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Released by: Unearthed Films
Released on: November 14th, 2023.
Director: Nicholas Roeg
Cast: Mimi Rogers, Bryan Brown
Year: 1995
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Full Body Massage – Movie Review:
A mid-nineties made for TV movie directed by none other than Nicholas Roeg, Full Body Massage, which originally appeared on Showtime in 1995, stars Mimi Rogers as a woman named Nina who makes a good living for herself as an art dealer. To relieve stress, she goes for a weekly massage but one day arrives to find that her regular masseuse, Douglas (Christopher Burgard), wasn’t able to make it and a substitute named Fitch (Bryan Brown) is filling in for him.
They hit it off almost immediately and before very long, he’s rubbing her down and they’re both completely naked. As this goes on, they engage in increasingly heavy conversations about life, love and more, which leads to a series of flashbacks exploring the lives of the two participants and the movie turns into an engaging mix of eroticism and philosophical new age meanderings.
First things first – a big part of the reason people are going to want to watch this is the fact that Mimi Rogers is naked in a lot of the film and, to be blunt, she looks great. That, for some, will be reason enough to want to watch the movie, there’s really no skirting around that. That said, there is more to this than just a healthy dose of gratuitous celebrity skin, and Roeg’s talents as a very cerebral filmmaker do start to make their presence known as the movie moves towards its finish. The naked massage aspect of the movie, again, a big draw, is in a lot of ways the backdrop for what becomes a discourse on life, love, science and even the meaning of life. If you pay attention to the dialogue that takes place during the massage sessions, it’s heavy and heady and very intelligent and hey, if that turns out not to be your thing, you’ve got a very naked Mimi Rogers to look at while it’s going on, so consider it a win-win situation for viewers of all tastes.
The performances are really good here. Roger is, of course, very physically attractive and she looks great here but her performance is believable and we have no problem buying her as a woman who is both intelligent and curious about some of these higher concepts that the movie explores. She and Bryan Brown, who also does very good work here, is quite strong and they make a good team.
Production values are better than average for a made for TV movie. The cinematography and lighting are both very good and there’s a decent, if somewhat generic, score behind all of this. Roeg keeps the pacing strong and, as such, the movie remains pretty engaging throughout. It would be easy to dismiss this as nineties softcore cable fodder but there’s a fair bit more going on here than just titillation, although, to be fair, the movie offers plenty of that as well.
Full Body Massage – Blu-ray Review:
Full Body Massage arrives on a 50GB region A Blu-ray disc with the feature presented in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 1.66.1 widescreen taken from a new 2k scan. Picture quality is really good here, the transfer boasts strong depth and detail and color reproduction looks very nice. Black levels are solid and skin tones look nice and natural. There are no problems with any obvious compression artifacts nor are there any issues with visible noise reduction or edge enhancement. Print damage is almost entirely absent, but the film’s natural grain structure is left intact. All in all, this looks really solid.
The only audio option for the feature is an English language 16-bit LPCM 2.0 Stereo track, with optional subtitles provided in English only. Audio quality is quite good. The track is balanced and there are no problems with any hiss or distortion. The score sounds quite good and dialogue is always clean, clear and easy to understand.
The main extra on the disc is the inclusion of the TV version of the movie, which his presented in 1.33.1 and leaves a little less to the imagination in that the framing doesn’t crop off the top and bottom of the image – so in short, you get more of Mimi Rodgers in this version. It’s also presented in 1080p high definition with 16-bit LPCM 2.0 Stereo audio and English subtitles.
Aside from that, we get a still gallery, a trailer for the feature, bonus trailers for Tokyo Decadence and Nightwish, menus and chapter selection options. This release also comes packaged with a slipcover.
Full Body Massage - The Final Word:
The reality is that a frequently naked Mimi Rodgers is the main draw here for a lot of viewers, but even if you take that to the side, Full Body Massage is a really well-made movie that tells a good story by way of some stylish cinematography, strong directing and very good acting. The Blu-ray release from Unearthed Films could have used more extras but it looks and sounds very good.