BUTTERFLY KISS
Color, 1994, 87 mins. 56 secs.
Directed by Michael Winterbottom
Starring Amanda Plummer, Saskia Reeves, Ricky Tomlinson
Severin Films (Blu-ray) (US R0 HD), Fabulous Films (DVD) (UK R0 PAL), First Run Features (DVD) (US R1 NTSC) / WS (1.85:1) (16:9)
MORGIANA
Color, 1972, 97m.
Directed by Juraj Herz
Starring Iva Janžurová, Josef Abrhám, Nina Divíšková
Severin Films (Blu-ray) (US R0 HD), Second Run (Blu-ray & DVD) (UK R0 HD/PAL), Studio Hamburg Enterprises (Blu-ray & DVD) (Germany RB/R2 HD/PAL)
THE SAVAGE EYE
B&W, 1957, 66 mins. 46 secs.
Directed by Ben Maddow, Sidney Meyers and Joseph Strick
Starring
Barbara Baxley, Gary Merrill, Herschel Bernardi, Jean Hidey, Elizabeth Zemach
Severin Films (Blu-ray) (US R0 HD) / WS (1.85:1) (16:9), Image Entertainment (DVD) (US R1 NTSC)
THE GLASS CEILING
Color, 1971, 95 mins. 23 secs.
Directed by
Eloy de la Iglesia
Starring Carmen Sevilla, Dean Selmier, Patty Shepard, Fernando Cebrián, Encarna Paso, Hugo Blanco
Severin Films (Blu-ray) (US R0 HD) / WS (1.85:1) (16:9)
Released in 2022, Severin Films' four-movie set House of Psychotic Women: Rarities Collection was a fascinating idea by author Keir-La Janisse to use her watershed film 
studies/biography book about female cinematic madness as the springboard for a Blu-ray box. It took a while, but in 2025 a second 
volume finally arrived, House of Psychotic Women: Rarities Collection Volume 2, with one major enticement for Spanish horror fans, a U.S. premiere of a Gothic Czech masterpiece, and two very out of left field choices in keeping with the prior set's modus operandi.
First up is the underseen and compelling Butterfly Kiss, the debut film from writer-director Michael Winterbottom who went on to one of the most diverse careers in modern history including the comedy hit The Trip and its sequels, the Thomas Hardy adaptations Jude and The Claim, 24 Hour Party People, The Killer Inside Me, and the notorious explicit music romance 9 Songs. Amanda Plummer, in the midst of a really wild indie period stretching from Pulp Fiction to 8 1/2 Women, stars as Eunice, an unstable woman traveling around rest stops looking for someone named Judith. She ends up as the object of fascination for hearing-impaired cashier Miriam (Reeves) who abandons her grandmother and follows Eunice, who is revealed to be covered in chains, piercings, and tattoos, on a murderous odyssey across the countryside.
Long before Monster brought the female serial killer love story into the mainstream, Winterbottom's film generates a lot of atmosphere out of its gray landscapes but ultimately rides or dies on the strength of its two leads. Fortunately Plummer (doing a remarkable accent) and Reeves are both up to the task, pulling pathos out of their increasingly terrifying characters leading up to a haunting ending that would do Jean Rollin proud. The killings here aren't terribly explicit but deliver enough brutality to get the point across and marginally qualify this as a horror film; however, it's been marketed primarily as an art film including its theatrical and home video releases in the U.S. and U.K. The Severin Blu-ray marks what appears to be the film's second HD incarnation on physical media, following a nebulous and quickly discontinued one in France. The presentation here is a 2K scan from the British Film Institute, 
and it looks a lot better than the ancient DVD and VHS versions out there with the outdoor scenes in particular getting a significant boost in detail and color saturation. The DTS-HD MA 2.0 English surround track sounds excellent with dramatic 
channel separation throughout, and optional English SDH subtitles are provided. In a new video intro (5m13s), Janisse ties this to other killer women films around that time (Heavenly Creatures, Bound, Thelma & Louise, etc.), the significance of the location for a road movie, and the growing number of queer road films. Then a second intro by writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce (3m51s), appropriately with a bit of a facial scuffing from a bike mishap, explains how the script originated from various cinematic and true-life inspirations including an incident visiting his family in Ireland. A new commentary by Kat Ellinger really finds her firing on all cylinders covering the unique aspects of making a British road movie on its motorways, the difficulties of shooting for an extended period of time in those areas, the upending of conventional romantic narratives here, comparisons to other killer duo movies from the '90s like Natural Born Killers, and lots more. In "Between Everyday And The Extreme" (22m7s), Winterbottom explains how his TV work led to the chance to do this film and why he chose this after another project with Cottrell-Boyce fell through. Plummer and Reeves appear separately in "No Judgement" (21m23s) and "You're Not Judith" (14m51s) about their impressions of Winterbottom early in his career, the