Stateline Motel (1975) from ICMS

Watching Stateline Motel on DVD is a pleasant as well as an unpleasant experience. 

It's pleasant because the film is actually much better than I expected of an Italian drama/crime flick shot in Canada in the 1970s and starring Ursula Andress. It has its flaws, to be sure. The lighting and the camerawork are nothing to write home about and the editing is sloppy. There is a car chase scene in Montreal where the editor reversed the negative, so it looks like the driver is sitting on the right! Most of the actors don't put in much of a performance either, except one. And believe it or not, that one is Ursula Andress who, together with the thickening plot, keeps this film on track. She managed to grasp her role perfectly and with her subtle acting and expressions gave her character depth and nuance that it would otherwise be lacking.

The story of the film is not bad at all. It goes about as follows:

Up to that point, the plot is predictable and pre-fabricated, but things start to get interesting and become more and more entangled. Did Michelle steal the diamonds, and if she did, does she still have them? And what about the others? How did the mechanic at the garage meet his maker? And what about the two local cops? And what about Floyd's partner - doesn't he want his share? Of course he does, but will he get it? Will Michelle and Floyd be able to get away with the diamonds? Or do they even have the diamonds? All this gets resolved in the final minutes and that resolution was a total surprise to me. To be honest there were a few hints that pointed to the final outcome but one only becomes aware of them after the film ends. 

As I mentioned when I started this review there was also an unpleasant experience. The DVD is simply abysmal. It must be a serious contender for the worst DVD of all times.

• The transfer is terrible and seems to come from a worn-out VHS tape. The images are blurry and have a yellowish color dominance. I still haven't been able to figure out what the correct aspect ratio might be. The actors looked too narrow in 4:3 and too wide in 16:9.
• And then there's the audio part. First of all it's encoded in MPEG 2 instead of Dolby Digital as should normally be on a 2002 release. But MPEG 2 can give good results, one might object. Yes, indeed, but not on this piece of trash. The sound is often cracking like on a worn-out 78 rpm  record, for those who still remember them. But the most important shortcoming is that picture and sound are not synchronized. There is a delay of such an extreme degree that when someone fires a shot you only hear it three full seconds later, like an echo in the mountains.

Needless to say that the poor image and sound quality put a real damper on my viewing pleasure.