Generally it’s only our own thoughts that make it to the frontpage, but traditions are there to be broken every now and then. And this sounds like a good opportunity to do so: Shameless Screen Entertainment are a UK company who release DVDs. This week (April 14) they’ll release Femina Ridens a.k.a. The Frightened Woman. Which happens to be one of my favourite 60s Italian cult movies. Or maybe even movies in general. So now I’ll hand over the mic (or keyboard) to Shameless…
Shameless Screen Entertainment is proud to announce that their 14th April DVD release of The Frightened Woman (aka Femina Ridens) has been approved by Piero Schivazappa, the director of the film.Witness the ultimate subjugation of a woman to serve the most twisted desires of man in the achingly hip ‘n’ horny Femina Ridens, where the kinkiest urges are played to a deadly conclusion…
The beautifully sensuous Dagmar Lassander stars as Maria, the living sex toy of Dr Sayer (Philippe Leroy) who delights in killing women at the point of orgasm. Sayer’s prolonged campaign of degradation pushes Maria right to the edge of death but the spell she casts on him will lead to the most extraordinary climax of a lifetime!
Stylish, imaginative and deliciously twisted, this kitschy 60s pop art erotica-fest boasts gorgeous set design, an even more alluring leading lady and a heady desire to please the viewer with increasingly bizarre and dangerous sex games.
Rebuilding The Frightened Woman has been a labour of love but thanks to the work of genre expert Marc Morris the Shameless version of The Frightened Woman runs at 86m 03secs compared to the 83m 25 secs run time supplied by the licensor.
What became clear as Shameless compared all the known versions of The Frightened Woman was that various moments had been lost at different points in all of them. Some were merely shaved seconds; others changed the nuance of a scene or missed out important footage. These have been more than enough to prompt fans on the web to start cataloguing the differences with a prime example being this thread on the respected DVD Maniacs forum:
In order to create this new Shameless version they have used a wide variety of source materials that widely vary in quality but they believe that the end result shows off the film in the complete form it has long deserved to be celebrated in including the correct colour palette.
Shameless have kept director Piero Schivazappa informed throughout the process and asked him to watch through it for them and see if he could give it his seal of approval. He kindly sat through it, with script in hand and felt that, “it is as faithful as it can be to the original script”, and was very happy to see the film brought back to life in this Shameless version declaring, “This IS the version of my film to watch.”
Well, all that sounds marvellous, but please bear in mind that the DVD will be released in anamorphic widescreen version (yay!) with English audio only (ermm). However, let us not be too gloomy: it’ll still be the best version available.
Avenue Kurtodrome 
Since then I’ve received the DVD and yes, it looks stupendous. It’s still one of my personal favourites.