Severin Films is bringing together the complete collaborative works of two cult film legends with The Complete Lenzi Baker Giallo Collection, which includes superlative editions of Orgasmo, So Sweet…So Perverse, A Quiet Place to Kill and Knife of Ice. The announcement trailer for the collection can be viewed in the player below!
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Italian writer/director Umberto Lenzi helmed popular peplums, created extreme poliziotteschi, and invented the Italian cannibal phenomenon. Hollywood actress Carroll Baker was the Golden Globe winning/Academy Award® nominated star of Baby Doll, Giant and The Carpetbaggers. Together in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s, they made four landmark films that changed the erotic thriller and giallo genres forever. For the first time, experience the complete Lenzi/Baker collaboration on six discs featuring restored uncensored versions, alternate edits, remastered soundtracks, exclusive Special Features and more.
In their first startling collaboration, Orgasmo, Carroll Baker stars as an American widow who arrives at her late husband’s luxurious Italian estate and surrenders to an orgy of ménages à trois, madness, and murder. Lenzi boldly fills the screen with bourgeois depravity, daring sexuality and unnerving twists for the worldwide hit At The Mountain Of Madness calls “so odd, disturbing and well-made, with that delirious giallo feel that’s like a drug.” Lou Castel (A Bullet for the General), Colette Descombes (Monika) and Tino Carraro (The Cat O’ Nine Tails) co-star in this landmark psychosexual thriller – released in the U.S. with extra nudity as Paranoia and also included here – now scanned from the internegative of Lenzi’s Director’s Cut for the first time on Blu-ray.
Following the international success of Orgasmo, the second Lenzi/Baker collaboration, So Sweet…So Perverse, is a kinky retelling of Diabolique featuring lush Paris locations, trippy flashbacks, a swinging score by Riz Ortolani (Cannibal Holocaust) and an all-star EuroCult cast that includes Jean-Louis Trintignant (The Conformist), Erika Blanc (Kill, Baby…Kill!), Horst Frank (The Cat O’ Nine Tails) and Helga Liné (Nightmare Castle). Executive produced by Sergio Martino (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh) from a screenplay by Ernesto Gastaldi (All the Colors of the Dark), this “full-blown classic giallo and one of Lenzi’s best” (B-Mania) is now fully restored in a new 2k scan from the original negative.
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In her third collaboration with Lenzi, A Quiet Place to Kill, Baker stars as a glamorous racecar driver entangled in a lurid affair with her ex-husband (Jean Sorel of Belle Du Jour), his wealthy new wife, and a twisted web of lust, murder and deception. Luis Dávila (Eagles Over London) co-stars in this 1970 Italian/French/Spanish co-production – released in Italy as Paranoia, though not to be confused with the 1969 U.S. re-title of Orgasmo – featuring a taut screenplay co-written by Bruno Di Geronimo (What Have You Done to Solange?) and Marcello Coscia (Let Sleeping Corpses Lie), plus edgy cinematography by Guglielmo Mancori (Wild Beasts) with Aristide Massaccesi/Joe D’Amato (Anthropophagus), now scanned from the original camera negative for the first time ever in America.
From its opening Edgar Allen Poe quote to the insane climactic twist, this fourth and final collaboration between co-writer/director Lenzi and Baker, Knife of Ice, is “something quite unique” (Gore Girl), with Baker as a traumatized mute being stalked through the Spanish countryside by a black-gloved sex maniac who may be a member of a Satanic cult. Evelyn Stewart (The Sweet Body of Deborah), Eduardo Fajardo (Nightmare City), George Rigaud (Eyeball) and Silvia Monelli (Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow) co-star in this “offbeat and fascinating giallo thriller” (All Movie), now scanned in 2K from the original negative with all-new Special Features.
The Complete Lenzi Baker Giallo Collection will be limited to only 4,000 units, with the first 1,000 direct orders from Severin’s webstore automatically including four postcards of the individual movie key arts, with other bundles including a brand-new, original T-shirt design, all of which will go on sale on June 30!
Special Features for Orgasmo:
- Director’s Cut
- Audio Commentary with Film Critic, Author & Academic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
- US X Rated Version + SDH subtitles
- Audio Commentary with Mondo-Digital’s Nathaniel Thompson & Troy Howarth, Author of ‘So Deadly So Perverse: 50 Years Of Italian Giallo Films’
- Giallo Fever – Interview with Director Umberto Lenzi
- US Trailer
Special Features for So Sweet… So Perverse:
- Audio Commentary with Kat Ellinger, Author of ‘All The Colors Of Sergio Martino’
- Lenzi’s Lenses – Backstage Chat with the Director at The 1999 Nocturno Film Festival
- Equilateral Triangle – Screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi on Lenzi
- Trailers
- Alternate Credit Sequence
Special Features for A Quiet Place to Kill:
- Audio Commentary with Author & Critic Samm Deighan
- Sex and Conspiracy – Interview with Director Umberto Lenzi
- Alternate Credit Sequence
- Alternate Clothed Scene
- Short Deleted Scene
Special Features for Knife of Ice:
- Carroll and Umberto’s Final Stab – Interview with Stephen Thrower, Author of ‘Nightmare USA’
- Until the Silence Screams – Interview with Director Umberto Lenzi
- Trailer
- Alternate Credit Sequence
CD Content:
- CD 1: Orgasmo Remastered Soundtrack
- CD 2: So Sweet… So Perverse & A Quiet Place To Kill Remastered Soundtracks Plus Bonus Track: Knife Of Ice (Main Title Theme)
