Massacre Time BluRay review
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Story: gold prospector Tom (Franco Nero) returns to his home town, where he finds his family property taken over by local tyrant Scott (Giuseppe Addobbati) and his brutal gang of henchmen led by his sadistic son Jason (Nino Castelnuovo). His brother Jeff (George Hilton) drowns his loss in alcohol. He's not happy about Tom's return, for he blames his departures years ago for their misery, while Tom is pissed because Jeff lost their mother's property to Scott and isn't doing anything about it. After beating some of Scott's thugs up in a bar, they follow Tom to the house of Carradine, the local businessman who sent for him, and murder him and his family. While Scott and his son grow apart over the son's increasingly aberrant handling of the family business, Tom is now out to take their empire on, but he'll need his drunken brother's help to put an end to Scott's reign of terror....
Massacre Time is an interesting case, I think. For one, it should be more popular than it really is. It was among the first spaghetti westerns widely available on DVD, it has A-list names attached to it, it got quite a wide release in the United States back in the day, and it's als an early 1966 spaghetti western with a down and dirty honest setting. Maybe this BluRay will help put it back on the map.
It's one of three spaghetti westerns directed by Lucio Fulci (and I think his best among these, the other two being Silver Saddle and Four of the Apocalypse). It carries the least of his fingerprints I would say, but they're not invisible. There's eerie moments, some creative camerawork including rear projection and some gruesome graphic murders.
It was written or co-written by none other than Fernando di Leo, notorious polizio director and one to call if you need a gritty subject packaged without much nonsense.
At 92 mins, it's easy to digest.
The BluRay looks great, especially the colors, but there was more noise reduction and edge enhancement that I had hoped for (especially considering it's a 4K master). True, it"s minimal but I guess a lot of detail of the image still gets lost and it's not crystal clear and crisp, especially once you direct your eyes away from the in-focus faces and notice things like washed out landscapes or the odd object that has overly stark edges where it should be more fuzzy. This is complaining on a high level of course, it's a greally great print and presentation.
Audio is more interesting. Without being advertised on the cover, and sneakily described English 1 and 2 in the menu, this disc actually houses the original Euoprean English dub, and the English dub made by AIP for its original States-side release. If none of these two strike your fancy (I find them to be not too different), you have an additional choice of the Italian or German dubs. There are subtitles in English or German on the disc. The audio sounds alright, these are all mono tracks, so not much in terms of dynamism, but they're all perfectly fine for your retro evening of spaghetti western enjoyment. Some hissing and slight noise is to be expected, all in all however these sound solid, and you even get some good depths with the musical soundtrack.
There is a handful of extras on this: an interview with Hilton, and an audio interview with Fulci, as well as an audio commentary by Leonhard Elias Lemke and Jonas Erler (in German) - Lemke also wrote the text for the extensive booklet which comes glued into the mediabook. There's also trailers and a gallery. Obviously the two main extras are of little value outside the German-speaking community, but maybe this release will just be the first sign of more to come, with the availability of this master. Unfortunately this disc isn't really listed on a lot of Amazon sites yet, so do keep a look out at your import dealer of choice.
- Buy now from Amazon.de: Mediabook A | Mediabook B
- International Amazon listings tbc... Amazon.nl (Cover A) | Amazon.nl (Cover B)
by Sebastian
A review copy of this release was provided to us by the distributor.
