Riccardo Freda's giallo/krimi crossover DOUBLE FACE gets a high definition facelift on Blu-ray.

After a whirlwind romance on the continent, John Alexander (Klaus Kinski, COUNT DRACULA) weds heiress Helen (Margaret Lee, VENUS IN FURS) before returning to London where he took a position in the family importing/exporting business. The marriage quickly deteriorated with John discovering that his wife has taken a lover in West End actress Liz (Annabella Incontrera, THE CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS). His confrontation with Helen and request for a divorce is met with a cynical "How middle class" – while also pointing out her tolerance of John's dalliance with his secretary (Barbara Nelli, BLOODY PIT OF HORROR) – and the assurance that he will be well-compensated as her sole heir to the ninety-percent of shares in the business. He commiserates with his father-in-law Brown (Sydney Chaplin, PSYCHO-SISTERS) – whom Helen regards as a mere employee despite his executive position – who regards his daughter as spoiled and selfish. When Helen decides abruptly that she needs a vacation to clear her head, she leaves behind John, Liz, and her father for a trip to Liverpool that ends with a fiery car crash. While the body is unrecognizable, Helen is identified by the charred passport on her person. Brown suggests that John get away after the funeral, but his pilgrimage to the various jet set sights where he and Helen were happy is met with suspicion by Liverpool detective Gordon (production designer Luciano Spadoni, THE PSYCHIC) even though Scotland Yard Inspector Stevens (Günther Stoll, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE?) has ruled Helen's death an accident. Upon returning home, John finds a comely squatter in Christine (Christiane Krüger, THE INTERNECINE PROJECT) who steals his keys when he drops her off in Soho and lures him into a warehouse psychedelic happening showcasing a stag film starring herself and a veiled woman known as The Countess whose neck scar convinces John that Helen must still be alive since the film was made only the week before. As John tries to find out anything about the film, being warned that The Countess is dangerous after having suffered injury in a car accident, inspectors Gordon and Stevens have discovered what might be a timing device in the wreck of Helen's Jaguar and John seems the likely suspect.

An Italian/German co-production marketed as a giallo in Italy and an Edgar Wallace krimi in Germany purportedly based on the novel "A Face in the Night," DOUBLE FACE is a superior work to director Riccardo Freda's subsequent thriller THE IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE but not without issues. In some ways it feels like a psychedelic transposing of THE HORRIBLE DR. HICHCOCK with John haunted by remembrances of his dead wife from her music – an Italian-language pop song by composer Nora Orlandi (THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH) who also sang it under the name Sylvie St. Laurent – her dog, her cigarette case, and her black veil while leaving ambiguous the nature of his feelings whether they are loss of love or guilt as the possible murderer. The overt necrophilia of the earlier Freda film is substituted here by his obsession with the stag film as he tries to assure himself that the veiled performer is his wife and then to convince others of it. Ultimately, the film falls back on the typical gaslighting and motives for murder of the thriller formula but Kinski easily carries to the film with his facial performance in whatever language he is dubbed. As with IGUANA, the film is let down by some laughable effects work from terrible back projection and blue screen composites with heavy black matte outlines and poor alignment to two car conflagrations that cut to unconvincing miniatures. The film's high points are the obsessive Orlandi score and some gorgeous color photography by Gábor Pogány (LOVE RITUAL) assisted by Cristiano who would photograph Freda's final film MURDER OBSESSION.

Released directly to television in the United States by ZIV International, DOUBLE FACE looked quite dark and drab on VHS from Unicorn Video in said TV print while an unauthorized disc from Luminous Film & Video Wurks offshoot Alfa Digital utilized the French title sequence LIZ ET HELEN but was not the French hardcore version featuring inserts with Alice Arno (THE PERVERSE COUNTESS) but simply a composite utilizing an English source and an inferior source for the earlier French version to patch up missing bits here and there. The first authorized DVD came from German but it represented the German theatrical cut of the film which ran ten minutes shorter than the Italian and export versions. Arrow Video's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray comes from a 2K scan of the original Italian camera negative restoring a wealth of color to a film that looked so drab on VHS from the neons of soho to the gels employed in the warehouse happening sequence. The HD resolution lends texture to clothing and hair but also shows up the film's poor optical effects from the back projection and matte composites with heavy black outlines to the laughable miniature effects. The English and Italian LPCM 1.0 mono tracks also a revelation with the lyrics of the two songs that figure into the film more intelligible. Optional English SDH subtitles transcribe the English dub while a second track translates the Italian (including the song lyrics). The English or animated Italian credits are selectable via seamless branching while the audio and subtitle options can be toggled independently of the version selection via remote.

The film is accompanied by an audio commentary by Video Watchdog's Tim Lucas who provides background on both the krimi and the giallo – noting that the influence of the former on the latter goes back to the giallo as paperback novel with their yellow covers inspired by British pulp "yellow jackets" that included works by Wallace (also providing a synopsis for "Face in the Night" that reveals that the film has nothing to do with the work on which the German credits purport it to be based upon). He considers the film to be more Italian than German due to Freda and his Italian writers – including KILL BABY KILL's Romano Migliorini, NIGHT OF THE DEVILS' Gianbattista Mussetto, and fellow director Lucio Fulci – and the seventy-thirty financing, as well as in tone with the film being more somber than the more outlandish turn of the purely German krimis. Of the contribution of screenwriter Fulci, Lucas likens the film in style and themes to ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER (released on Blu-ray as PERVERSION STORY from Mondo Macabro) while characterizing Helen as A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN).