Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		2.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

The Count of Monte Cristo Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 10, 2013

Note: This film is currently available only in the double feature The Count of Monte Cristo / Man Friday.

Shout! Factory has been going whole hog lately with a slew of double (or more) features under several of its imprints, including Timeless Media Group. Some of these offerings, such as Movies 4 You: Timeless Westerns, at least had a genre knitting the disparate films together, though even supposed genre siblings like The Hot Spot / Killing Me Softly might seem at least a little odd to some. Taking the cake in this recent sweepstakes of forced disc-mates is the rather unlikely pairing of The Count of Monte Cristo, a made for television opus starring Richard Chamberlain which was quite well received in its day but which has languished in the home media department, and Man Friday, a fascinating reboot of the hoary Defoe epic Robinson Crusoe, a big screen effort teaming Peter O’Toole and Richard Roundtree in a decidedly different telling of the famous tale. Aside from the fact both of these entries are part of the ITV catalog, there really isn’t much recommending a pairing of them, other than that they both are circa mid-seventies.

After having become something like the television equivalent of a matinee idol during his run on the popular sixties’ medical drama Dr. Kildare, Richard Chamberlain set out to prove his acting mettle in a number of projects, including the horribly ill-fated Broadway musical version of Breakfast At Tiffany’s, which co-starred another refugee from the small screen, Mary Tyler Moore. But by the late sixties and early seventies, Chamberlain had begun to get more than respectable reviews in a number of rather challenging theatrical outings, including some of Shakespeare’s historical dramas. While some of his big screen efforts were middling at best (Ken Russell’s interesting but muddled biopic of Tchaikovsky, The Music Lovers, for example), Chamberlain really started to make his pop cultural mark in the early seventies with a number of made for television movies, and The Count of Monte Cristo, which like many entertainments produced for American television also received a European theatrical release, proved to be one of his most popular, if not quite as enduring as Shogun or The Thorn Birds, two of the actor’s most famous eighties entries in the telefilm sweepstakes.

For a television film, The Count of Monte Cristo is rather impressively mounted, with a number of rather luscious Italian locations utilized to the production’s benefit (the bulk of the movie was filmed at Rome’s iconic Cinecitta Studios). As was the norm in the day of these relatively high budget made for television outings, a number of well known if perhaps no longer exactly A-list performers were recruited to fill out the large supporting cast. Therefore, augmenting Chamberlain’s turn as the ill fated Edmond Dantes are such talents as Trevor Howard as Abbe Faria, another prisoner in the horrible island bound jail Dantes finds himself in; and Louis Jourdan, Tony Curtis and Donald Pleasance as a trio of conspirators who send Dantes to the prison, expecting him to die there. Adding romantic interest are Kate Nelligan as Mercedes, the woman Dantes had planned to marry, and Taryn Power (Tyrone Power’s daughter) as Valentine, the comely daughter of de Villefort, Jourdan’s duplicitous character.

Scenarist Sidney Carroll telescopes a great deal of Alexandre Dumas père’s legendary novel, as probably should be expected, jettisoning some characters and also giving some of the existing characters rather different arcs than they experienced in the original version. What may bother Dumas fans the most about this adaptation is its rather interesting divorce from the sociopolitical context which informed so much of the original novel’s intent and, frankly, gave it so much of its impact. This Count of Monte Cristo is boiled down to its absolute essence, which is of course a revenge story, a tale of a man horribly wronged who goes about seeking justice slowly but surely after he’s become well educated at the hands of the Abbe and later is able to escape his meager cell, find a treasure, and craft a new, opulent identity for himself.

Some of this outing may strike more cynical viewers as unintentionally funny. Once Dantes assumes the role of the Count of Monte Cristo, he affects an imperious air, one that is manifestly evidenced by him throwing his cloak at whatever servant happens to be within spitting distance (this actually happens a couple of times in the film). Also, the big trial showdown between De Villefort and Dantes has an inexplicable piece of business for Jourdan which I personally found laughable, though evidently at the time of this telefilm’s broadcast, this sequence was considered a dramatic high point of the proceedings.

A long ago reviewer of the musical version of Jekyll and Hyde once said it was a show that was “all about the hair”, and in a way, that can also be said of this production. We get to see Chamberlain as a dashing young man, then a haggard prisoner with straggling locks and an uncouth beard, then as a mustaschiod quasi-pirate, and then, finally, as a silver-white haired elder who’s out to teach his nemeses a thing or two about retribution. Chamberlain’s performance is actually quite good, all things considered, and this version does at least peer, if only fleetingly, into one of Dumas’ major theses, the corrosive effects of vengeance.

The Count of Monte Cristo Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Count of Monte Cristo is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Timeless Media Group (an imprint of Shout! Factory) with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The elements here are in okay if not spectacular shape, with some fairly noticeable scratches and specks showing up quite a bit of the time. Colors have actually maintained a great deal of their original vivacity, especially blues, which remain quite convincing. On the other hand, greens seem faded and flesh tones are a bit on the pink side. The bulk of the film looks quite soft, as perhaps befits its television origins, and fine detail rarely rises above merely adequate levels. The biggest problem for some videophiles will be transitory mosquito noise that crops up in a couple of darker scenes, especially some of the jail sequences, where it swarms over the lower third of the frame.

The Count of Monte Cristo Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Count of Monte Cristo lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix (presented via DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0) sounds quite full and vibrant, especially with regard to Allyn Ferguson's rousing, sometimes heraldic, score. Dialogue is well prioritized and always easy to hear, and the glut of environmental sound effects is also very well mixed into the proceedings. Things do sound rather narrow here, without much depth, but there's no real damage to report, and fidelity is fine given reasonable expectation. Dynamic range is also quite wide, courtesy of a few action sequences.

The Count of Monte Cristo Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Photo Gallery (1080p)

The Count of Monte Cristo Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This early entry in Richard Chamberlain's made for television movie or miniseries filmography has been oddly missing on home video, with only a few sporadic releases through the years, some of them pricey imports. Looking back on this effort now from the vantage point of several decades, it's quite a bit glossier than a lot of television fare, but it also can't quite escape its "made for television" roots, including a truncated plot, some inexplicable changes in characters, and some kind of corny acting at times. Chamberlain and Howard are both standouts, but I personally found Jourdan and Curtis to be major distractions. Still, this outing has its fair share of fans, who will no doubt be thrilled this is out on Blu-ray, even despite some occasionally problematic video.