9½ Weeks on VHS Widescreen – The DVDfever Review

9½ Weeks

9½ Weeks stars Kim Basinger as Elizabeth, who works at the Spring Street Gallery which is shortly due to display a big exhibition for an unknown artist named Farnsworth, and she still thinks occasionally about her ex-husband, Bruce (Olek Krupa)… that is until she meets John (Mickey Rourke), a man whom she has no idea what he does for a living, but that he earns more than enough money.

He eyes her from the local market, and woos her at first by buying an expensive shawl for her that she had her eye on there but couldn’t afford.

Within a short space of time, Elizabeth is embroiled in a passionate affair in which John wants her to submit to his every whim however perverted it seems from the famous food scene, later parodied in Hot Shots! to dressing up as a man in a restaurant, and beyond what she could possibly imagine as some of John’s desires go further than she had anticipated…


If you haven’t seen the film before, it’s worth checking out to see what all the fuss was about ten years ago, and director Adrian Lyne makes more of the less animated scenes with expert direction.

For this tenth anniversary edition, it would have been nice for the theatrical trailer to have been included but it wasn’t.

The digitally remastered print is quite a clean one, but on the whole looks a little soft, although that could have been the way it was filmed to benefit the look of the sex scenes. One or two of the other scenes look a little grainy though.

The sound quality is superb with top tunes from yesteryear blasting out during some of the scenes which no doubt would have been edited on terrestrial television.

The sleeve claims a 1.85:1 ratio, but although it looks a little less than that, the film was probably shot flat and masked for cinema presentation. Therefore with the widescreen version while some picture will be lost at the top and bottom of the screen, some more side information will also be gained. The reverse will apply to the fullscreen version, but of course the widescreen version will be the way the director intended the picture to be.


FILM CONTENT
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
8
8
8
0
OVERALL 6


Detailed specs:

Cert:
Running time: 111 minutes
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Cat.no: 6162W
Year: 1986
Released: 1996
Sound: Dolby Surround
Widescreen: 1.85:1

Director: Adrian Lyne
Producers: Anthony Rufus Isaacs and Zalman King
Screenplay: Patricia Knop and Zalman King
Music: Jack Nitzsche

Cast:
John: Mickey Rourke
Elizabeth: Kim Basinger
Molly: Margaret Whitton
Harvey: David Margulies
Farnsworth: Dwight West
Sinclair: Roderick Cook
Bruce: Olek Krupa


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