DVD-review: PERVERSION STORY aka ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER

A rant of mine concerning Lucio Fulci: if there is one film in my collection which failed to live up to my anticipation, it's his "Zombi 2". Seeing as how that has many titles I'll elaborate: it's the one with the "zombie vs. shark" fight and the "splinter punctures eyeball" scene. To me that sums up the whole movie as all other things in it have been done better elsewhere. What is worse, the zombies made me laugh and the movie sports some of the worst continuity errors ever. Zombie loses an arm: cool. A few seconds later this zombie still has both arms: NOT cool. And these errors are not there to "evoke a dreamlike state", as one apologist told me. When people's hair and beards change length and color back-and-forth several times within the same scene this is just evidence of SLOPPY FILMMAKING!
Still, faults and all, "Zombi 2" certainly had a couple of cool bits and if people hadn't been praising it out of proportion I would have had more fun with it.

Apart from his better-known gorefests Fulci also made a lot of movies in other genres, which made me wonder whether the man was generally overrated or if there was a part of his resume I'd be more fond of. So when I got a chance to see the new Severin DVD-release of Fulci's "Perversion Story (a.k.a. One on Top of the Other)" I was curious to see if it would suffer the same deficiencies as his ahem... classic masterpiece.

To my pleasant surprise it didn't: "Perversion Story" is a stylish little thriller with some great visuals. It also has a plot which manages to hold your attention, decent performances, and of course the gratuitous nudity which gave the film notoriety.

The plot: George is a doctor in San Fransisco who has a habit of lying and cheating to keep his clinic financially secure.

When his estranged wife dies of an asthma attack a secret insurance policy of hers turns up, awarding him a cool million dollars. George is surprised to say the least: his wife had hated him for years and this document was only recently made up. But he and his mistress are in for a real shock when a secret message leads them to a strip club featuring a dancer who looks uncannily like his dead wife. The police and the insurance company both notice the resemblance as well, starting a sequence of events which leads to George finding himself under suspicion of murder...

Technically one of those gloriously exploitative Italian pulpthrillers called "Giallo", this movie is from 1969 and therefore does NOT contain a black-gloved killer stalking and slashing a boatload of attractive women, as this only became popular a few years later. There is a murder though and the boatload of attractive women is there as well, often in various stages of undress. Also gone is the angle where some psychological trauma is the cause of it all although George's family and in-laws sure have some issues to work out.

As mentioned the performances are quite good: George is played by Jean Sorel as the unlikable hero who is way too slick, arrogant and cruel for his own good. When truly weird things start to happen to him this arrogance gradually gets replaced with despair, and although we as the audience never start to like him it gets so far that you cannot help but sympathize as the plot unfolds. This is unexpected but partly happens because Sorel sells the character so well.
Then there are the two (or three) female leads, played by Elsa Martinelli and Melissa Mell. Fulci normally gets a lot of flak for his mysoginy and the flesh on display here won't alleviate that opinion, but based on this film's characters this charge would seem unfair. The two (or three) women are much stronger than the males on display here.

Elsa Martinelli plays George's mistress, and she is the only person who can be considered a protagonist in the normal sense: headstrong, intelligent and trying to save George from the elaborate trap sprung on him.
And Melissa Mell...WHOA! She plays George's wife and her stripper-double, and shines. The woman not only looks good (essential for this particular part) but displays a casual charisma which makes her a force of nature in this film. No mean feat seeing as how she is nude in quite a few scenes which would be very distracting with a lesser actress. Melissa is nothing less than spellbinding here, which is a good thing as the story lynchpins around her persona(s).

Speaking of nudity, by todays standards what is shown is rather tame but make no mistake there is LOTS of it. Part of the story revolves around a stripper and George's mistress works in a studio where nudie pics are taken, so if the leads aren't undressed somebody in the background is bound to be. But this is all played out as being part of the sixties San Fransisco scenery with its sexual experimentation and I found it to be inoffensive. All obnoxious behavior towards women on display here is intentional and part of the story.

Fulci wrote and directed this and I may have to eat some of my unkind words about him. It's a colorful movie which looks good, and apart from the occasional plothole I was impressed by the scripting as it played out much more straightforward than I had expected. There is no real Fulci crazy signature here except maybe for one or two shots where you expect the camera to pan away when OOPS... it doesn't (and this goes both for nudity and what little gore there is in this movie).
It certainly has aged quite a bit but in a good way, linking itself with the time when its story takes place. Recommended.

On to the DVD:

Severin has released this film as "Perversion Story" instead of its better known title "One on Top of the Other".

There is a good reason for this: both titles refer to different versions of the movie. Basically, "Perversion Story" is "One on Top of the Other" with ten minutes of character embellishment cut out, but with five minutes of more raunchy material added in. It's a shame that Severin was not able to include both versions for this release, as both have their fans. The missing scenes have also not been included in the extras which would have been a satisfactory alternative for either version (if you're interested to see what the differences exactly are use the link at the bottom to visit our colleagues of DVD-Times who wrote an excellent comparison article on both versions).

Video seemed very sharp on my TV, with unfortunately the sharpest artifacts on display ever, but close examination on a computer brings out the sordid truth: edge enhancement. So much of it that it results in haloing. Colors wobble a bit around reel changes but are otherwise excellent and vibrant, very important in a movie as visually pleasing as this one.
But it looks much better than any giallo I've seen from that period and as long as you don't freeze the picture there honestly isn't too much to complain about.

Audiowise I bow before Severin: they included the Italian sound! Glory, as this obviously lipsynchs much better than the English dub. Subtitles are very good, and for fun you can play the English dub with subs on to see exactly how much information you're missing when listening in English!

Extra's are on the light side with just the trailer, although truth be told it's an amusingly sleazy one milking the movie for all exploitation it's worth. Very meagre for a two-disc set, the second disc being the jazzy soundtrack CD.

You can buy it from our affiliate:

DVD of Perversion Story

The DVD-Times article on the different versions (Spoiler warning!):
Perversion Story vs One on Top of the Other