Slaughter Hotel - Raro Video (Blu-ray)

Theatrical Release Date: Italy, 1971
Director: Fernando Di Leo
Writers: Fernando Di Leo, Nino Latino
Cast: Klaus Kinski, Margaret Lee, Rosalba Neri, Jane Garret, John Karlsen, Gioia Desideri, Giangiacomo Elia, Fernando Cerulli

Release Date: December 9th, 2014
Approximate running time: 94 minutes 7 Seconds
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Widescreen / 1080 Progressive / MPEG-4 AVCC
Rating: NR
Sound: DTS-HD Mono Italian, DTS-HD Mono English
Subtitles: English
Region Coding: Region Free
Retail Price: $29.95

"This Italian exploitation horror cult classic stars a terminally creepy doctor (Klaus Kinski) at an asylum for suicidal and disturbed women. There's a team of strange doctors, unprofessional nurses and even a hunky gardener at these ladies' service to help them recover. In classic Giallo form director Fernando Di Leo introduces a mad-raving murderer, typically dressed in black and using the institution's old-fashioned armory decoration as slashing tools." - synopsis provided by the distributor

Video: 3/5

Here’s the information provided about the transfer, "New HD transfer digitally restored".

Slaughter Hotel comes on a 25 GB single layer Blu-ray.

Disc Size: 22.1 GB

Feature: 20.1 GB

Though the source used for this transfer has been cleaned up, unfortunately, it suffers from digital noise reduction and scanner noise. Image clarity is generally strong, black levels fare well, and any compression issues are minor. That said, despite being a marked improvement over Shriek Show’s DVD and Raro Video’s DVD, the result is another disappointing transfer from Raro Video.

Audio: 4/5 (DTS-HD Mono Italian), 0/5 (DTS-HD Mono English)

This release comes with two audio options, a DTS-HD Mono mix in Italian and a DTS-HD Mono mix in English. Both audio mixes are in very good shape, as the dialog is always clear and everything sounds balanced. Range-wise, considering the limitations of the mono source, these audio mixes do a satisfactory job, and the more ambient aspects of the soundtrack fare well. It should be noted that some scenes were only shot in Italian, and when listening to these scenes while listening to the English language track, these moments are silent. And it is a shame that during these non-English-dubbed moments, the Italian audio mix was not used instead of these moments of silence. Included with this release are removable English subtitles. The reason for giving the English language track a 0/5 score is because it is useless since there are moments where there is no audio.

Here is more information about the missing audio from the English audio track. “Regarding this matter this was an editorial decision, not a mistake: the longer exclusive uncut version of this movie, that we have released, has no audio in some very short segments of the English dubbed version-not due to a technical problem, but because we used a master that had scenes that were never used in previous releases and/or screenings. We, at Raro, decided to add some of these parts as extras in the special features. But, in order to give you access to this rare and longer uncut version, we left some short silent scenes in the English dubbed version.”

Extras:

Extras for this release include deleted scenes (2 minutes 13 second, Dolby Digital mono), an interview with actress Rosalba Neri titled Lady Frankenstein’s Memoirs (18 minutes 28 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo in Italian with non-removable English subtitles), a featurette titled Asylum of Fear with comments from director Fernando Di Leo, Rosalbi Neri, Oliver Pere (Quinzaine Executive) and composer Silvano Spadaccino (14 minutes 23 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo in Italian with non-removable English subtitles), a slipcover, and an eight-page booklet with cast & crew information, and an essay about Slaughter Hotel written by Chris Alexander.

Summary:

Slaughter Hotel was co-written and directed by Fernando Di Leo, whose other notable films include Caliber 9, The Italian Connection, The Boss, and To Be Twenty. The score for Slaughter Hotel was composed by Silvano Spadaccino (Beatrice Cenci), who had previously worked with Di Leo on Naked Violence and A Wrong Way to Love. He would also contribute songs to three more Di Leo films: Rulers of the City, To Be Twenty, and Burn, Boy, Burn.

The narrative revolves around a psychopath who targets patients at a clinic that caters to mentally disturbed women who come from wealthy families.

Alternative titles that Slaughter Hotel has been released under include Asylum Erotica, Cold Blooded Beast, the film’s Italian language title La bestia uccide a sangue freddo (The Beast Kills in Cold Blood), and its French language title Les insatisfaites poupées érotiques du docteur Hitchcock (The Dissatisfied Erotic Dolls of Dr. Hitchcock).

Content-wise, Slaughter Hotel has all the ingredients that one would expect or want from a Giallo. Gory murder set pieces, an ample amount of nudity, and a masked killer who keeps things interesting by using a wide array of weapons, all of which just happen to be laying around this most unusual asylum,.

And though Slaughter Hotel employs another one of these genre staples, the red herring, it is in this area that it is not as effective, as at least one said red herring is an obvious decoy that stands out like a sore thumb. Also, one area where Slaughter Hotel differs from the Giallo genre’s staples is its ending, which offers up an unusual resolution in which the killer does not get the chance to explain the reason behind their killing spree.

When it comes to the cast, Slaughter Hotel features a superb cast, led by Rosalbi Neri (Top Sensation) in the role of Anne, a nymphomaniac whose masturbating scene is easily the most memorable moment. Other performances of note include Margeret Lee (Venus in Furs) in the pivotal role of being used by the police as bait to finally draw out the killer, and Klaus Kinski (Count Dracula) doing what he does best, looking menacing.

Known for his extraordinary work within the Poliziotteschi genre, Slaughter Hotel would mark Fernando Di Leo’s first and only foray into the Giallo genre. And though Slaughter Hotel was clearly thrust upon Di Leo due to the popularity of the Giallo genre at the time, The end result is an unfairly maligned film that actually holds up better than the majority of its contemporaries.

Slaughter Hotel is another disappointing release from Raro Video, a company that is the Blu-ray equivalent to Mya Communication, whose DVD releases had many of the same shortcomings that plague far too many Raro Video releases.

Written by Michael Den Boer