6.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
While filming the closing scene of "The Death Kiss", leading man Myles Brent is actually killed. Having played around with, or been married to, most of the women connected with the movie studio, there are lots of suspects. When leading lady Marcia Lane is arrested for the killing, her suiter, a studio writer, starts to investigate the killing in order to prove her innocence...
Starring: David Manners, Adrienne Ames, Bela Lugosi, John Wray, Vince BarnettMystery | 100% |
Crime | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 2.5 | |
Audio | 2.5 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Oh, to have been a Tiffany Studios press representative back when The Death Kiss premiered in 1932. This so-called Poverty Row studio probably didn’t even have much of a press department, but it could have capitalized cheekily on the reuniting of three players from the previous year’s mega-hit Dracula with tag lines like:
The old gang is back! As if they never un-died!Or perhaps emblazoned over an illustration featuring Bela Lugosi:
He vants to solve your crime!Lugosi was in fact featured rather heavily in the advertising that Tiffany managed to churn out to promote the film, this despite the fact that the actor is very much a supporting player in what ironically turns out to be an early talkie era version (of sorts, anyway) of Robert Altman’s The Player. There’s certainly nothing akin to Altman’s technical mastery (like that famous opening sequence) on display in The Death Kiss, nor even any high-falutin’ intellectual content, but much like the Altman film The Death Kiss attempts to peel back the artificial veneer of a movie studio that is in chaos after an inexplicable murder. The Death Kiss has achieved a perhaps unwarranted cachet through the years since it did in fact reunite Lugosi, David Manners and Edward Van Sloan from Dracula. And the film was famous in its day for hand tinted “color” snippets (recreated here) as well as for huge box office receipts it generated in New York City when it played at the 6,000 seat (!) Roxy Theater on Manhattan’s Seventh Avenue, after the Roxy introduced so-called “popular prices” (i.e., big discounts) in order to lure prospective audiences away from the then new and lustrous Radio City Music Hall. The Death Kiss is probably best appreciated by modern audiences as an interesting curio which sees Lugosi playing it relatively straight, with an okay but hardly mind boggling murder mystery at its core, and some brief but fun looks at the actual Tiffany Studios, such as they were in the early thirties.
The Death Kiss is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Classics with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. Lovers of Hollywood lore know the less than august end Tiffany Studios endured, and The Death Kiss, like other "poverty row" material of that era, ultimately passed into the public domain. Bargain basement home video releases have been pretty awful up to now, and the good news here is that from a relative standpoint, this Kino offering is the best I've personally seen. Unfortunately, that doesn't equate to it being really good. Sourced from 35mm elements housed at the Library of Congress, it seems apparent that there were elements of varying quality. At intermittent times, this transfer can look quite good, with excellent contrast and only a minimum of damage to report. But more consistently there are rather wide contrast and grain fluctuations and at times a somewhat frustrating amount of scratches, emulsion damage and various dirt and other anomalies to endure, as well as problems like missing frames. The original hand tinted sequences (mere moments, really) are recreated here, with yellow coloring appended to things like flashlight beams or wall sconces in the screening room. The most "spectacular" effect is a blink and you'll miss it instant where a film burns and melts in the camera (see screenshot 4). With no better elements to source a transfer from, and without the kind of market interest that would justify a frame by frame restoration, this Kino release is commendable, if far from ideal. Film purists will at least be happy to note that there's no overt digital interference here, and the elements are presented organically as they were found, warts and all.
The Death Kiss features a middling but problematic DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix that can only do so much with old, weathered and damaged stems. While dropouts here are not nearly as numerous as in previous video versions of the film I've personally seen, there are still volume fluctuations, lots of hiss and "snaps, crackles and pops". Very little actual dialogue is compromised, however, and it's relatively easy to hear all of what's going on, even in some intentionally noisy scenes.
Typically my cutoff line for what I can comfortably recommend is a film earning at least a 3.0 for overall quality. But rules are meant to be broken. The Death Kiss is no great forgotten masterpiece, and in fact it would be a fairly easy argument to make that the film has certain lame elements, including some wooden acting. But this a great chance to see at least a glimpse or two of an early thirties' studio, and it's fun to see the three Dracula stars reteamed, even if this "follow up" has little of the quality of their first collaboration. While this release suffers from lackluster video and audio, the included commentary is fun and fact filled. For historical reasons if nothing else, The Death Kiss comes Recommended.
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