottom. Legendary Czech actress Iva Janžurová portrays a pair of rival sisters in Juraj Herz’ crazed gothic melodrama MORGIANA. In Ben Maddow, Sidney Meyers and Joseph Strick’s ‘dramatized documentary’ THE SAVAGE EYE, Barbara Baxley stars as a bitter divorcee adrift in Los Angeles’ dark underbelly. And with the landmark Spanish thriller THE GLASS CEILING starring Carmen Sevilla, writer/director Eloy de la Iglesia crafts an unsettling story of paranoia, madness and murder. All 4 films in HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN: RARITIES COLLECTION VOLUME 2 have been scanned from their original camera negatives and are presented on Blu-ray for the first time ever in North America.
BUTTERFLY KISS (1995)
Label: Severin Films
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 87 Minutes 56 Seconds
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Stereo with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Cast: Amanda Plummer, Saskia Reeves, Ricky Tomlinson
Michael Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People) debut feature film Butterfly Kiss (1995) is a demented road movie starring Amanda Plummer (Pulp Fiction) as Eunice, a deeply disturbed and deeply unstable drifter whose wanders the motorways, stopping off at random gas stations and making strange small talk with the cashiers, asking each of them if their name is Judith, and when they reply no, she kills them, for reasons unknown, moving onto the next gas station. At one such stop off she encounters a hard-of-hearing clerk named Miriam (Saskia Reeves, TVs Slow Horses) who humors her inquiries and shows her kindness, the pair bond, and together they end up on a cross-country odyssey through England, one chock full of bi-sexual mayhem, murder and madness, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake, most killed by Eunice, with Miriam helping dispose of the bodies.
Miriam is a hard woman, frayed mentally, but strong-willed and domineering over the much meeker Miriam, she wears chains around her torso hidden beneath her clothing, revealing nipple-piercings, myriad bruises and tattoos. It's that domineering force that Miriam finds herself drawn to, becoming complicit in the deranged murder spree, abandoning her sickly grandmother and hitting the road with Eunice, seemingly desperate to escape her mundane existence, even if it means hitching her wagon to the crazy train. Both women seem to complete each other is some fucked-up beautiful way, their names shortened to "Eu" and "Mi", sort of reflecting that they a are two sides of the same coin. Our leads give bold performances, especially Plummer who bares it all, giving a brassy and emotionally raw turn, often exposing herself to show the seemingly self-flagellation chains she has bound herself in, offering the occasional religious rants that seem to inform her psychopathy. The overall vibe here is a 90's feminist Badlands, a demented road film peppered with outbursts of violence, and with a surprisingly robust soundtrack features songs from New Order PJ Harvey, Bjork and The Cranberries. I also liked the story structure with the film told in flashback, peppered with black and white interview footage of Miriam in the present day, presumably from a police interrogation room, it's a very assured feature film direct from Michael Winterbottom, and a demented good time.
Audio/Video: The film arrives on Blu-ray from Severin Films in 1080p HD framed in 1.85:1 widescreen, sourced from 2K scan from the original camera negative by The British Film Institute and approved by Winterbottom and McGarvey. The source is in terrific shape, grain is well-managed, colors are well-saturated and texture and details in the close-ups look excellent. Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo with optional English subtitles, it's clean and well-balanced, the accented dialogue sounds fine as does the soundtrack and score.
Extras for Butterfly Kiss are plentiful, we start off with two intros, the first is a 5-min Introduction By Kier-La Janisse, Author Of House Of Psychotic Women, who puts it into context along other killer-women flicks, while the 4-min Introduction By Writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce gets into the real-life experiences that informed the script. We also get
a terrific Audio Commentary With Film Historian Kat Ellinger, this is exactly the sort of transgressive cinema you need her for and she gives us a banger, diving into the production, the themes, how it upends certain convention, and how it compares to other killer-couple flicks. Next up is the 22-min Between Everyday And The Extreme – Michael Winterbottom On Directing Butterfly Kiss who talks about how his early TV directing work lead to his feature films debut, and we get a 21-min No Judgement – Amanda Plummer Remembers Portraying Eunice, Plummer is always a hoot, talking about the film, aspects of shooting it, touching on the script and what it was like working with Winterbottom. In the 15-min You're Not Judith – Saskia Reeves On Portraying Miriam
We also get the 7-min Pestilence Through Petrol – Julie Baines On Producing Butterfly Kiss; the 18-min Front Light And Black Sky – Seamus McGarvey On Shooting Butterfly Kiss, who speaks about this being his first legit feature film with a budget, and the differences of shooting film versus digital, and the 1-min Trailer. The last disc extras s the 12-min Short Film: Pleasures of War (Ruth Lingford, 1998), I love that Severin have been so adamant about including short film on many of their recent releases, and this haunting animated meditation on the horrors of war is quite interesting.