lack of psychological analysis in the script and execution, their mutual admiration as actors, their reactions to the finished product, and thoughts on how the violent content was handled. In "Pestilence Through Petrol" (8m56s), producer Julie Baines discusses her previous work with Reeves, her attraction to the gritty and edgy nature of the script, and her joy at getting Plummer cast in the film soon after she got a U.K. agent. Finally in "Front Light and Black Sky" (17m51s), Seamus McGarvey recalls his upgrade here compared to earlier micro-budget films, his love of working as a camera operator, and the stark differences between shooting on film and digital. Finally you get the theatrical trailer and the 1998's Ruth Lingford short Pleasures of War (11m39s), a very spooky animated depiction of combat and its victims with one of the most unnerving soundtracks you'll ever hear.
Based on a tale by Russian 
horror writer Aleksandr Grin, the story of Morgiana sounds like a period twist on killer-twin potboilers like Dead Ringer but 
the execution here is another story entirely. Iva Janzurov excels here in dual roles as Klára and Viktoria (or Clara and Victoria, depending on the subtitles), twin sisters whose recently deceased father has left them in charge of their sprawling estate. Loving only her cat Morgiana, Viktoria decides to poison her sister to death (very slowly) because she lusts after Klára's boyfriend and her half of the money, but the plan is complicated by blackmail, Klára's increasingly hallucinatory reactions to the poison, and a few Poe-like twists of fate. Once again the style here is wild and technically audacious, this time augmented with blazing color including vibrant Gustav Klimt-style painted opening credits and quasi-Victorian production design that perfectly echoes the theatricality of the performances. This would actually make a terrific double feature with Fassbinder's Martha, which came out two years later and nicely plays off both the look and performances of this film. Significantly it also features some nifty wide angle "cat cam" shots way before Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento dabbled with the same idea in their versions of Poe's "The Black Cat."
According to reports, Herz intended to follow the original story's lead with a Fight Club-style plot twist at the end that got nixed by the censors.
Even without this bit of narrative trickery, the film functions perfectly well on its own and still contains little nods to the original concept, while the device of using the same actress for the leading roles is accomplished with numerous clever bits of cinematic sleight of hand that will have many film buffs reaching for the rewind button. The Second Run DVD was a godsend at the time, in great shape apart form some print damage here and there, and the full frame transfer is quite satisfying overall and features their usual excellent optional English subtitles. (It was previously available on Japanese and Czech DVD but with no English subtitle options.) Herz himself 
appears for a 15-minute interview in which he talks about the genesis of the film and the compromises involved, as well as his own opinion of his place alongside but not quite in the Czech New Wave. Daniel Bird provides thorough 
liner notes booklet in which he focuses on Herz's output following the breakthrough of The Cremator and this film's issues with the authorities.
In 2019, Studio Hamburg Enterprises released limited edition Blu-ray and DVD versions of the film with optional German or English subtitles, featuring the original Czech audio or two different German dub tracks. Extras include the entire marvelous soundtrack by Luboš Fišer (which is available separately from Finders Keepers), an image gallery, and clips from two other Herz films on Blu-ray, Beauty and the Beast and Ferat Vampire. In 2023, Second Run upgraded Morgiana to Blu-ray with an expanded special edition, featuring a virtually identical presentation as the prior Blu-ray thanks to a solid transfer "from the best existing original materials created by the Czech National Film Archive." Some occasional flecks pop up, but the color and detail are strong throughout with a more neutral, bright appearance compared to the yellow cast of the DVD. The Herz interview is ported over here as are the liner notes by Bird, augmented here with an additional essay by Ian Conrich, "A Czech Cinema of the Gothic," analyzing the themes of violence, obsession, and control in this film and The Cremator. Included here as an audio commentary track is a brisk 2020 episode of The Projection Booth podcast featuring Mike White, Kat Ellinger and Ben Buckingham waxing about all things Herz including their first encounters with this film, the necessities of multiple viewings, the issues that tripped up 
the project with the forces that be, and the finer points of Janžurová's remarkable performance(s).
