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Released by: Dark Sky Films
Released on: 10/25/2005
Director: Frank Wisbar
Cast: Horst Buchholz, Martin Held, Maria Perschy
Year: 1958
The Movie:
Shortly after the end of the second World War, a Berlin reporter named Greg Bachmann (played by Horst Buchholz) has recently been released from prison for breaking into a jail to research one of his stories. A famous newspaper man named Cesar Boyd (Martin Held) pulls a few strings for Bachmann to get him out of the clink early, and sets him up with a job as his right hand man once he's back in the real world.
What most of the world doesn't know is that not only is Bachmann working as Boyd's assistant, but he's ghost writing a lot of his material as well, and being paid quite well to do so. When Boyd's pretty young neice, Bettina (the lovely Maria Perschy who shows up alongside Paul Naschy in Exorcism and who played Lillian in The Ghost Galleon), comes to live with her uncle between terms at school, she meets Bachmann and is smitten with him from the start and the two of them start to spend a lot of time with one another.
Deadline's start to creep up on Boyd and he decides that in order to get his story in to Bachmann on time to be written up, he'll simply elaborate on a war story that his servant told to him a few years ago - this time, though, he changes a few details so that the story relates to a Nazi soldier who escapes prison in Poland. He passes the story off to Bachmann as the truth, it's written up, sees print, and it becomes a headline across the city.
Bachmann and Bettina continue their courtship, but something about that last story doesn't sit well with him and so he starts to look into things a little more closely than he had been doing in the past. When he starts to uncover the truth, his view of Boyd begins to change and tensions grow between the three characters.
Released as part of Dark Sky Film's 'Lost Noirs' line (that started with their fantastic release of Without Warning), this 1958 film directed by Frank Wisbar really shouldn't have had that logo emblazened across it's cover art. There's nothing really noirish about the movie, unless you consider being shot in black and white the only requirement. If anything, Wet Asphalt is simply a character drama that deals with issues or morals and how relationships can be strained when they're called into question. It's a decent little movie, but it's not a Noir film so don't go in expecting dark, shadowy photography and a femme fatale monkeying things up for the hero or anti-hero.
The movie is well shot, however, and it has some very nice cinematography and decent compositions. The presence of a young Maria Perschy gives it some cult appeal as she'd go on to start in all manner of Spanish horror films in the late sixties and early seventies and work not only with Nashcy and de Ossorio but Jess Franco and Leon Klimovsky as well.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The fullframe black and white image looks pretty solid save for some mild print damage and moderate grain in a few scenes. There's a decent level of both foreground and background detail and the contrast levels are set nicely. The blacks look nice and deep and don't break up or pixelate and there aren't any problems with mpeg compression artifacts or edge enhancement here.
The dubbed English language Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono track sounds fine for the most. As can be expected there are some instances of mild hiss and the occaisonal pop that can be heard on the track but other than that, things sound pretty decent here and there aren't any serious issues with the audio portion of this release. The dubbing isn't so hot here though, and it's a shame that the German mix wasn't included (it probably couldn't be located).
Aside from chapter stops, there's nothing else on this release.
The Final Word:
It's not that Wet Asphalt is a bad film, it's that it is being completely misrepresented on DVD where it's being touted as a lost noir. It's not a noir, it's simply a character drama. If you know that going in, you probably won't be disappointed but keep your expectations realistic for this one. Dark Sky's disc looks and sounds very nice, but contains no extra features to note.
Check out the Dark Sky Films website for more information by clicking here!