Special Features:
- Introduction By Kier-La Janisse, Author Of House Of Psychotic Women (5:14)
- Introduction By Writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce (3:51)
- Audio Commentary With Film Historian Kat Ellinger
- Between Everyday And The Extreme – Michael Winterbottom On Directing BUTTERFLY KISS (22:07)
- No Judgement – Amanda Plummer Remembers Portraying Eunice (21:23)
- You're Not Judith – Saskia Reeves On Portraying Miriam (14:51)
- Pestilence Through Petrol – Julie Baines On Producing BUTTERFLY KISS (6:56)
- Front Light And Black Sky – Seamus McGarvey On Shooting BUTTERFLY KISS (17:51)
- Trailer (1:24)
- Short Film: PLEASURES OF WAR (Ruth Lingford, 1998) (11:40)
MORGIANA (1972)
Label: Severin Films
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 103 Minutes 3 Seconds
Audio: Czech DTS-HD MA 2,0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Fullscreen (1.3:1)
Director: Juraj Herz
Cast: Josef Abrhám (Václav Havel’s LEAVING) and Josef Somr
Morgiana (1972) comes from director Juraj Herz (The Cremator), it's a lush and disorienting Gothic tale of two sisters, the cruelly jealous Viktorie and her naïve sister Klára – both portrayed by Iva Janžurová. After the death of their wealthy father dies the favored Klára inherits the home, the money and the property while black sheep Viktorie gets a modest country home dubbed The Green Flute. After visiting a tarot card reader the diabolical sister becomes convinced that she deserves the fortune, and to that end, acquires a slow-acting, tasteless, odorless and untraceable poison to slowly poison her sister. As he plan is set in motion and Klara's health declines she becomes wracked by guilt and is blackmailed by the chemist's wife (Nina Divísková) who concocted the poison for her.
This is a wonderfully lush and surreal gothic nightmare, we get fish-eyes lenses and psychedelic flourishes, cat's eye POV, and some terrific Victorian period costuming with the sisters outfits clearly designed to color-code their two personalities. To that end I thought Viktorie was a very tasty villainous, decked out in black Victorian dresses and black veils, her exaggerated make-up, she's just wonderfully evil and raven-haired schemer, quite the opposite from her ginger-haired sister who is usually in a flowing white dress and has more a natural looking beauty about her, it's a terrific contrast. There are moments that have a hallucinatory quality about them that seem to lend credence to some schizophrenic happenings, most incorporating mirrors, which I found intriguing and unsettling, but also perhaps a little undercooked. Regardless, this was wonderful watch, a Gothic tale of murder and madness that looks gorgeous, and has a sumptuous score by Lubos Fiser (The Mysterious Castle in the Carpathians) that nicely accentuates the surreal menace, and the lush cinematography of Jaroslav Kucera (Adela Has Not Had Supper Yet). If you are not familiar with the film but have been enjoying the Czech fantastical films that distributor Deaf Crocodile have been releasing these past few years this should be high on your list of films to check out, or vice versa, if this tickle your cinema-brain you need to check out what Deaf Crocodile are up to.
Audio/Video: Morgiana gets a region-free Blu-ray presented in 1080p HD fullscreen (1.33:1) scanned in 4K from the original camera negative by The National Film Archive in Prague. It looks wonderful, the Victorian-era costuming and textures shine, and we get Czech language audio via DTS-HD MA 2.0 dual-mono with optional English subtitles
Extras for Morgiana come by way of a 4-min Introduction By Kier-La Janisse, Author Of House Of Psychotic Women, that talks about how Juraj Herz was athe rare horror director working in the Czech new wave, plus we get a new
Audio Commentary With Stranger With My Face Festival Director Briony Kidd And Cerise Howard, Co-Founder Of The Czech And Slovak Film Festival Of Australia, a wonderfully conversational commentary as they toss around ideas about the themes and meaning of the film, plus is artistry and style.
