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Mad Foxes (Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack)

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    Ian Jane
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  • Mad Foxes (Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack)



    Released by: Illusions Untld.
    Released on: October 3rd, 2013.
    Director: Paul Grau
    Cast: Jose Gras, Laura Premica, Andrea Albani, Erik Falk
    Year: 1981
    Purchase From Diabolik DVD

    The Movie:

    Co-produced by Erwin C. Dietrich (best known for producing a few of the prolific Jess Franco's better known films and lots of sexy Eurotrash), Mad Foxes is a film that truly has not a single redeeming quality to it. Simply trash for trash's sake, it's an absolutely unabashed mixture of sex, violence and naked kickboxing that sadly we're unlikely to ever see again. Luckily, it lives on Blu-ray to make sure that we don't ever have to go without it again.

    The hero of the story is Hal (Paul Gras), and when we're first introduced to him we find him out wining and dining his lady friend on the eve of her eighteenth birthday. Hal has taken her to the Big Apple Disco and is trying to get her drunk so that he can get into her pants, so in that respect he's not so much a hero at all. Let's call him a protagonist instead. Actually once you start to think about it, Paul is a pompous dickhead. Anyway, after an evening of boozing it up, he drives her back to his place to ply her with more liquor and hopefully get it on. Unluckily for them, a gang of leather-clad Nazi bikers gets in their way. Hal's girlfriend ends up getting raped and it's up to him to take down these scumbags once and for all, cause Hal's just not having any of that.

    Anyway, with a mind full of vengeance and a Corvette Stingray full of gas, Hal heads over to his kickboxing friends' place and talks them into taking justice to the street. They all head over to the bikers' hang out, which is some sort of abandoned coliseum where they booze it up and yell random things at one another. Upon his arrival he greets them by yelling 'Sons of bitches, here I am!' and a poorly choreographed fight scene ensues. Highlighted by a scene in which one of the kick-boxer guys cuts off the lead bikers' member and force feeds it to him, this is just a barrage of bad martial arts and ridiculous outfits set to goofy music. Bliss!

    Once this nastiness is out of the way, Hal heads off to his parents' house and picks up a foxy hitchhiker along the way (who is fresh from a romp on the beach with her boyfriend who she leaves at the curb). The two head over to ma and pa's place to relax. Hal schools her in the ways of love, pressing her up against a weird artisanal wall piece that his parents have before wooing her into taking a bath with him by seductively grunting at her 'Sit on me!' But of course, those dastardly bikers turn up again and all hell breaks loose. You can't just cut a Nazi biker's cock off and feed it to him and assume he's not going to come and try to kill your family. They show up while Hal and the lady are horseback riding and screwing in a field. By the time they get back, Hal's folks are dead and he just gets even more pissed off. At this point, the kid gloves come off. Hal puts on his comfiest loafers and dons his best pair of tan colored action slacks and takes it upon himself to eliminate the Nazi biker threat once and for all. Erik Falk will keep taking off his pants and stumble around drunkenly, a Nazi dominatrix will work her magic on a hair guy with a bushy beard and a toothy grin, and Hal will dole out justice in big, bloody chunks.

    As this movie plays out, a lot of people die. There's a whole whack of gratuitous sex and nudity (a fair bit of which is male and full frontal - that'd be Erik Falk again, infamous for also doing naked kickboxing in Rolls Royce Baby), and nothing even for an instant really makes a whole lot of sense. Oh, and the theme song is by Krokus and it's called Easy Rocker. Remember Krokus? You probably don't unless you were into 80s metal. I was into 80s metal so I remember Krokus. Anyway, that's beside the point. The point of this is to say that Mad Foxes is nuts. It's out of control. You really just have to see it for yourself, because no matter how many zany, low budget, bad movies you may have under your belt, nothing can prepare you for the sheer ineptitude of this film. At the same time, as inept as it is, the movie actually has decent enough production values and shows a fair bit of technical polish. Like most Dietrich productions made around this time a lot of the same cast members are used and a lot of the same music is recycled over and over again, not just in the same film, but between films. The cinematography is actually pretty nice though, and the locations secured for shooting occasionally make this look like it had much bigger budget than it did.

    At roughly eighty minutes in length, the movie never drags. When Hal isn't boffing some pretty Euro tart he's driving around looking unusually pleased with himself, offering up dopey lines of smug dialogue, or actually fighting with the bikers. The violence in the film is pretty bloody, and on top of that it's fairly creative in how it shows disposing of the various miscreants he's come up against. Puzzlingly enough, the swastikas on the bikers' armbands disappear any time the action takes them out of doors, but they reappear once things head back inside. There was probably some sort of law in Europe at the time prohibiting the public display of Nazi insignias but either way, you could definitely make a pretty cool drinking game out of this - take a shot every time a swastika appears or disappear! You'd be pretty sloshed pretty quickly, not that we condone such actions on this website.