That brings us to the 
Severin release, the film's first American home video release and featuring a new scan from the Czech National Film Archive that looks quite a bit warmer (closer to the U.K. DVD) and with no visible damage at all. Framing adjusts slightly throughout but not enough to matter much, and the DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono track sounds excellent (as are the optional English subtitles). Janisse provides a new intro (3m38s) tracking its placement in her book, its role in the director's filmography exploring dark impulses, and Herz's unique status as a homegrown horror director. A new commentary by Stranger With My Face Festival Director Briony Kidd and Cerise Howard, co-founder of the Czech And Slovak Film Festival Of Australia, has them swapping thoughts and opinions about the film's meaning and use of style, connections to other earlier films from the Czechoslovak New Wave, the role of sexual repression, and analogies to genre films like What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? In "Little Drop of Poison" (14m42s), Janžurová looks back at Herz and this film in particular including their earlier work together, the reason she played both roles right after making Oil Lamps, the issue of her hair color, and the demands of doing a co-production with Bulgaria. The dreamy "The Stone Forest" (6m25s) is an animated short covering the shooting location of Pobiti Kamani, created by Leslie Supnet with narration by Janisse explaining how the film's geological and historical background could fire up someone's imagination. Absolutely do not skip over Herz's wild 1970 TV production Nightmares (Nocní mury) (26m22s), essentially a string of connected macabre and whimsical Scoptiones-style music videos with Nada Urbánková as a woman whose marriage turns into a string of vampire encounters. Beautifully restored, it's a treat for the eyes and ears if you want to see a truly different kind of monster musical. Finally you get the 1998 short film Rest in Peace (13m18s) by Rachel Amodeo who stars with Dame 
Darcy in this film festival classic about the eerie aftermath of an act of 
sisterly grave robbing.
A real curve ball comes next on disc three with the pioneering The Savage Eye, an early American indie film and one of the first narrative-documentary pastiches. Assembled over a three-year period by three short-form directors (Ben Maddow, Sidney Meyers and Joseph Strick, with the latter going on to the longest career) and an array of cinematographers including Haskell Wexler, it's a stunning time capsule of Eisenhower-era Los Angeles and an unflinching look at what the postwar middle class woman experienced in urban America. Barbara Baxley (Nashville) stars a Judith -- yes, another Judith -- who has recently gotten divorced and is now experiencing all the wonders and grotesqueries of being single in the City of Angels. From beautician visits to fitness to flailing in the dating pool, she goes through it all with a male interior voice, The Poet (Merrill), serving as a kind of companion and counterpoint. Along the way you get some other digressions into areas like a poker hall, a Halloween drag ball, and a pet cemetery just because... well, it's fascinating and serves as an obvious precursor to the Italian mondo craze, all set to a sparse score by none other than Leonard Rosenman.
The blurring of the lines between doc and fiction has become much more common today, especially once Hollywood started to embrace it with later films like Wexler's Medium Cool. 
At the time, this film was something truly jolting as it 
offered a dizzying amount of visual and mental stimulation in barely over an hour of screen time. Unfortunately its place in film history has largely been minimized due to the film's unavailability, including a very long stretch after its sole DVD release from Image Entertainment in 2000 as part of a valuable batch of Strick releases.
The Severin release features a sterling new 2K restoration from the original elements held by the Academy Film Archive, looking a lot more crisp and visually impressive than the old disc could have ever indicated; the DTS-HD MA 2.0 English mono track is also immaculate and features optional English SDH subtitles. Elizabeth Purchell delivers a very thorough audio commentary (opening with a disclaimer that the idea of doing the whole track as The Poet was in the cards) including lots of background about the L.A. locales, the lengthy production process and evolution of the film, and the intersection of feminist and queer imagery. "Judith X" (16m6s) by Esotouric's Kim Cooper is listed as a locations video essay but plays more like a spoken word piece playing over clips from the film with ruminations on the backgrounds of some of the locales. After that you get an archival interview with Strick (17m6s) about the background of how the film evolved from a script by Maddow influenced by painter William Hogarth that started as a study in L.A. vulgarity but turned into something a bit different. The trailer and a Trailers from Hell version hosted by Janisse follow next, and again you get two short films: Strick's 1970 interview compendium Interviews with My Lai Veterans (22m6s), 
with an archival director interview (5m23s) about the creation of this discussion with soldiers from the infamous combat atrocity; and the psychologically agitating 
Vincenzo Core And Fabio Scacchioli 2011 experimental short Miss Candace Hilligoss' Flickering Halo (14m33s) which turns footage from Carnival of Souls into an aesthetic assault.
