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Released by: Mondo Macabro
Released on: February 22nd, 2022.
Director: Piero Schivazappa
Cast: Philippe Leroy, Dagmar Lassander, Lorenza Guerrieri, Varo Soleri
Year: 1969
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The Laughing Woman – Movie Review:
Also known as The Frightened Woman, Piero Schivazappa twisted, psychosexual thriller stars the beautiful Dagmar Lassander as a woman named Maria. She works as a press agent for Dr. Sayer (Philippe Leroy), who runs a huge charity organization. When she has to pay a visit to Sayer’s house one night to collect some documents, he welcomes her in and offers her a drink. She accepts, not really thinking much of it, and after some strange conversation, soon enough finds herself in a strange room with red lights, bound to a metal frame. Dr. Sayer declares that she is his prisoner and property and that he’ll be doing whatever he wants with her, whether she likes it or not.
Maria, however, is no fool. As he goes about playing out his BDSM fantasies using her as his plaything, she realizes that her life is very much in danger and not quite ready to die yet, she uses all of her assets to attempt to outwit Sayer and hopefully save her own life. As this game of cat and mouse plays out on the screen, the characters develop in interesting ways leading us to question who is really in charge here.
Distributed domestically in the late sixties by Radley Metzger’s Audubon Films, The Laughing Woman is a trip. Featuring some absolutely gorgeous production design work from Enrico Sabbatini (who would work on Metzger's own films Camille 2000 and The Lickerish Quartet, but equally stunning in terms of their design work!), the film moves at a nice pace and gives both Lassander, who looks amazing here, and Leroy a chance to really strut their stuff. Schivazappa ensures that the visuals are never less than perfect, the movie is a pop-art masterpiece of sorts and a fantastic time capsule of late sixties style and color, sometimes garishly so but it’s never less than awesome to look at. An excellent score from none other than the great Stelvio Cipriani adds to the film’s already considerable, quirky charm.
Not nearly as explicit as the plot description probably sounds, the movie still has a good amount of kink in it, and while these set pieces aren’t as nudity-laden as you might think they’d be, they’re really well-shot. The cinematography from Carlo and Sante Achilli manages to reveal just enough to provide some mildly exploitative thrills but what happens in the film is much more of a mental exercise than a physical one. And the movie is better for it, you really get pulled into the plot, as thin as it might be, and as the suspense in the storyline builds and the characters start to get properly fleshed out, the movie proves to be as tense and exciting as it is visually stunning.
The Laughing Woman – Blu-ray Review:
The Laughing Woman arrives on Region Free Blu-ray in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition presentation taken from a new 4k scan of the original 35mm negative and framed at 1.85.1 widescreen with the feature taking up 18.3GBs of space on the 25GB disc. Picture quality on this release is very strong, with beautiful color reproduction and strong black levels. Flesh tones look nice and natural, there’s a lot of detail here and the image is rich with texture. Depth is really strong and the image shows no noticeable issues with noise reduction, edge enhancement or obvious compression artifacts. The transfer is also super-clean, you’ll be hard pressed to spot any print damage here at all, while the film’s natural grain is, thankfully, retained. No complaints here, the picture is beautiful.
English and Italian language options are provided in 16-bit DTS-HD 2.0 mono with optional subtitles provided in English for both tracks. Both tracks are clean, clear and nicely balanced, free of any hiss or distortion. The score has a bit more depth to it than you might expect an older mono track to provide. The subtitles are clean, clear and easy to read. No issues here.
Extras start off with an audio commentary with Kat Ellinger who is very definitely in her element here as she goes over the influence of the works of the Marquis de Sade on the story and some of its specific elements. She also does a pretty deep dive into the gender politics that are an important part of the film, while still managing to cover details of Schivazappa’s career, notes on the different cast members, thoughts on the production values and the score as well as the film’s production and release history.
Director Piero Schivazappa appears in a thirty-three minute interview titled Marquis De Sade Vs. Praying Mantis. In this piece, he covers details of writing the screenplay, some of the design elements that obviously play a huge part in the film's visual appeal, location work, the score and how the film was received upon its initial theatrical debut.
The disc also contains a twenty-five minute a video essay on the film's production design by Rachael Nisbet. Titled, simply enough, Production Design In The Laughing Woman, this one goes over the film's ultra-stylish visuals and how a lot of what we see on display here ties into other media of the era and into different genres and aspects of pop culture.
Additionally, we get English and Italian theatrical trailers, an animated photo-novel by Jacques Spohr that plays out with selections of the film’s score overtop, the Mondo Macabro promo reel, menus and chapter selection options.
The Laughing Woman - The Final Word:
The Laughing Woman is worth seeing for the visuals alone, but throw in some great performances from the two main leads, a great score and some really intriguing atmosphere and it turns out to be much more than an exercise in style over substance. Mondo Macabro’s Blu-ray treats the film wonderfully, providing a beautiful presentation and a nice selection of extras. Highly recommended!
Click on the images below, or right click and open in a new window, for full sized The Laughing Woman Blu-ray screen caps!