The 15-min Little Drop Of Poison – Actress Iva Janžurová Remembers Morgiana features the star of the film discussing her dual-role, the locations and costuming.
The 6-min The Stone Forest – Newly Commissioned Short Film On Shooting Location Pobiti Kamani, Animated By Leslie Supnet And Narrated By Kier-La Janisse gives a history of the unique tubular geological formations seen in the film, and how they have been noted throughout history.
We also get a pair of short films, first up is the 26-min
Short Film: Nightmares – Juraj Herz' 1970 Vampire Rock Musical Made For Czech TV which is a pretty stunning black and white rock musical, plus the 13-min Short Film: Rest in Peace (Rachel Amodeo, 1998), offering a new 2K scan this Rachel Amodeo directed film co-starring Dame Darcy, the latter of whom I know as the creator of the comic book Meatcake, which I used to read quite a bit when I worked at Toxic ranch records here n Tucson in the mid 90's. It's a ghostly tale of sisterly grave-robbing made in the style of a B&W silent film.
Special Features:
- Introduction By Kier-La Janisse, Author Of House Of Psychotic Women (3:38)
- Audio Commentary With Stranger With My Face Festival Director Briony Kidd And Cerise Howard, Co-Founder Of The Czech And Slovak Film Festival Of Australia
- Little Drop Of Poison – Actress Iva Janžurová Remembers MORGIANA (14:42)
- The Stone Forest – Newly Commissioned Short Film On Shooting Location Pobiti Kamani, Animated By Leslie Supnet And Narrated By Kier-La Janisse (6:25)
- NIGHTMARES – Juraj Herz' 1970 Vampire Rock Musical Made For Czech TV (26:22)
- Short Film: REST IN PEACE (Rachel Amodeo, 1998) New 2K Scan Of This Cult Favorite By Rachel Amodeo And Dame Darcy (13:18)
THE SAVAGE EYE (1959)
Label: Severin Films
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 66 Minutes 46 Seconds
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: Sidney Meyers, Joseph Strick
Cast: Barbara Baxley, Gary Merrill
The Savage Eye (1959) is a slice of verité cinema from a trio of outsider filmmakers – the once blacklisted screenwriter Ben Maddow (The Asphalt Jungle), Oscar nominated editor/director Sidney Meyers (The Quiet One) and future Oscar winning director Joseph Strick (Interview with My Lai Veterans), who wrote, produced, edited and directed this black and white ‘dramatized documentary’. It's really a series of documentary footage shot around Los Angeles that's been stitched together with a story about a recent divorcee Judith (Barbara Baxley, Nashville) as she goes about her day in urban Los Angeles, struggling to find her place n the world after her husband has left her for another woman. interestingly there's no traditional dialogue to drive the story, just Judith having an inner conversation, sometimes adversarial with the disembodied voice of The Poet (Gary Merrill, The Woman Who Wouldn't Die). As she wanders around L.A. we get footage of charlatan faith healers and true believers speaking in tongues, a rowdy wrestling match Judith attends with her date Kirk (Herschel Bernardi, TV series Peter Gunn), and a sultry burlesque show starring the voluptuous Jean 'Venus the Body' Hidey, as well a gruesome accident sequence, women getting beautified and surgically altered, and cops shaking down people on the streets. This sort of has the vie of an L.A. Mondo movie, a tour of the seedier L.A. streets, highlighting the alienation of humanity in the then modern age and Judith bitterness following her divorce. I don't honestly know if this has a ton of re-watch value for me, but my single-viewing kept me rapt, I loved seeing the vintage L.A. streets and cars, the assembly of interesting randos on the streets, the fly-on-the-wall aspect of it all, it's pretty interesting stuff, both for the the archeological exploration of L.A. and of the bitter, middle-aged divorcee mind-set.
