Many's the gem that was shown late Fri night/early Sat morn after The Late Late Show on RTÉ1 back in the day. None more so than Bluebeard, which made quite an impression on this pubescent male adolescent, basking in the newly found freedom of staying up a bit later than normal at the weekend.
This film is a moderately faithful adaptation of the folktale, transposed to fascist-era central Europe, nominally Austria. There's every ingredient present in
the film for a morbidly humourous, camp and kinky, sumptuous soft-porn melodrama-horror, but somehow it just doesn't happen. The performances are wooden
(with the exception of Joey Hatherton as the proverbial ladykiller's latest conquest) and the whole thing falls a bit flat. Could it have been the oppressive hopelessness of a Summer shoot in/near Budapest?
The movie does retain a curios value, but this re-viewing has illustrated more than any other how one's impression of things changes and diminishes with age: what left me deeply awe-stricken, shocked, horrified, thrilled and titillated as a 14 year old in 1989 now seems slightly naff. CF my review of The Outsider. This viewing of Bluebeard also occurred on youtube, it has been up and down over the past while, probably owing to copyright infringements by the uploader(s). The limited DVD relase is available only as an expensive US or Spanish import. There's an
interesting review of the DVD release by Paul Mavis.
The film theme/score is arguably one of Morricone's best and also one of his lesser known works. One of the variations is sampled on Grantby's excellent compilation CD
of late 90's downtempo, Coffee Table Music.
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