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Nothing Underneath: Special Edition 40th Anniversary
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Rustblade Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (25th June 2025). |
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The Film
 When Yellowstone forest ranger Bob Crane (Fever Pitch's Tom Schanley) psychically senses the mortal peril of his fashion model twin sister Jessica (Nicola Perring) halfway across the globe, he travels to Milan only to discover that she is missing. None of the models staying at the boarding house Hotel Scala have seen her and she has missed four consecutive shoots, but there is no evidence to suggest that she has met with foul play. Police commissioner Danesi (Halloween's Donald Pleasance) is, however, willing to concede that something is amiss when model Carrie (Catherine Noyes) is stabbed to death with a pair of dress shears that Bob saw in his psychic vision. With models and photographers hiding their own secrets and vices, Bob constantly hits brick walls in his investigation, with only Danish model Barbara (Renée Simonsen) the only friendly face. Eventually, Bob and Danesi discover the tragic event linking the murder victims; however, while Bob still believes his sister was the first victim, Danesi suspects that she may actually be the killer. Very loosely based on the scandalous novel "Sotto il Vestito Niente" – the film's Italian title which translates as "Nothing Under the Dress" although the more ambiguous English title is also quoted in the film's dialogue – and starting life with producer Achille Manzotti (Two Evil Eyes) wanting Michelangelo Antonioni to direct the film with Charlotte Rampling and Terence Stamp in the leads – Nothing Underneath is a thriller by director Carlo Vanzina, the son of famed Italian comedy director Stefano Vanzina aka Steno (Uncle Was a Vampire). While the fashion milieu harkens back to Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace, the film's stylistic visual debt is more Dario Argento filtered through the Hollywood aesthetics of Brian De Palma with even Pino Donaggio's hybrid orchestral/electronic score seeming to riff on both Blow Out and Body Double as well as the scene in which a character is menaced by a power drill more likely derived from the latter De Palma film than from Umberto Lenzi's earlier giallo Seven Blood-Stained Orchids) where a string of victims are also part of an insane revenge plot. Scripted by Vanzina, his brother Enrico Vanzina, and Argento-collaborator Franco Ferrini (Phenomena), Nothing Underneath is actually quite well-plotted apart from the psychic element and a few other leaps in logic. There are, however, some interesting if understated themes like the lack of interest in anything but the surface existence of models ("A little bit of make-up, a beautiful dress, and nothing underneath"), their seeming disposable nature juxtaposed against the landmarks of Milan including the major set-piece of a Moschino fashion show staged in front of Milan's Central Railways Station to the strains of Evelyn "Champagne" King's "I Am What I Am" and Murray Head's "One Night in Bangkok". American actor Schanley returned to episodic television and has since become a character actor, while Danish model Simonsen also appeared in Vanzina's drama Via Montenapoleone and eventually left modeling to become a novelist with her series of "Karla" novels adapted to the screen. Paolo Tomei, who plays sleazy playboy jeweler Giorgio Zanoni, was a modeling agent who also provided fashions for the sequel Too Beautiful to Die (released in Italy as "Sotto il Vestito Niente II") which actually begun development with Vanzina in the director's chair; however, he eventually exited the project and Manzotti replaced him with multi-award-winning commercial and music video director Dario Piana (The Deaths of Ian Stone). Vanzina also helmed the thrillers Mystere and Call Girl but his only other films exported to America have been the period romance The Gamble starring Matthew Modine, Faye Dunaway, and Jennifer Beals, and the soapy drama Millions starring Billy Zane, Lauren Hutton, Carol Alt, and Alexandra Paul (with a supporting role from Paul's Christine co-star John Stockwell). Vanzina would direct a supposed sequel to Nothing Underneath in 2011 titled Nothing Underneath: The Last Fashion Show which has not seen release in any English-speaking territories. Although the Italian title was it is better known as Too Beautiful to Die. 
Video
Released direct to video in the United States by Sony three years after its Italian premiere, Nothing Underneath took a long time to reach DVD, with an Italian-only edition circa 2008 followed by an English-friendly Danish import using the same master and finally making its Blu-ray debut in Germany in 2017 in two mediabook options (Cover A and Cover B) but it was not English-friendly. We have not seen that edition, but Vinegar Syndrome's 2021 Blu-ray double feature with Too Beautiful to Die and U.K. boutique label Nucleus Films' 2022 Blu-ray were derived from a new 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative. Italian soundtrack Rustblade's Blu-ray – carried in the United States by MVD but also available directly from Rustblade for European readers – features a 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer that appears to be the same scan but with different grading. While saturated colors pop against the rain-slicked Milan settings, the image is slightly brighter overall with grayer shadows which may be a color space issue (playing with the black levels and backlighting TV and player controls reveals that the same additional picture detail when lightening shadows on the Vinegar Syndrome which also slightly washes out the saturation in similar fashion to the Italian disc). One thing revealed by the brighter image is that the end credits do not scroll over black but over a freeze frame of the final shot with glinting pieces of glass still hanging in the ear after the killer falls out of frame. Making picture control adjustments approximates how the master should have looked, which is not what could be said of the disastrous DVD line of fellow Italian boutique soundtrack label Dagored earlier in this century. 