    There's also a strange homoerotic vibe through a lot of the movie. While Hal flaunts his heterosexuality anytime a woman gets near him, the bad guys seem to enjoy spending time together with their dongs hanging out and Hal's kickboxing friends like to pose and strut about looking muy macho indeed. They're also sometimes lit in soft focus, as if to romanticize their handsome good looks and impressive moustaches. The leader of the bikers, despite including rape high up on his list of favorite pastimes, is dubbed in a fairly effeminate voice and has some stereotypically gay mannerisms about him. Whether this was intentional or not on the part of the filmmakers? Who knows. But it's not hard to see it. Maybe it was put in the movie to give the ladies something to enjoy…?

    At any rate, Mad Foxes is a seriously trashy delight. One of those rare scenes that seems to outdo itself with every next scene, it's a fast paced eight minute dose of unabashed ridiculousness and one of the most mind bogglingly awesome movies ever made.

    Video/Audio/Extras:

    Mad Foxes was released on DVD years back in a nice anamorphic widescreen transfer. This AVC encoded 1080p high definition presentation, framed at 1.85.1 widescreen, is not the same transfer. The colors are a little less brash and contrast is better. Detail is nicely improved and while this isn't going to compete on the same level that the best Blu-ray transfers can, it's a good looking presentation of some fairly soft source material. There is a vertical scratch visible for a few minutes in one scene. Close ups, understandably, show more detail and texture than the other shots do but improvement is noticeable over the standard definition DVD release in pretty much every way. Grain is left intact but the source used was obviously very clean as outside of a few specks here and there we don't notice much in the way of serious print damage. Skin tones look pretty natural here, never too pink or too orange, but some compression artifacts can be spotted here and there.

    Audio options are provided in German and English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio tracks and in Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0. There are no subtitles of any kind provided. The clarity of the English track is pretty solid. There isn't a load of surround activity but the score and effects do occasionally spread out a bit. Levels are nicely balanced, dialogue is clear and there aren't really any problems here, it sounds fine.

    Extras? Well, we get an audio commentary from Erwin C. Dietrich and Helmi Sigg that is probably essential listening but which is unfortunately not in English, nor is it subtitled. We'll assume it's awesome and hope for a subbed release some day. Outside of that, we get a still gallery and a theatrical trailer for the feature. The packaging for this release is pretty slick. As this is a combo pack release it holds the Blu-ray and DVD discs inside some sturdy plastic trays inside the hardcover book style binding. There's a twenty-eight page full color booklet inside that contains some writing on the film in German (it's not translated) and a load of color pictures. And dig that trashy cover art by Rick Melton.

    The Final Word:

    It's a crying shame that the commentary isn't subtitled but otherwise this is a solid release. The transfer isn't quite perfect but it is a nice improvement over the DVD release. As to the movie itself? Mad Foxes is an undisputable trash classic, a relentlessly entertaining barrage of sex, violence and sleaze and one of the most insanely entertaining movies to ever unfold before your leering eyes. Amazing stuff, really.


    Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!





















































    • Lalala76
      #13
      Lalala76
      Senior Member
      Lalala76 commented
      Editing a comment
      Ascot-elite have plans starting May/june 2014 for 2 Dietrich blu-rays a month, like they are with the Franco titles.

    • bflocket
      #14
      bflocket
      Junior Member
      bflocket commented
      Editing a comment
      I don't think I'd be able to believe that Mad Foxes would ever be released in a beautiful HD edition (with cool packaging to boot) if I didn't own it and have it in front of me.

      The same goes for Blue Rita, Burial Ground (Die Rí¼ckkehr der Zombies), Flavia the Heretic (Nonnen bis auf's Blut Gequí¤lt) and Cannibal Holocaust...

      Through some strange turn of events, they DO now indeed exist.
      Even with all of those surprising yet welcome releases, I know I shouldn't get my hopes too high that somebody will seek out old prints/negatives and do Giselle right. Should I???
      But I can kind of at least see a glimmer of hope now.

      Giselle (1980, Brazil) is from around the time of Mad Foxes and is just as trashy (though not quite as hyperactive) as Mad Foxes.
      I mean, where else can you find incest, communist rallies, gang rape and homosexuality (f/f AND m/m) all being accompanied by John Lennon and Kenny Rogers music?
      Or hardcore horse breeding to tune of the old "If You're Going to San Francisco..." song?
      bflocket
      Junior Member
      Last edited by bflocket; 11-20-2014, 12:04 PM.

    • Ian Jane
      #15
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      Ian Jane commented
      Editing a comment
      It truly is an age of miracles!
    Posting comments is disabled.

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