Theatre of Mr. & Mrs. Kabal Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Theatre of Mr. & Mrs. Kabal Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 10, 2019

Some of you may be old enough to remember something called a bookstore (and, yes, that’s a joke). Years, in fact decades, ago I attempted to escape from a typically brutal rainy Portland day by dashing into just such an emporium where for some reason a little tome by Edward Gorey called The Loathsome Couple caught my eye, and, it being a very short and illustration filled volume, I started reading it right there. Big mistake. Gorey’s trenchant, extremely dark sense of humor “reached out and touched” me in a rather significant way, and I started guffawing so loudly that a store employee asked me to either quiet down or leave the premises. There’s another kind of loathsome couple on display in the completely peculiar (mostly) animated feature, Theatre of Mr. and Mrs. Kabal, a 1967 effort from Polish director Walerian Borowczyk, though whether or not individual viewers will find this odd piece "laugh out loud" worthy may be up for debate.

Borowczyk is somewhat infamous as a would be pornographer, and it’s interesting to note that Theatre of Mr. and Mrs. Kabal is specifically detailed as “a film for adults”, though aside from a few interstitial shots of babes in bikinis, there’s not anything here that would probably be termed overly salacious. The film has an unabashedly surreal quality, even if it actually has a through line of sorts, detailing the harridan tendencies of Mrs. Kabal (which evidently leads to problems of indigestion), and the perhaps understandable refuge the henpecked Mr. Kabal finds in spying on those aforementioned pulchritudinous women. There’s a certain “meta” quality here that hints at vaudeville, replete with title cards and blackouts, and Borowczyk himself (or at least a somewhat tweaked version of him) appears in scenes with Mrs. Kabal, urging her to stick to whatever script is ostensibly being utilized.

Theatre of Mr. & Mrs. Kabal Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Theatre of Mr. and Mrs. Kabal is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. As can perhaps be gleaned from some of the screenshots accompanying this review, Borowczyk indulges in a variety of styles, not necessarily relegated solely to "traditional" animation, in this film. The animated sections are actually kind of minimalist, more like line drawings than anything, frequently without much in the way of background information. These are contrasted with some relatively brief live action moments and the kind of weirdly enjoyable scenes of Borowczyk interacting with Mrs. Kabal (see screenshot 6). As such, grain is perhaps understandably a bit variable, but resolves surprisingly well throughout the presentation. The color looked slightly faded to my eyes, probably most noticeably in the live action interstitials, which appear a bit on the brown side. There's also recurrent if rather minor damage in the form of repeated vertical scratches that show up, often toward the sides of the frame.

Theatre of Mr. & Mrs. Kabal Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Theatre of Mr. and Mrs. Kabal features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track which displays some signs of distortion that are most noticeable in the opening credits sequence which plays to some archival classical audio. The main feature is filled with sound effects, including what is supposed to be Mrs. Kabal's "dialogue", which sounds like snippets of audio that have been variously tweaked to end up sounding more like random blips and bleeps rather than spoken words. There's minor hiss evident in the quieter sections, but no issues with regard to dropouts.

Theatre of Mr. & Mrs. Kabal Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements of any kind offered on this Blu-ray disc.

Theatre of Mr. & Mrs. Kabal Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Theatre of Mr. and Mrs. Kabal is certainly a unique little film, one that may not offer a ton in the way of actual "content", but which is completely over the top stylistically. The film has a certain piquant sense of humor, though I for one was never in the throes of hilarity the way I was so long ago with regard to The Loathsome Couple. This may be of particular interest to lovers of cult animation or for anyone who has followed Borowczyk's rather interesting career. Technical merits are generally fine for those considering a purchase.