Audio/Video: The Savage Eye arrives on Blu-ray in 1080p HD framed in 1.85:1 widescreen, scanned in 4K by Severin Films from the original camera negative provided by the Academy Film Archive. The black and white film looks marvelous, the original cinematography shines with crisp whites and deep blacks, excellent grayscale and some terrific detail in the close-ups. Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 2;0 dual-mono, likewise, it sounds fantastic and is free of age-related hiss or distortion.
Extras include an Audio Commentary With Film Curator/Historian Elizabeth Purchell that is well-researched and quite thorough, getting into the locations seen in the film, it's themes, and long production schedule. Up next is the 16-min Judith X – Locations Video Essay By Esotouric's Kim Cooper, that not only talks in-depth about the locations, but also offers a spoken-word layover that I found fantastic, working as both a detailed exploration of the locations, some of which no longer exists, as well as a spoke-word art piece,
We also get a 17-min Archival Interview With Co-Director Joseph Strick, and a 3-min Trailer, in lieu of an intro we get soemthing even better, a Trailers From Hell Commentary By Kier-La Janisse, Author Of House Of Psychotic Women, plus a pair of short films. The first is the 22-min Short Film: Interviews with My Lai Veterans (Joseph Strick, 1970) wherein a series of soldiers involved with the infamous war atrocity are interview, which is accompanied by a 5-min Archival Interview With Director Joseph Strick On Interviews with My Lai Veterans. The last of the disc extras is the 15-min Short Film: Miss Candice Hilligoss' Flickering Halo (Vincenzo Core And Fabio Scacchioli, 2011), an experimental short film that repurposes footage from the cult-classic Carnival of Souls into a flickering assault on your senses, which appropriately is preceded by a photosensitive epilepsy warning.
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary With Film Curator/Historian Elizabeth Purchell
- Judith X – Locations Video Essay By Esotouric's Kim Cooper (16:06)
- Archival Interview With Co-Director Joseph Strick (17:06).
- Trailer (2:56)
- Trailers From Hell Commentary By Kier-La Janisse, Author Of House Of Psychotic Women
Short Film: INTERVIEWS WITH MY LAI VETERANS (Joseph Strick, 1970)
(22:06)
- Archival Interview With Director Joseph Strick On INTERVIEWS WITH MY LAI VETERANS (5:23)
- Short Film: MISS CANDACE HILLIGOSS' FLICKERING HALO (Vincenzo Core And Fabio Scacchioli, 2011)(14:33)
THE GLASS CEILING (1971)
Label: Severin Films
Region Code: Region Free
Rating:
Duration: 95 Minutes
Audio: English and Spanish Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: Eloy de la Iglesia
Cast: Dean Selmier, Patty Shepard, Fernando Cebrián, Emma Cohen
The Glass Ceiling (1971) comes from writer/director Eloy de la Iglesia, a director who Severin Films have almost single-handedly turned me not just onto, but a rabid fan of. Sure, his film Cannibal Man was widely available in years past, but it was Severin's on-going deep-dive into his flicks like the drug-addled teen delinquency flicks El Pico 1&2, the political thriller The Creature, and the apartment-set Spanish giallo No One Heard the Scream - whenever they release a new de la Iglesia flick I am here for it. Now here we are with another Spanish giallo, also apartment set, entry previously unseen by myself, so it was quite a treat.
In it frustrated housewife Martha (Carmen Sevilla, Cross of the Devil) is left alone with her beloved feline friend Fedra when her husband Carlos (Fernando Cebrián, Iguana) leaves town on a business trip. She lives in an apartment, the landlord is an sculptor/artist, Ricardo (Dean Selmier, School of Death), who operates his art studio on the floor below, while above her is sexy neighbor Julia (Patty Shepard, The Witches Mountain). a cold beauty in the mold of Barbara Steel, who's husband Victor is also away, but when Martha hears a commotion the floor above she begins to suspect that Julia murdered her husband. Side characters include a sex-pest grocery delivery guy who makes advances towards Martha, and a lusty teen named Rosa (Emma Cohen, The Other Side of the Mirror), who delivers fresh squeezed milk to the apartment inhabitants, and who has a passion for Ricardo, which he resists, as he seems much more interested in Marta, with whom he starts spending a lot of time. In proper giallo-fashion red-herrings abound, Julia's story about why her husband is absent are unconvincing, the men are all slightly shady, and it's interesting that someone seems to be feeding the artists' guard dog with some strange meat at night, with Marta thinking maybe Julia's feeding her husband's remains to the dogs! There's also someone unseen stalking the apartment taking secret photos of all the women in the women who frequent the apartment.
