The Sergio Martino Collection

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DarkImbecile
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Joined: Mon Dec 09, 2013 6:24 pm
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The Sergio Martino Collection

#1 Post by DarkImbecile » Fri May 28, 2021 11:03 am

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One of Italian cinema’s most celebrated and prolific filmmakers, Sergio Martino worked across a range of genres, but is arguably best known for his giallo thrillers. This collection brings together three of his finest.

In The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail, recently widowed Lisa Baumer is summoned to Athens to collect her husband’s generous life insurance policy, but soon discovers others are willing to kill to get their hands on it.

In the Edgar Allan Poe-inspired Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, abrasive drunk Oliviero amuses himself by holding drunken orgies and abusing his long-suffering wife… but when a series of grisly murders shakes the local community, Oliviero finds himself in the frame.

Finally, The Suspicious Death of a Minor combines giallo and crime thriller tropes as undercover cop Paolo pursues the Milanese criminal outfit responsible for the brutal murder of an underage prostitute, but finds himself up against a killer-for-hire who’s bumping off witnesses before they have a chance to talk.

Featuring sensational casts of genre stalwarts, including Edwige Fenech, George Hilton, Anita Strindberg and Luigi Pistilli, with scripts by giallo master Ernesto Gastaldi and sensuous scores by maestro Bruno Nicolai, this is an essential collection for any Italian cult cinema fan.

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS
  • Three films from Sergio Martino: The Case of the Scorpion's Tail, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, and The Suspicious Death of a Minor, restored in 2K from the original camera negative
  • High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation for all films
  • Original uncompressed mono Italian and English audio tracks
  • Optional English subtitles for Italian audio and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for English audio
  • Newly commissioned artwork by Marc Schoenbach
THE CASE OF THE SCORPION'S TAIL
  • Audio commentary with writer Ernesto Gastaldi, moderated by filmmaker Federico Caddeo (in Italian with English subtitles)
  • Under the Sign of the Scorpion – an interview with star George Hilton
  • The Scorpion Tales – an interview with director Sergio Martino
  • Jet Set Giallo – an analysis Sergio Martino’s films by Mikel J. Koven, author of La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film
  • The Case of the Screenwriter Auteur – a video essay by Troy Howarth, author of So Deadly, So Perverse: 50 Years of Italian Giallo Films
  • Theatrical trailer
  • Image gallery
  • Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Chris Malbon
YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY
  • Through the Keyhole – an interview with director Sergio Martino
  • Unveiling the Vice – making-of retrospective featuring interviews with Martino, star Edwige Fenech and screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi
  • Dolls of Flesh and Blood: The Gialli of Sergio Martino – a visual essay by Michael Mackenzie exploring the director’s unique contributions to the giallo genre
  • The Strange Vices of Ms. Fenech – film historian Justin Harries on the Your Vice actress’ prolific career
  • Eli Roth on Your Vice and the genius of Martino
  • Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Matthew Griffin
THE SUSPICIOUS DEATH OF A MINOR
  • Audio commentary by Troy Howarth, author of So Deadly, So Perverse: 50 Years of Italian Giallo Films
  • Violent Milan – an interview with co-writer/director Sergio Martino
  • Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Chris Malbon

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swo17
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Re: The Sergio Martino Collection

#2 Post by swo17 » Fri May 28, 2021 11:12 am

dwk wrote:
Thu May 27, 2021 11:21 am
Torso was a US only release, so it is possible that the US version of the Martino set will include it.
Nope. In fact, this just looks like a gift box of the standard editions of the three UK titles, without even any booklets included

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Mr Sausage
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Re: The Sergio Martino Collection

#3 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri May 28, 2021 1:32 pm

Martino's an above average director of giallos, but these are not his best. Suspicious Death of a Minor isn't a giallo, tho'--it's not even a horror film! It's a polizioteschi. I watched it for the original horror list project without realizing it wasn't eligible. I did write up the other two in the set tho':
Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (Sergio Martino, 1972): I don't know why, but Italian genre movies sometimes have these absurdly specific titles. This is Martino's least straightforward giallo. Rather than seeming original, however, it comes across more like an ill-assembled conglomeration of different genre films. While the first act is a straight-forward giallo, the second switches gears and becomes a tale of bedroom intrigue before again turning around in the third act to become a tale of plain intrigue with everyone plotting against each other. Overlying all of this is a loose adaptation of Poe's The Black Cat. It really is an oddly structured movie. While Martino can be stylish--and this movie has some good moments--he's never willing to sustain that stylishness in his films, with the notable exception of the superb All the Colours of the Dark. For all its oddness, Vice just isn't that interesting, either from an aesthetic or a narrative stand-point. Edwige Fenech is positively adorable, tho', in her ear-length haircut, and she gets to seduce Anita Strindberg, which does a lot to liven the second act.
The Case of the Scorpian's Tail (Sergio Martino, 1971): Another Bird with the Crystal Plumage imitator, only it replaces the perversity and insanity underlying Bird's mystery with plain greed. A woman inherits a million dollars after her estranged husband dies in an accident, and a bunch of characters crawl out of the woodwork looking to get their hands on it, including a black-clad, knife-wielding maniac. A lot of gory deaths follow, with very little suspense and not much attention to the details of the mystery (you really begin to appreciate Argento's detail fetishism as you go on in this subgenre). The real problem with the movie is that it can't seem to stick to a central character for very long, something that kills the incentive to invest in anyone. Overwhelmingly, it strikes you that the makers of most giallos just lack passion for the material, the very thing that's needed to make these movies interesting. This is why Argento's giallos are so successful: you feel that the material delights him, and that imaginative delight in the details becomes infectious.

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