The Roommates / A Woman for All Men Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

The Roommates / A Woman for All Men Blu-ray Movie Review

Exploitation King

Reviewed by Michael Reuben March 23, 2015

Like many more famous directors, including Sydney Pollack, Richard Donner and Robert Altman (to name just a few), Arthur Marks learned his craft directing episodic television, including over seventy episodes of the landmark legal drama Perry Mason, which ran on CBS from 1957 through 1966. Marks was literally born into the film industry, growing up on the MGM lot where his father worked a variety of jobs and appearing as an extra in numerous films. Studio head Louis B. Mayer knew him by name, as he knew all of the regulars on the lot.

But Marks's career took a different path, as the old studio system crumbled in the Sixties and Seventies under the multiple pressures of economic stress, a changing culture and the continued onslaught of competition from TV. As both producer and director, Marks chose to focus on the drive-in market that the studios considered beneath them. In that long-past era, drive-ins were one of the favorite locales to see films deemed less than respectable, including horror and the general category dubbed "exploitation", which today would probably be called soft-core porn. In those days, though, the legal landscape was sufficiently rocky that filmmakers showing sex and nudity had to be sure to include "socially redeeming value", and Marks had enough self-respect as a filmmaker that he always included a story. His connections in Hollywood were good enough that he often got real actors.

Gorgon Video, one of the specialty labels under the umbrella of MPI Media, is issuing restored versions of two films from the Marks canon on DVD and Blu-ray. Released theatrically in 1973, The Roommates was the first film to be distributed by General Film Corporation, the company Marks created to eliminate obstacles he had encountered obtaining distribution for previous projects. Marks's 1975 release, A Woman for All Men, is a cut above even his own work in the exploitation field, due to both its cast and its script.

For further discussion of The Roommates, please see The Roommates Blu-ray review.

For further discussion of A Woman for All Men, please see the A Woman for All Men Blu-ray review.

The Roommates / A Woman for All Men Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The source for Gorgon Video's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was not identified, but the company has provided a surprisingly well-defined and detailed image for two low-budget films from forty years ago. As one might expect, there is major damage in the form of scratches and blotches in the opening titles, where optical printing often locks in such issues, but the bulk of the film is in remarkably good shape. For The Roommates, colors are bright and vivid, which, is important for both the locations of this film and the Seventies decor. For A Woman for All Men, colors are a mix of soft earth tones (for the McCoy home and construction site) and bright hues (mostly for Karen's wardrobe and occasionally for that of other women). The image has natural grain to it, although I cannot discount the possibility that some light degraining may have been applied to certain shots. Fortunately no artificial sharpening has coarsened the grain or otherwise marred the image.

Because Gorgon is supplying two films on a single BD-50, both features have been mastered with an average bitrate of only 21.99 Mbps. While this is somewhat low for features originated on film, neither film involves many edits (a point discussed in the commentary for The Roommates) or major action, so that a skilled compressionist can accomplish a lot with a little. Even with print damage, the image appeared to be free of artifacts.

The Roommates / A Woman for All Men Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The original mono soundtracks for both films is presented in lossless PCM 2.0 with identical left and right channels. The dialogue is clear, but the sound effects are frequently flat, which is strictly a function of the original recordings. From a storytelling perspective, the soundtrack gets the job done, and in the days when the effects were pumped through a drive-in loudspeaker attached to a car door, I suspect no one noticed any deficiency.

The Roommates / A Woman for All Men Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Please see the individual reviews for a description of the extras.

The Roommates / A Woman for All Men Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Gorgon Video has done vintage enthusiasts a great service by bringing these two films back from obscurity in such unusually good presentations. They won't be anyone's idea of demo material, but I doubt anyone has seen them looking this good since . . . well, maybe never. Recommended, as long as you understand what kind of films these are.