Lucio Fulci turns his back on horror and plunges headlong into erotic obsession with THE DEVIL'S HONEY, on Blu-ray from 88 Films.

Saxophonist Nicky (Stefano Madia, BODYCOUNT) enjoys an increasingly perverse sadomasochist relationship with muse Jessica (Blanca Marsillach, FLESH + BLOOD) whose reluctance and resistance spurs him on to greater depths of depravity. Jessica does not realize just how much she really loves Nicky, however, until he has an embolism and collapses in the studio after falling off his motorcycle and striking his head on a rock. When he dies on the operating table, Jessica blames his doctor Wendell Simpson (Brett Halsey, RETURN OF THE FLY) who was distracted by an earlier argument with his wife Carol (Corinne Clery, MOONRAKER) during the procedure. After anonymously harassing the doctor on the telephone, even to the point of spoiling his attempted reconciliation with his wife, Jessica abducts the doctor and chains him up in Nicky's seaside villa, intent on making him suffer with the knowledge that she is now in charge of whether he lives or dies. As the days pass, however, Jessica is surprised by her own reactions to Simpson's responses to her sadism and starts to question her masochistic devotion to Nicky's memory.

Although eroticism was certainly not unfamiliar in Fulci's filmmaking canon, he was better known by the mid-eighties as the Italian godfather of gore with his unofficial and unauthorized "sequel" to DAWN OF THE DEAD in ZOMBIE, his gothic trilogy THE BEYOND, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, and HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY, and the excesses of his latter day giallo THE NEW YORK RIPPER regardless of the few misfires in other genres that followed. Coming out of a year-long convalescence after contracting viral hepatitis while shooting the CONAN-inspired CONQUEST, Fulci mounted this Italian/Spanish co-production – shot largely in Sitges, Spain with a Venice-set flashback in which Fulci makes a cameo – take on the post-9 1/2 WEEKS Italian brand of softcore erotica that also reshaped Tinto Brass' brand of kink into a more glossy and commercial brand. Before he was taken ill, Fulci had been intending a work in this direction with another man-held-captive-by-possessive-woman scenario – based on a script by himself and Francesco Barilli (PERFUME OF THE LADY IN BLACK) – that became Giuseppe Patroni Griffi's COLLECTOR'S ITEM with Tony Musante (THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE), Florinda Bolkan (A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN), Laura Antonelli (VENUS IN FURS), and Marsillach as the latter's daughter (with her sister Cristina from Dario Argento's OPERA playing Antonelli in flashbacks). Whereas Fulci's earlier films were easy targets for charge of misogyny, his rumination here on "the loneliness of sadomasochism" is surprisingly tender in throwing together two people in mourning for the deaths of relationships in different respects. Even if the ending is a little abrupt, the level of psychological complexity subtly conveyed throughout is enough to hint that Jessica's masochism with Nicky is more than a sexual kink (and we never learn if she actually was pregnant and suffered a miscarriage after Nicky's death or if it was a delusion). THE DEVIL'S HONEY of the title comes from a verse of poetry that takes on special meaning for both.

Released on VHS stateside as DANGEROUS OBSESSION by Action International Pictures with some trims to the saxophone sex scene and a bit of footage lost to an overlap in the video master reels, THE DEVIL'S HONEY has taken a long time to make its English-friendly digital debut. The film actually made its Blu-ray bow in the United States from Severin Films, and 88 Films utilizes the same master in a marginally better encode. THE DEVIL'S HONEY's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 can be excessively grainy and soft at times, but this should not be a surprise given the photographic style that cinematographer Alejandro Ulloa – billed in the English credits as "Alessandra Ulloa" and as "Alessandro" in the Italian – adapted in the eighties with a lot of backlighting, diffusion, and lens flare. Most of the present-tense exteriors and interiors like the operating room as well as close-ups without diffusion look considerably sharper than the flashbacks and the sequences set at the villa, the look of which appears to be not so much dreamy as humid. Audio options include the English and Italian dubs in LPCM 2.0 mono. The English track is rather low in volume, requiring more amplification to hear the dialogue while some of the music cues mixed lower barely register. The Italian track is more full-bodied throughout and the more satisfying listen (even if the English features familiar Italian genre voice performers). Severin's optional subtitles were actually dubtitles while 88 Films' subtitles are a new translation of the Italian track which no longer refer to Gaetano as Nicky and Dr. Dominici was Dr. Simpson as they are on the English track.

Severin produced a nice array of new extras which have been ported over the 88 Films release; however, exclusive to the British region free Blu-ray is an audio commentary by film historian Samm Deighan who contextualizes the film both as an individualistic turn by Fulci to carry over some of his themes into a new genre but also as part of the overall Italian attempt to innovate and cross-pollinate the erotic genre during a period of flux in the Italian filmmaking industry of the eighties. She also notes that the relationship between Jessica and Nicky is not just sadomasochistic but abusive, and one becomes confused as to whether Jessica really is exacting revenge on Simpson as her boyfriend's killer or on a substitute for Nicky. Also exclusive to the British Blu-ray is the film's Italian opening and closing credits which are possibly newly composited since the image seems minutely less grainy and hazy than the English sequence. The an alternate opening from the American video release with the replacement DANGEROUS OBSESSION title card as well as the minor variations in the saxophone sex scene runs longer than the extra on the Severin disc (6:23 versus 2:33) because it feature the entire opening sequence.

In "The Devil's Halsey" (17:26), actor Halsey discusses his early Hollywood career and his decision to go to Italy, working with Riccardo Freda, Mario Bava, and later Fulci (along with returns to America in between with writing credits on television shows like THE DUKES OF HAZZARD and penning some novels which were optioned but never filmed). He speaks favorably of THE DEVIL'S HONEY and working with Clery but less so of Marsillach before moving on to THE TOUCH OF DEATH of which he recalls working with Fulci to add black comic elements to a more straightforward script. In the context of his casting in THE GODFATHER PART III, he describes DEMONIA as a "mess" made with Sicilian mob money. He also reveals that he did not know he was in CAT IN THE BRAIN until he returned to Italy and learned that Fulci was busy at work on a film in which Halsey was supposedly appearing. In "Wild Flower" (12:13), actress Clery focuses on her Italian experience in general, traveling to Italy for a love affair with a man she eventually married, working as a model in Paris and Milan while turning down offers by producer/casting agent Ibrahim Moussa to turn her into a movie star before eventually making her debut in THE STORY OF O. She briefly discusses the main feature but focuses more on the period in which she was fortunate to work before the decline in European film production.

"Producing Honey" (13:22) is an interview with co-writer/producer Vincenzo Salviani who recalls being the one to convince a just out of hospital Fulci to fly to Spain and shoot the film. Fulci was apparently unsure of how to shoot an erotic film, and Salviani recalls working with him daily to find solutions to shooting challenges (Salviani would direct Halsey two years later in the erotic drama VELVET DREAMS with Kathy Shower). He also touches upon his collaborations with Ruggero Deodato, having produced WAVES OF LUST and LIVE LIKE A COP, DIE LIKE A MAN after serving as production manager on a number of Fernando Di Leo films. In "The Devil's Sax" (9:51), composer Claudio Natili recalls the scoring assignment on the Fulci film as a new challenge after years as a singer and songwriter (having appeared as a singer and actor in Renato Polselli's musical comedy MONDO PAZZO... GENTE MATTA! back in 1966). He worked with Salviani more so than Fulci and reveals that he would have been even more nervous taking on the assignment had he known that Fulci had been a jazz musician in his youth.