Audio
Nothing Underneath was shot in sync-sound English and mixed in Dolby Stereo. A handful of eighties Dolby Stereo Italian titles had issues with the mix seemingly from trying to clean up and then boost some bad location recording and sometimes phasing issues. A few dialogue sequences in Nothing Underneath evidence the latter – notably the conversation between Bob and Carrie at the theater after her fashion shoot – and subsequent video releases including the U.S. and U.K. tapes as well as the Scandinavian DVD utilized a mono mix (included as an additional option on the Nucleus edition). Thankfully, the Dolby Stereo mix had been restored to the Vinegar Syndrome and Nucleus Blu-rays. The stereo imaging is evident from the start with Donaggio's score and some instrumentation that tended to get buried in the mono tracks on earlier releases but tends to be more restrained in other musical sequences that just sound fuller than the Italian track. On the other hand, there are sequences that make good use of directionality including the apartment climax as Bob tries to evade detection by the killer first signified by hallway footsteps and the jangling of the door lock on the right channel. Rustblade also features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 rendering of the English stereo mix along with the Italian track in mono also included on the earlier editions (the Italian end credits also have a Dolby Stereo logo so presumably Rustblade is just working from the assets that were made available when the 4K remaster was created and did not try to source the Italian stereo). While the two aforementioned Blu-ray included both English SDH subtitles for the English track and English subtitles for the Italian track, Rustblade includes optional English subtitles (basically the SDH track without the effects/music notations) along with Italian, French, German, and Spanish subtitles (we have no idea if they are based on English or Italian track). 
Extras
While the Vinegar Syndrome and Nucleus editions were packed with mostly the same fairly comprehensive extras including two commentaries, Rustblade have assembled their own extras package (in Italian with optional English subtitles). The interview with screenwriter Enrico Vanzina (21:21) who reveals that although he and his brother had made the success in comedies and were at their peak in the mid-eighties, they had always wanted to work in different genres. Mystere was a deliberate step in that direction but Nothing Underneath came about because Antonioni recommended them when he exited the project. Vanzina reveals that he did not read the source novel, knowing it was not the plot he wanted to do, and instead he, his brother, and Ferrini constructed it as a series of homages to De Palma. He reveals that he had a lot of respect for Argento who thought their film an intrusion into his genre – understandable given the increasingly difficult financing situation for films in the late eighties – and that he already felt it would be foolish to try to imitate Argento and attributes all of the film's stylistic debt to De Palma including hiring Donaggio and letting him do his job without trying to influence him in the direction of De Palma. While the interviewer suggests that the film's use of homosexuality is problematic, Vanzina tries to separate the motivations of the killer from their sexuality – also citing the bisexual character in their bigger hit Vacanze di Natale – while also revealing that some of the more graphic sex scenes like the views Bob sees through his hotel window were imposed because the film as not sexy enough. When asked about the sequel, he skips over the Piana film and discusses what he and his brother were trying to achieve with the 2011 film.  Also included is an interview with composer Pino Donaggio (4:11) who defends the similarity between his "Telescope" theme from Body Double and the reworked theme in Nothing Underneath as marks of his style like similar Morricone cues, and also notes that he reworked them theme again for the 2011 Vanzina film as well as the more recent Spin Me Round. The appreciation by critic Francesco Lomusico (7:24) provides more of a context to the film's production and its influences – citing both Ferrini's script for Argento's Phenomena and De Palma's The Fury for the psychic aspect as well as Psycho itself rather than Hitchcock filtered through De Palma – as well as discussing the Piana sequel neglected by Vanzina (even though he and his brother were involved early on). The disc also includes the Italian theatrical trailer (1:58), the English export trailer (2:02), and the English opening and ending credits (5:26) – the latter two mislabeled in the Italian menu as "Americani" – and a photo gallery (2:10). 
Packaging
The "Special Edition 40th Anniversary" is available from the usual online retailers while MVD Visual also carry a limited number of Rustblade's two limited edition offerings: the 40th Anniversary Limited Deluxe Bag including a digipak, the soundtrack on CD and LP as well as a carrying bag, postcards, a booklet, a Polaroid photo, and black underwear - Rustblade for European readers - and the 40th Anniversary Deluxe Limited Edition with only the digipak, soundtrack CD, postcards, and Polaroid (Rustblade for European readers).
Overall
The Italian giallo Nothing Underneath owes less to the the works of Mario Bava and Dario Argento than the genre as filtered through the lens (and telescope) of Brian De Palma.
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