Bluebeard 4K (1972)

 

        Studio Canal are releasing, on both 4K UHD and Blu-ray, this rather singular and frequently outrageously entertaining piece of EuroTrash from the early 1970s. Mind you, at first glance BLUEBEARD looks like it might actually be rather classy. Produced by Pierre Spengler and the Salkinds just before their blindingly good adaptations of THE THREE MUSKETEERS & THE FOUR MUSKETEERS, starring Richard Burton and Raquel Welch, and with music by Ennio Morricone, the film’s pedigree doesn’t suggest the pile of deliciously lurid nonsense that it actually is. 

But just scrape beneath the surface and we see the cast also includes Sybil Danning (BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS and HOWLING II), Agostina Belli (HOLOCAUST 2000) and Karin Schubert (COLD EYES OF FEAR, BLACK EMANUELLE). But the real secret as to where this film is coming from lies with its director, Edward Dmytryk, the man who, during a somewhat chequered career, gave us movies like Universal’s CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN (1943). 

Richard Burton gets out of his biplane, takes off his cunning concealing leather mask to reveal...a blue beard! Cue the titles in case we didn’t quite get that. There’s something about his face being mutilated during the war but as this is mixed in with something about how much his beard tickles it’s all a bit confusing. Richard is very rich Kurt von Sepper, who explains all this beardy stuff to Karin Schubert just before marrying her. For reasons that aren’t yet quite clear Karin dies in a hunting accident when Richard accidentally points his gun at her and shoots her. A lot of actual animals also get actually shot in the run up to this sequence so be warned. Retiring to play his massive organ while his dog wanders in to the most inappropriate introductory music for a canine in movie history, we then flash forward unannounced to Joey Heatherton’s over the top dance act. 

Bewitched by her dainty clodhopping in red high heels Richard is soon inviting her back to his castle, marrying her and giving her surreptitious glimpses of his old serving woman Martha brushing the hair of the corpse of his dead mother before pushing Martha down the stairs. Joey has a nervous breakdown. Richard goes to Vienna, leaving her the keys to his castle but saying that on no account must she use the gold one. That’s because it opens a secret chamber where the preserved naked bodies of his former wives are kept. Unfortunately his naughty latest wife opens Pandora’s Box, which all proves to be a trap for her unwary self. Because he loves her more than any of his other wives Richard says that before he kills her he’s going to tell her all about why he did all of the other wives in. 

We’re about halfway through this two hour film now and the series of flashbacks that now ensue are the excuse for a string of cameos from various Euro-actresses who get done in by Richard in a number of silly ways including an eagle, a giant elephant tusk, being flogged and then drowned in wine, and being nailed inside a coffin. Most of them manage to end up naked before they die, except for Raquel Welch, probably more because it was in her contract than because she plays a nun in a series of increasingly revealing outfits. The whole thing is rounded off with the kind of revelation we've all been expecting, followed by an appropriate come-uppance.

The first twenty minutes of BLUEBEARD are a triumph of ludicrous dialogue, beautiful women and opulent sets, but this one really needed a Robert Fuest or someone similarly mad to bring it all off. But the film isn’t an entire dead loss by any means, and any movie that has Richard Burton putting several bullets into a stuffed owl he has turned into a taxidermy alarm clock so it won’t frighten his wife deserves an albeit very tiny place in cinema history.

Studio Canal’s disc also comes with a commentary track from Howard S Berger and Nathaniel Thompson who enthusiastically embrace the lunacy of all I have described above. There’s also a new interview with Anna Bogutskaya who discusses both the movie and Richard Burton's career in relation to it, and an archival interview with Edward Dmytryk's wife Jean Porter which covers his career (34 minutes). Finally the set comes with a 12 page booklet featuring new writing on the film by Peter Raleigh.

Edward Dmytryk’s BLUEBEARD is out from Studio Canal in 4K on both UHD and Blu-ray on Monday 28th September 2026