The 10th Victim (1965)

Studio: Blue Underground
Theatrical Release: December 20th, 1965
Blu-Ray Release: September 13th, 2011
Rating: Not Rated

Review by Craig Sorensen

“Why have birth control when you can have death control”.

In the near future (well, future for the mid 60’s) murder has been turned into a government sanctioned game of chance.  For the promise of a million dollars anyone can volunteer for the hunt, either as a hunter or as a victim.  If you can make it to your tenth hunt you win the grand prize.  Ursula Andress plays Caroline Meredith, on her tenth hunt.  Her victim, Marcello (played by Marcello Mastroianni), who seems more concerned with avoiding his ex-wife and girlfriend than avoiding bullets.

This premise could be hopelessly dour and self important but the film takes a pop art, comic book approach.  There have been other films with the same premise, Battle Royale and The Running Man most prominently, but this is my favorite.  It just refuses to take itself too seriously.

The fashions and production design scream 60’s.  The film almost looks like a parody of the 1960’s at this point.  I love the design of the film though so I’m certainly not complaining.  Christ, I wish I could live in this world (well, if it weren’t for all the murder anyway).  It’s a little depressing finishing the film and realizing that I have to go to fucking work in the morning.

The film breezily coasts along on the likability of it’s stars as well.  Mastroianni is effortlessly cool in the lead.  Ursula Andress is appropriately sexy as his foil/love interest.  The two definitely have chemistry on screen and it’s not hard to buy their eventual attraction.

This new transfer makes my old Anchor Bay DVD look like shit.  The picture has much better contrast and the colors seem closer to a theatrical presentation to me.  The previous transfers all look like mud compared to this new Blu-Ray.  There’s a nice layer of grain so and I don’t see noise so I don’t think that the image has been overly processed.  There are two soundtrack options, the original Italian dialog track and an English dubbed track.  I’d recommend the Italian as the actors doing the English track don’t seem to know that the film is a comedy.  Mastroianni’s performance is particularly fucked with this track.  Both tracks sound good to me though.  Piero Piccioni’s score sounds great.

Extras include both the U.S. and Italian trailers for the film, a poster and stills gallery, a Marcello Mastroianni still gallery and a 90 minute documentary called “Marcello: A Sweet Life”.  The video is made up of interviews with people who knew him and vintage interviews with the actor and a few of his directors like Visconti and Fellini.  It’s a nice tribute to the actor’s life and work.

I’m a fan of the film so I would probably say this is a must buy even if it wasn’t a good package.  Thankfully that’s not the case here.  The film looks better than it ever has on home video.  If you are a fan of the 1960’s and films like Danger, Diabolik or Modesty Blaise then you should have a good time.  I’d recommend buying this.

(taking screen captures of a Blu Ray is a huge pain in the ass and I can't get any of the software I previously used for reviews to work with this disc.  So you get none I guess.)