Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

A Black Veil for Lisa Blu-ray Movie Review

Spoiler alert.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 12, 2015

What exactly constitutes a spoiler? All of us who review at Blu-ray.com have experienced annoyed messages or forum posts from various readers complaining that we’ve “spoiled” some salient plot point, when by the very nature of a review, where at least a general outline of the film’s story must be addressed, something (whether minor or major) is going to get “spoiled”. But beyond the confines of a review, indeed within the context of a film itself, what might be thought of as a spoiler? There were a lot of jokes back when Titanic was released which actually made fun of people who were apparently upset that both the film and casual audience members “gave away” the fact that there was a certain calamity that attended the journey. Really? And so we come to the kind of interesting 1968 quasi-giallo A Black Veil for Lisa, a film which begins with Lisa herself (Luciana Paluzzi, Thunderball) attending a funeral in that titular black veil. And in fact the title of the film at least hints that the voluptuous Lisa is evidently going to be mourning someone, and considering the fact that the film soon divulges she’s married to an older policeman named Franz Bulon (John Mills), some viewers may feel like things are “spoiled” fairly early on. Putting that qualm aside, A Black Veil for Lisa is often fascinating on its own relatively lo-fi terms, with an admirably pulpy feel that carries the film through some florid touches.

John Mills wasn’t yet a “Sir” when he made A Black Veil for Lisa in 1968, and in fact he was still two years or so away from his well deserved Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, received for his startling work as the lovable if severely handicapped Michael in David Lean’s underappreciated Ryan's Daughter (are we ever going to see this gorgeous film on Blu-ray?). Mills’ career was long and storied, including classics like In Which We Serve (included in David Lean Directs Noël Coward), Great Expectations (another fantastic film still missing on Blu-ray), and Tunes of Glory (still another film not out on Blu-ray as of the writing of this review). But for whatever reason Mills never seemed to ascend to the top rank of British actors, at least from the perspective of the traditional American moviegoer. In fact, Mills probably became better known in the late 1950s and early 1960s as the father of Hayley (with whom he co-starred in Tiger Bay, a kind of precursor in some ways to Cape Fear) and, later, Juliet (who became a minor television star with the short- lived but well remembered sitcom Nanny and the Professor in 1970).

While the high water mark for giallo is often considered to be the 1970s, there have been entries both well before that timeframe like Mario Bava’s 1963 outing The Girl Who Knew Too Much (available on Evil Eye), as well as relatively recent efforts at least more or less in the idiom like Amer and The Editor. A Black Veil for Lisa’s director Massimo Dallamano never really became an icon in the giallo movement, and in fact is probably best remembered by Western audiences for having lensed some of Sergio Leone’s so-called Spaghetti Westerns like A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. Dallamano ends up only hinting at giallo tropes in A Black Veil for Lisa while also investing the film with a number of florid stylistic touches that tonally at least approximate the feeling of the Italian horror genre.

While the opening (credits) sequence provides a grave’s eye view of a burial, along with an extreme close-up of the tear stained face of Lisa (Dallamano evidently never met a zoom lens he didn’t love, at least as evidenced by the techniques on display throughout the film), A Black Veil for Lisa actually seems to take off on a completely divergent path shortly thereafter, with elements which are probably the most clearly influenced by giallo. These aspects include a cloaked and gloved killer who mysteriously watches a guy in a bar from a distance, and then follows and stabs him when he’s stumbling home, in a well staged and pretty creepy sequence.

Quickly, however, it turns out that Inspector Bulon is the lead guy on the case, one that involves a potential serial murderer and an incipient drug trade. There’s evidently some dysfunction at the Bulon home front, as evidenced by a weird interchange between Bulon and his younger wife Lisa which then segues into a perhaps uncomfortable love scene between the two. Underlying the tension is the fact that evidently Lisa has a somewhat colored past herself, one that may in fact be part and parcel of the crime trade Bulon is investigating.

A Black Veil for Lisa gets a bit more convoluted, at least from a traditional structural perspective, when Bulon actually catches the culprit, who turns out to be an impossibly handsome ladies’ man named Max Lindt (Robert Hoffmann). Bulon, approaching a nervous breakdown due to his obsessive suspicion that his young wife is sleeping around, decides to take matters into his own hands, with a little help from Max, but things begin to twist and turn, leading to at least one unplanned (by Bulon, anyway) death.

The film frankly doesn’t work all of the time, and tends to be a bit clunky when actors who aren’t quite of the same stature as Mills are on screen. Even Mills struggles at times here, offering a much more compelling portrait of a man under some psychological duress than in scenes where Bulon is forced to rough up various suspects or bystanders. Still, A Black Veil for Lisa is often incredibly stylish, and it moves with a kind of breathless alacrity that makes it enjoyable, albeit slight.

A Black Veil for Lisa Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

A Black Veil for Lisa is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This has a fairly dated look, one which doesn't help obviously aged and damaged elements. The palette has faded at least slightly (and at times more than slightly), with densities and saturation fluctuating throughout the presentation. Contrast is generally solid but can't overcome deficits in shadow detail in some of the darkest sequences. That said, there's still quite excellent delineation between the black raincoat and gloves of the killer and some of the shadowy backgrounds he moves through. Detail is very good in close-ups, but generally speaking sharpness and clarity are only average. The grain field is relatively heavy throughout the presentation, giving a kind of palpable texture to the proceedings.

A Black Veil for Lisa Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

A Black Veil for Lisa features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track that has a fair degree of boxiness, along with the perhaps unavoidable surreality that often attends Italian films which were at least partially post-looped. Fidelity is good to very good, with no real damage to report, but no overwhelming vivacity either.

A Black Veil for Lisa Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements of any kind on this Blu-ray disc. The main menu offers Play and Chapters options.

A Black Veil for Lisa Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A Black Veil for Lisa manages to be unexpectedly compelling even when it can't quite gain sufficient traction to be really memorable. Mills is better at detailing the angst of his character than Bulon's supposed toughness, and it's in the emotional breakdown of the Inspector that the film finds whatever emotional resonance it attains. Dallamano invests the film with quite a bit of style, and some of the framings are unusual and quite interesting. As a curio if nothing else, and despite only average technical merits, A Black Veil for Lisa comes Recommended.