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Cult Epics’ line of Radley Metzger reis­sues are a pre­mier event for fans of vin­tage erot­ica.  They’ve taken great care with the a/v qual­ity of these releases, put in a strong effort in the bonus fea­tures area and even offered vari­ant cuts of films that allow the version-happy viewer an extra level of choice.  Their blu-ray edi­tion of The Lickerish Quartet is a good exam­ple of how they’ve done with their Metzger prop­er­ties: it looks stun­ning and sup­ple­ments the expe­ri­ence with extras that take you fur­ther into Metzger’s intel­lec­tual approach to the genre.

For starters, the trans­fer on this film might be the best of any in the Erotica Psychedelica box.  The anamor­phic image has strong detail and bold col­ors.  Age-related defects are min­i­mal and the result is a stun­ner with an appro­pri­ate but very lush vin­tage look.  The audio retains the orig­i­nal mono sound­track and it sounds nice and punchy here: the dubbed dia­logue comes through in a crisp style and effects and music blend nicely with the vocal tracks.

This blu-ray also sports a fairly ambi­tious pack­age of extras.  As usual, the offer­ings begins with a com­men­tary track fea­tur­ing Metzger and mod­er­a­tor Michael Bowen.  Metzger dis­cusses the atmos­pheric loca­tions, the com­plex­i­ties of dub­bing the film’s sound­track and plenty of mate­r­ial on the actors (par­tic­u­larly Frank Wolff, who had a trag­i­cally short life).  Bowen gen­tly presses Metzger to dis­cuss the mean­ing behind the story’s more sur­re­al­is­tic touches: Metzger play­fully resists at first but soon offers an inter­est­ing, thought­ful take on the film’s pre­sen­ta­tion of a slip­pery reality.

Elsewhere, there are a few fea­turettes: “Mind Games” is a brief making-of piece with nar­ra­tion play­ing over a set of Metzger’s per­sonal home movies from the set.  It also offers some comparison/contrast of the film’s live sound­track ver­sus its ulti­mate dubbed incar­na­tion.  The lat­ter ele­ment is fur­ther explored in “Giving Voice To The Quartet,” a short piece that goes into detail on the film’s com­plex dub­bing sit­u­a­tion — two actors sup­plied their own voices in dif­fer­ent stu­dios in dif­fer­ent coun­tries, plus the other two actors were dubbed by dif­fer­ent actors — and offers more comparison/contrast sam­ples that incor­po­rate the on-set soundtrack.

However, the most intrigu­ing inclu­sion amongst the non-commentary fea­tures might be a set of “cool” takes for the film’s sex scenes: in other words, alter­na­tive sequences that cut down sex­ual explic­it­ness and full-frontal nudity.  Though these don’t reflect Metzger’s inten­tions for the film, they are com­posed and edited in as art­ful a man­ner as what ended up in the fin­ished film.  The pack­age is rounded out with trail­ers for The Lickerish Quartet, Camille 2000 and Score.

In short, this is another strong addi­tion to Cult Epics’ line of Metzger titles.  It’s the best this film has ever looked on video and the extras are worth­while.  Fans will need this — and if you’re a neo­phyte to the world of Metzger, it’s a great place to start.