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Released by: 88 Films
Released on: February 13th, 2017.
Director: Ulli Lommel
Cast: Suzanna Love, Robert Walker Jr., Jeff Winchester
Year: 1983
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The Movie:
This De Palma-esque thriller from Ulli Lommel opens in London with a scene where a young girl (Amy Robinson) sees her mother (Bibbe Hansen), a prostitute, murdered in the other room next to her own by one of her johns. Fast forward a few years and that girl has grown up into a beautiful young woman we learn is named Olivia (Suzanna Love). She's trapped in a less than ideal marriage to a husband that she seems to constantly fight with. He insists he can support both of them and doesn't want her to work, but it's clear that she doesn't have the faith in him he wishes she did. There doesn't seem to be much of a spark there.
After things get physical, Olivia has clearly had enough - and you can't blame her for that. It's then that she notices the prostitutes that congregate around the London Bridge looking for their next trip. It seems that these ladies of the night do a pretty brisk business and so Olivia decides to give it a shot herself. Before you know it, Olivia's new found trade leads her to kill when she starts hearing the voice of her dead mother in her head. When she meets an American architect named Mike (), in town to assist in the dismantling of the bridge so that it can be brought back to the United States, their mutual attraction seems almost instant.
Things get complicated with her husband learns of this affair and tries to murder the man, but it doesn't go as planned. With her husband dead and Olivia clearly confused and conflicted by all of this, she leaves London for America without the architect, but their story is far from over.
An interesting mix of suspense, drama, psycho-sexual thrillers and occasional horror movie tropes presented with some intermingled touches of surrealism, Prozzie (also known as Olivia and Double Jeopardy) is one of Lommel's more accomplished films. While it's neither as sophisticated as his In Tenderness Of The Wolves or as outlandishly screwy as The Bogey Man, it's an interesting piece of filmmaking in its own right, thanks to the keen visual sense on display, the interesting story development and some genuinely good acting on the part of Suzanna Love. She and the director were married at the time this picture was made, her family fortunes (she was a Dupont heiress) having financed some of his work (this film included) even after they divorced. It was likely this intimacy between actress and leading lady that lead to her work in front of the camera feeling as real as it does. Her character is both sympathetic and genuinely frightening at times, but even during some very drastic shifts in her persona, Love is, as Olivia, enthralling to watch. Her work in her other collaborations with Lommel was fine, but her work on this particular picture is a step or two above their other projects.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Prozzie makes its worldwide Blu-ray debut through 88 Films on a 25GB disc framed at 1.85.1 widescreen and presented in AVC encoded 1080p high definition. Taken from a new 2k transfer of an unidentified source, the movie has a pretty gritty look to it, with moderate to heavy grain more frequent than not. Detail is never reference quality here but to be fair, a lot of that would seem to have more to do with the lighting and cinematography used in the picture. This is a pretty dark looking picture by nature, but colors are a little uneven here, sometimes looking a bit drabber than they probably should. For the most part the picture is pretty clean, any print damage that shows up is minor. The picture quality here isn't amazing but it is definitely a step up from what DVD would have been able to provide.
The only audio option on the disc is an English language 24-bit LPCM 2.0 Mono track. The audio is a little flat but otherwise it's fine. There are no issues with any hiss or distortion to complain about, the audio is quite clean. The dialogue is clean easy to follow without any issues, the score and effects sound pretty decent and the levels are properly balanced. There are no alternate language or subtitle options provided.
The first extra on the disc is a five minute interview with director Ulli Lommel simply entitled Ulli Lommel On Prozzi. Here the director, clad in a denim jacket, mirrored shades and a cowboy hat offers up his memories of making the film and then discusses why he likes it as much as he does. Compared to other recent interviews with Lommel, this one is fairly subdued. The disc also includes a twenty-four minute long interview with cinematographer Dave Sperling entitled Cocaine Cowboys, Boogeymen & Prozzies. This one is a bit more substantial as Sperling talks not just about working with Lommel on this film but of their earlier collaborative work on The Boogeyman (or The Bogey Man if you prefer) as well. He also goes into some detail about the specifics of shooting this film and why it has the very distinct look that it does.
Aside from that there's an eighteen minute trailer reel showing off other titles available through 88 Films, menus and chapter selection.
Also included inside the red case alongside the disc is an insert booklet containing some liner notes from Calum Waddell that detail the director's rise and fall, and where this particular film sits not only alongside his other pictures but in the horror/slasher pantheon as well. 88 Films has also included some nice reversible sleeve art offering two different one sheet images to display.
The Final Word:
Prozzie isn't quite the slasher film that the packaging might lead you to believe, but it's still an interesting and fairly twisted B-movie made with no small amount of style and featuring a very good lead performance from the beautiful Suzanna Love. It's a fairly sleazy affair, but not without its own odd artistic flourishes. The Blu-ray release from 88 Films is a pretty solid one, offering up the film in good shape and with a few extras too.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