How it all wraps up was delightful, I would be lying if I said I did not sort of figure it out by the time of the reveal, but even then there's an ambiguous and very subtle twist to it that I absolutely loved. It's stylish, tense and very well-made, plus the cast is phenomenal, with beauties Carmen Sevilla, Patty Shepard, and Emma Cohen all sharing screentime in film, each radiating beauty and lust in equal measure, but it's mostly Sevilla's charm and beauty that dominates the flick.
Audio/Video: The Glass Ceiling gets a solid release, framed in 1080p HD framed in 1.85:1 widescreen, sourced from scanned in 4K from the original camera negative. It;s a handsome presentation with terrific color, skin tones look natural and blacks are deep and inky. Audio comes by way of English or Spanish DTS-HD MA 2.0 dual-mono with option English subtitles, both tracks sound excellent, I opted for English for the majority of my viewing.
Extras include a 6-min Introduction By Kier-La Janisse, Author Of House Of Psychotic Women, plus an Audio Commentary With Shelagh Rowan-Legg, Author Of A Forthcoming Monograph On Director Eloy De La Iglesia, And Faculty of Horror's Alexandra West that is quite detailed and thorough, contextualizing the film among other thrillers and de la Iglesias' filmography, and highlighting the cast and stylistic choices. Easily my favorite extras is the 16-min Connected At The Soul – Patty Shepard As Remembered By Her Sister, Judith Chapman, she is so loving and enthusiastic when speaking about her late sister, recalling her trajectory from modeling to acting, it's a heartwarming and fond remembrance, it's a wonderful extras. We also get 1-min of Alternate Scenes From The TV Version, basically just a clothed version of a couple of scenes, plus the 3-min Trailer. Again, we get a shgort film, this time it;s the 26-min Short Film: Anta Mujer (Agustí Villaronga, 1976), from the director of In A Glass Cage, a wild slice of erotic occult mysticism, that might be my favorite of all the shorts on the set.
Special Features:
- Introduction By Kier-La Janisse, Author Of House Of Psychotic Women (6:19)
- Audio Commentary With Shelagh Rowan-Legg, Author Of A Forthcoming Monograph On Director Eloy De La Iglesia, And Faculty of Horror's Alexandra West
- Connected At The Soul – Patty Shepard As Remembered By Her Sister, Judith Chapman (16:56)
- Alternate Scenes From The TV Version (1:01)
- Trailer (2:31)
- Short Film: ANTA MUJER (Agustí Villaronga, 1976) (26:26)
The 4-disc Blu-ray set arrives in a top-loading Rigid Hardbox similar other Severin box sets like The Eurocrypt of Christopher Lee and the Lenzi/Baker sets, the spines showcasing the name the set and the individual films. Inside the the box the films are each presented in their own black Viva Elite black keepcases with a single-sided sleeve of artwork. The Blu-ray discs feature the same artwork as the wraps.
The House of Psychotic Women: Rarities Collection Vol. 2 is another stunning collection of feminine insanity on film from Severin Films, wonderfully curated by Kier-La Janisse, Author Of House Of Psychotic Women, the box set namesake, offering four unique tales that span 90's indie serial-killer cinema, the Czech fantastic, a seedy mondo L.A. docudrama, and a female-led Spanish giallo, it's truly a wild and varied collection. All four films have been gorgeously restored and loaded-up with hours of insightful extras, including six short films which are an adventure unto themselves, outside of the four fascinating feature films at he heart of the set.
Screenshots from the Severin Films Blu-rays:
THE GLASS CEILING (1971)
Extras:
THE SAVAGE EYE (1959)
Extras:
MORGIANA (1972)
Extras:
BUTTERFLY KISS (1995)
Extras:
Buy it!
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