The Last Match – Cauldron Films (Blu-ray)

Theatrical Release Date: Italy/USA, 1991
Director: Fabrizio De Angelis
Writers: Gianfranco Clerici, Gary Kent, Vincenzo Mannino
Cast: Oliver Tobias, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Napier, Henry Silva, Martin Balsam, Rob Floyd, Melissa Palmisano

Release Date: February 11th, 2025
Approximate running time: 94 Minutes 3 Seconds
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 Widescreen / 1080 Progressive / MPEG-4 AVC
Rating: NR
Sound: DTS-HD Mono English
Subtitles: English, English SDH
Region Coding: Region Free
Retail Price: $29.95

"Get ready for the most important game of your life where one mistake means Game Over! What do you do when your daughter is framed for drug smuggling during a Caribbean vacation while being held in jail by a sadistic warden (Henry Silva - Escape from the Bronx)? If you are football star Cliff Gaylor (Oliver Tobias - Cobra Mission), you call an audible and do whatever you can to get her out! But when the American Consulate (Charles Napier - Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) doesn't want to be involved and the local attorney (Martin Balsam - Psycho) only wants you to grease his palm with no guarantees, your only choice is to take matters into your own hands. Before he can even call the next play, his coach (Ernest Borgnine - Code Name: Wild Geese) and the rest of the football team (in full uniform!) are on a plane packed with weapons and money aimed to free his daughter or die trying!" - synopsis provided by the distributor

Video: 4.5/5

Here’s the information provided about the transfer, "a new 4k restoration struck from the camera negative."

The Last Match comes on a 50 GB dual layer Blu-ray.

Disc Size: 38 GB

Feature: 25.6 GB

The source looks excellent; colors look correct, image clarity and black levels are solid, and there are no issues with digital noise reduction.

Audio: 4.25/5

This release comes with one audio option, a DTS-HD mono mix in English with removable English SDH subtitles. Included are removable English subtitles for all dialog not in English. The audio sounds clean, clear, and balanced. Range-wise, this audio track sounds very good.

Extras:

Extras for this release include reversible cover art, an image gallery with music from the film playing in the background (posters/home video art/stills), a theatrical trailer (3 minutes 10 seconds, DTS-HD mono English, no subtitles), an interview with special effects artist Roberto Ricci titled Blown Away (16 minutes 14 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo Italian with non-removable English subtitles), a video-essay by Italian film expert Eugenio Ercolani titled Understanding the Cobra, he discusses director Fabrizio De Angelis (17 minutes 38 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo English, no subtitles), a minidoc by Eurocrime! The Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the '70s director Mike Malloy titled American Actors in a Declining Italian Cinema (29 minutes 3 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo English, no subtitles), and an audio commentary with Italian exploitation movie critic Michael A. Martinez.

Summary:

Fabrizio De Angelis directed The Last Match. He’s also known for Thunder, Cobra Mission, and Killer Crocodile. Besides directing, he also worked as a producer on films like Violent Naples, Zombie, Zombie Holocaust, The Beyond, The House by the Cemetery, and The New York Ripper.

A football star's daughter is imprisoned on a Caribbean island for possession of illegal drugs. When it becomes clear that they are dealing with a corrupt government known for their brutality, the father, his coach, and some of his teammates decide to break her out of prison.

Being a producer and a director are two vastly different, albeit significant, roles in the filmmaking process. Having now seen a cross-section of Fabrizio De Angelis’ films as a director, it is clear that he is nothing more than a workmanlike filmmaker with no distinct style. That said, when it came to producing the films, the films he worked on always flourished because of their directors.

Though The Last Match has a solid premise, a foreigner accused of a crime they did not commit and imprisoned. The execution of said premise is not without its shortcomings. Most of the first hour is not much more than characters talking and not much happening. Things liven up in the action-heavy last 30 minutes, when the father and his teammates, dressed in the football uniforms and armed to the teeth, attack the prison.

Something you can always count on from Italian genre cinema is recognizable faces, many Hollywood actors and actresses in the twilight of their careers. Notable cast members are Ernest Borgnine (The Wild Bunch), who portrays a football team coach; Charles Napier (Supervixens), who portrays a U.S. embassy official; Henry Silva (The Manchurian Candidate), who portrays the drastic prison warden; and Martin Balsam (Psycho), who portrays a shady lawyer. The performances often veer into the over-the-top realm, especially when it comes to the aforementioned Hollywood actors.

By the 1980s, Italian genre cinema was in decline, and budgets were slashed, and though they continued to churn out films like The Last Match into the 1990s, it is clear they were working on even finer margins. That said, what the Italians often lacked when it came to money, they more than made up for with their ingenuity. Nowhere is this clearer in The Last Match than in its action sequences, which include a moment where a character blows up a helicopter by drop-kicking a grenade into it. Ultimately, The Last Match is not even B grade cinema, it is Z grade.

The Last Match gets a solid release from Cauldron Films that comes with a strong audio/video presentation and informative extras, only recommended for fans of Z-grade cinema.

Written by Michael Den Boer