Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life & Ghastly Death of Al Adamson Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life & Ghastly Death of Al Adamson Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 20, 2020

Note: This film is available as either a standalone or as part of Al Adamson: The Masterpiece Collection. This review is based on the disc included in the Masterpiece set.

Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life and Ghastly Death of Al Adamson begins at the end, so to speak, with some archival news coverage interspersed with contemporary interview snippets dealing with Adamson's kind of grisly murder in 1995. The documentary then takes an almost sweet hearted look at Adamson's history and filmography before ultimately returning to Adamson's last years and his ultimate killing by a handyman he had hired to help flip a house Adamson had purchased.

The main source for career information is Adamson's self described best friend and colleague Samuel M. Sherman, who recounts a lot of the ins and outs of various films, though some fans may wish a bit more information had been offered about Adamson's ability to "rejigger" films into various forms with various titles. There are a number of other interesting interviews as well, along with some fun archival clips (including some great old silent footage of Adamson's famous movie cowboy father, Denver Dixon, who evidently made the first Australian western at the dawn of the silent era).

Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life & Ghastly Death of Al Adamson Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life and Ghastly Death of Al Adamson is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Severin Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer (often) in 1.78:1 (some archival video is in narrower aspect ratios). As with many documentaries culled from various sources, there are some inescapable quality variations on display, with some of the older clips from films often looking fairly ragged. The contemporary interview and other scenes like some establishing shots are all sharp and very well detailed. In the Masterpiece set, this shares a disc with The Female Bunch, but I can't offer any comparisons to the standalone presentation since I don't have that release.

Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life & Ghastly Death of Al Adamson Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life and Ghastly Death of Al Adamson features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and 2.0 tracks. This is by and large a talking heads documentary, with a lot of interstitial film clips, and as such the 2.0 track probably suffices quite well. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to really isolate "big" moments in the surround track that sounded substantially different from the 2.0 track, but both offerings feature great fidelity (with an understanding that some archival audio can be a little time ravaged on occasion).

Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life & Ghastly Death of Al Adamson Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Outtakes (1080p; 20:10) includes several deleted scenes from the documentary with some more really enjoyable interview segments with the likes of Russ Tamblyn and Samuel Sherman.


• Beyond This Earth Promo Reel (1080p; 3:09)


• Blood & Flesh Trailer (1080p; 2:40)


• Al Adamson Poster Gallery (1080p)

Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life & Ghastly Death of Al Adamson Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life and Ghastly Death of Al Adamson is a fascinating piece that probably could have offered a bit clearer exposition on some of Adamson's biography, but which is buoyed by some really fun and often quite heartfelt reminiscences from the likes of Russ Tamblyn, Samuel Sherman, and a host of others. Technical merits are solid, and the supplementary package enjoyable. Recommended.