Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		1.5

Blazing Stewardesses Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 20, 2020

Note: This film is available as part of Al Adamson: The Masterpiece Collection.

Disc Eight of The Masterpiece Collection offers a double feature of then trendy "stewardess" movies, with Naughty Stewardesses plying pretty traditional Adamson exploitation content, and with Blazing Stewardesses trying (and probably failing) to inject more nutty comedy into the mix.

In "I'm Still Here" from the original Broadway staging of Stephen Sondheim's Follies, Yvonne DeCarlo famously sang:

First you're another sloe-eyed vamp
Then someone's mother, then you're camp.

Having already matriculated from her sloe-eyed vamp phase in films like Salome Where She Danced to portraying Eddie's mom in The Munsters, one might safely assume that Blazing Stewardesses is firmly part of DeCarlo's camp era. DeCarlo is on hand as brothel maven Honey Morgan, who ends up helping house several stewardesses (including a couple women from Naughty Stewardesses). The film weirdly features a "Western" version of the kind of marauding biker gangs that were frequent nemeses in Adamson's efforts, but here of course they're on horseback, threatening a dude ranch owner. It's all frankly incoherent a lot of the time, and it's not helped by supposed "comedy" offered by two of the three legendary Ritz Brothers.

Blazing Stewardesses Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Blazing Stewardesses is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Severin Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.84:1. While this is ostensibly from a 35mm source, it's pretty fuzzy a lot of the time, with clarity and detail levels tending to ebb and flow as a result. There are recurrent contrast issues, with whites often appearing blown out. As with many of the other films in this set, there's pretty ubiquitous damage, including speckling, scratches, almost mutantly large reel change markers, and some iffy stock footage. Still, colors are surprisingly vivid almost all of the time, and the outdoor material (which is plentiful) popping rather well. In these brighter moments, fine detail on some of the outrageous outfits worn by several characters is also good. This is another presentation where there's a sudden (if this time, brief) downturn in quality at circa 50:46 in a scene with DeCarlo singing (could it have been edited out of some versions?).

Blazing Stewardesses Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Blazing Stewardesses features a decent if improvable DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono mix. There's noticeable breakup in some of the music, notably the opening cue under the text card, and then the main theme (which also sounds really boxy). Amplitude is kind of variable, and I actually found it hard to hear some of the dialogue on the plane scenes in particular, where there's the background "hiss" of the plane noise. English subtitles are available via the button on your remote.

Blazing Stewardesses Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Archival Audio Commentary with Producer / Distributor Samuel M. Sherman


• Alternate The Great Truck Robbery Title Sequence (1080p; 00:20)


• TV Spot (1080p; 1:05)


• Radio Spot (1:25)


• Females For Hire Combo TV Spot (1080p; 1:02) offers another Double Feature combo trailer with Hard Women.


• Bedroom Stewardesses (1080p; 18:22) offers the Adamson directed sections of the film, which feature virtually no bedrooms.

Blazing Stewardesses Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Kind of hilariously the marketing material included as supplements on this release touts the rapturous critical response this film supposedly received, while studiously avoiding actually naming any of the critics ostensibly offering their approval. This is an unfortunate low point in the filmographies of several notables, but this has decent if improvable technical merits and another nice commentary from Samuel N. Sherman.