DVD Review: Lust

Lust (aka Torino centrale del vizio)

Italy 1979
Director: Bruno Vani, Renato Polselli (uncredited)
Writers: Alessandro Moretti, Renato Polselli, Bruno Vani
Starring: Rita Calderoni, Raúl Martínez, Tony Matera, Marina Daunia, Christina Hui, Emanuela Cannarsa, Albertina Capuani, Sergio Baldacchino, Mario Castagneri.

DVD Released: August 31st 2010
Cert: NR
Running Time: 78 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 Letterboxed Widescreen
Audio: Dolby Digital Mono Italian
Subtitles: English
Distributor: Mya Communication
Region: 0 NTSC

The Film:

So I usually end my reviews with some comments on the A/V presentation of the DVD I've watched but in this case the quality of the picture (and it's audio) affected my experience so much that I'm sticking it right up front; to say the transfer sucked donkey balls would be a massive understatement and, frankly, an insult to the burros bollocks which I can only imagine look better than this! It really does look like some bloke's discovered a mossy old European beta max tape in his waterlogged basement and then proceeded to transfer it to VHS and then to DVD, after letting his dog urinate on it first of course. It. Really. Is. That. Bad.

Phew, OK, now that's out of the way all that's left for me to do is tell you just how fucking awful the actual film itself is........

Helen (Rita Calderoni), a femme fatale with a nebulous mysterious past has fallen for a strapping young Italian bloke and wants to give up her former life to be with him. First however she wants to be honest with her fiance about just how much of a fucked up nutjob she really is; cue scenes of Helen with her lesbian tennis instructor, working as a drug mule and getting gang-banged by a bunch of bikers as her poor beau watches. But he's willing to accept her for what she is (you what!?) and Helen turns over a new leaf, only to suddenly vanish right after the wedding, d'oh! We follow said bloke as he tries to discover what happened to Helen; was she kidnapped by the shady organisation she used to work for? Did she just change her mind about the marriage? Or perhaps she forgot to try bestiality and has gone to satisfy her curiosity on that front as well..........

Actually writing that all out it makes it sound like an interestingly bonkers 70's spaghetti z-flick, believe me it isn't. A famous director once said about watching film 'I'd rather be confused for 20 minutes than bored for 5 minutes' well he should try and sit through the first 20 minutes of this one and he'd soon change his mind. I had no idea whatsoever what was happening - seemingly random images are played while Italian narration drones on in voice over about 'Helen, where is Helen, one moment here, the next she was gone, but I see her everywhere' wait, who, what? The basic plot of the film is painstakingly pieced together by the viewer after about 50 minutes of turgid indecipherable non-linear almost experimental onscreen pap and this isn't Memento folks, there isn't an intriguing twist or any hook at all to get the viewer interested or invested in the characters. The acting is uniformly awful, the sleaze factor is quite high with 70's style violence, rape, nudity, etc.

Aha apparently this is a "super-rare, almost lost film by Bruno Vani and co-directed by the late, great Renato Polselli. Mastered from impossible-to-find materials, this is a fair quality print." Fair quality, I had a chuckle over that one! So it's of some kind of significance to fans of Polselli presumably, good luck finding any of those!

The Disc: 

Dodgy letterboxed widescreen picture. VHS tape flaws all over the place, blown-out contrast, washed-out colours that make it seem like you're watching the image through a blizzard. Lots of print damage and debris. Mono Italian audio track is muffled, tinny, distorted and prone to drop-outs. Removable English subtitles are provided with hilarious translation errors throughout, so that's a bonus!

Review by Giuseppe Rijitano