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Tinto Brass Collection

CAV // Unrated // June 17, 2003
List Price: $59.95 [Buy now and save at Amazon]

Review by Shannon Nutt | posted November 9, 2003 | E-mail the Author
THE MOVIES

Tinto Brass, the Italian director who helmed Caligula, releases three of his other erotic films in The Tinto Brass Collection, a set of DVDs that is more noteworthy for its visual worship of the female form than it is for strong storytelling.

The set consists of 1983's The Key, 1985's Miranda and 1992's All Ladies Do It. Each movie is softcore in nature – with much more nudity and sexuality than American audiences are used to in their R-rated fare, but not nearly enough to qualify for an X-rating.

In The Key an older man is married to a somewhat younger wife, whom he notices has taken a liking to their daughter's fiancé. When the two dance together at a party, the older man is surprised to find out how turned on he gets by watching his wife with the younger man. He starts to encourage his wife to do more things with his future son-in-law, but soon realizes that the difference between the idea of his wife fooling around and the reality of it are two very different things.

Miranda tells the story of a young woman who has lost her husband in the war (the movie is set during World War II) and begins to have relationships with a different number of men. The film takes a lighthearted look at relationships as Miranda must choose which of the men she would like to spend the rest of her life with.

All Ladies Do It is the most modern of the three movies in this set, being filmed the most recently and the only one of the three to be set in the time period in which it was filmed (the other two movies are both set in the 1940's). The female lead of this title is married, but finds that she derives excitement from cheating on her husband. Not only cheating…but telling him about her sexual adventures once she has completed them! But her husband soon becomes jealous, and she must reexamine her lifestyle and make the choice between continuing her promiscuity or making a monogamous commitment.

THE DVD

Video:
Although the video is presented in 16:9 anamorphic widescreen, the video quality is not very good. Not only do the films show their age (even though the oldest one is from as recently as 1983), but there seems to be a lot of color drained from the print. So despite being anamorphic, I was more than a little disappointed with the quality of the video.

Audio:
The audio is even worse than the video, with all three films being presented in mono. The films are a mix of dubbed lines and subtitles, with The Key having a strange mix of both dubbing and subtitles; Miranda being entirely dubbed and All Ladies Do It being entirely subtitled. It's too bad we weren't given the audio option of either watching subtitled versions or dubbed versions for all three films.

Extras:
All three DVDs contain an Interview With Tinto Brass concerning the film in question. It takes a while to get used to Tinto's heavy accent, and many of his sentences require use of the rewind button to figure out what he said. However, I found the interviews with Brass to be the most entertaining part of the set, as we discover what his ideas were behind each film and get a little insight into the man. Each DVD also contains a Photo Gallery for the title in question, as well as Filmographies for Tinto and the female star of the title. Each disc also contains all three Trailers for each of the movies in this collection. Finally, on All Ladies Do It only, there is an Outtakes reel. The other two DVDs do not contain outtakes.

THE BOTTOM LINE

While I can't say I would want to watch any of these movies again, I will say that Tinto Brass has an eye for the erotic, and fans of softcore may want to give this one a look. I think the best reason Brass' fans will want to pick up this set is for the interviews – but there's really no reason to buy the set for just those. Rent the discs first to check them out and then make your decision concerning purchasing.
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