Finally on disc four comes the rarest and most sought-after film of the set, Eloy de la Iglesia's cult favorite thriller The Glass Ceiling from 1971. His first thriller, the film essentially served as the opener for a trilogy of suspense films (with varying degrees of violence) about Spanish apartment life followed by Cannibal Man and No One Heard the Scream, albeit this time from an entirely female point of view. Carmen Sevilla (King of Kings) stars as Marta, a housewife who's frequently left to her own devices with her cat while her husband Carlos (Cebrián) is off on business. With her imagination kicking into overdrive by herself, she only socializes with a few others in the area including sculptor landlord Ricardo (Selmier, who weirdly used his Spanish acting career as cover for his time as a hired U.S. assassin!), upstairs neighbor Julia (American-born Spanish horror vet Shepard), and milk deliverer Rosa (Jess Franco star Cohen). Thanks to weird noises upstairs and other circumstantial evidence, 
Marta begins to suspect that Julia may 
have murdered her own husband and is gradually disposing of the body in pieces. Meanwhile, an anonymous man is skulking around taking illicit photographs of all three women for unknown reasons.
Though usually classified as a horror film, this is a deliberately paced thriller that feels like a mixture of Repulsion and Rear Window tossed in a blender with Jeanne Dielman in rural Spain. The payoff is worth your patience though, and it's a very strong piece of work from a director who was just starting to find his voice and would make a huge mark on local cinema for the following decade. This is mainly Sevilla's show, and she is indeed excellent, but it's also fun to see pros Shepard (who can steal a shot by simply breathing) and Cohen together here as potential red herrings. The story itself is an intriguing one that definitely comes to a final and satisfying twist ending, while the rural setting makes for an effective backdrop with the cast visibly sweating buckets during all of the daylight scenes.
The majority of Iglesia's major work has thankfully made its way to U.S. Blu-ray in recent years in very nice editions, but this one was a notable holdout for a long time despite its 
acclaim via fan-subbed copies floating around on the gray market. Fortunately the wait was worth it; the Blu-ray looks superb thanks 
to a 4K scan from the camera negative and comes with both the English and Spanish DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono tracks with optional translated or SDH English subtitles. It's a toss up which one is better since the cast was speaking a mixture of both languages, though generally the Spanish one is more elegant and organic to the film. The last of the Janisse intros (6m19s) is an appreciate survey of Iglesia, the influence of the giallo on Spanish filmmaking, and the finer points of the film's cast. An audio commentary by Shelagh Rowan-Legg and Alexandra West has a great time appreciating the film's place in the thriller genre including its ties to other films, its place in Iglesia's filmography as a defining early entry, the prevalence of shirtless guys in Iglesia's films for obvious reasons, and the sparing but effective use of a handheld camera. In "Connected at the Soul" (16m56s), actress Judith Chapman remembers her sister, Patty Shepard, including the childhood move that landed her in Spain, her enthusiastic personality, the progression of her career, and the reason she walked away from the camera early on. Also included are a quick 1m1s bit of alternate footage from the film's TV version (basically reshoots to cover a bare butt), the English trailer, and a beautiful restoration of the 1976 Agustí Villaronga short film, Anta Mujer (26m26s), a wild mixture of religious iconography and lesbian eroticism about a woman following mystical voices to her destiny accompanied by Carl Orff music.
MORGIANA: SEVERIN (Blu-ray)
MORGIANA: SECOND RUN (Blu-ray)
MORGIANA: STUDIO HAMBURG ENTERPRISES (Blu-ray)
MORGIANA: SECOND RUN (DVD)
Reviewed on May 24, 2025
