Cactus Flower Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Cactus Flower Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman October 25, 2018

Note: 'Cactus Flower' is currently only available as part of a Mill Creek double feature with 'Age of Consent.'

Toni (Goldie Hawn in her cinema debut) is a love-struck and suicidal 21-year-old who attempts to kill herself by inhaling poisonous gasses from her stove. She’s upset for being scorned by her “married” lover, a dentist named Julian (Walter Matthau). Her suicide attempt thankfully fails when her neighbor Igor (Rick Lenz), smelling the gasses, breaks into her apartment and resuscitates her. Toni reveals all the details of her disappointment to him, including that she has written a letter to her lover announcing her suicide, a letter she no longer wishes for him to receive. She pleads with Igor to call Julian before he receives said letter. But Julian receives the note, anyway, rushes from his office, and confronts Toni. He promises to marry her and divorce the “wife” he doesn’t actually have but has pretended exists as part of his courtship with Toni. But she nags him repeatedly to allow her to meet his wife, to make sure that she and her children will be fine; she doesn’t want to be a “home breaker.” Desperate to satisfy her demands, Julian recruits his longtime nurse, Stephanie (Ingrid Bergman), to pose as his wife and speak with Toni, which ultimately only creates a larger pile of lies that several people must keep straight in an effort to save Julian’s relationship with Toni.

Cactus Flower Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Despite a few pops and speckles, which increase in severity only occasionally, Cactus Flower looks fairly good on Blu-ray. Like the film with which it shares a disc, Age of Consent (linked above), the image is generally filmic, with a somewhat aggressive but complimentary grain structure. The image boasts high end detailing, which extends to practically every surface: faces and clothes, dense city streets, dental office or apartment interiors, and album covers in a record shop. Sharpness and clarity are excellent all the way around. Colors are a strength, too, boasting good saturation and accuracy throughout the entire palette, including from those seen on many of those same elements noted above as textural strengths, such as the diversely colored covers in that record shop and the yellow sweater Toni wears in the same location. The only scene of real trouble comes at the 51 minute mark in a photography dark room where macroblocking is more prominent than elsewhere.

Cactus Flower Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The included LPCM 2.0 uncompressed soundtrack is heavy on dialogue; most everything else is a mild support element. The spoken word is clear and images smartly and efficiently to the center. Various supporting details and music present with adequate sonic definition and generally good front-end placement, through the track never really stretches with any significance, preferring the comfort of a more centralist positioning.

Cactus Flower Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Cactus Flower contains no supplemental content.

Cactus Flower Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Cactus Flower was based on Abe Burrows' Broadway play (which was itself based on a French production) and the film doesn't betray its stage roots, remaining very much a product of the scene, allowing for plenty of breathing room for the actors to develop the story in carefully paced, but very humorous, segments. It's a fun romp of lies and deception in the name of love that boasts an agreeably assembled A-list cast. Mill Creek's featureless Blu-ray delivers quality 1080p video and perfectly fine two-channel uncompressed audio. Recommended.