Women in Revolt (1971)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1971
Running Time	98:53
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Paul Morrissey
Studio Distributor	Andy Warhol Beyond Home Entertainment	Starring	Paul Morrissey George Abagnalo Penny Arcade Betty Blue Maurice Braddell Jackie Curtis Candy Darling Jane Forth Johnny Kemper Martin Kove Jonathan Kramer Duncan MacKenzie Sean O'Meara
Case	Amaray-Opaque-Secure Clip
RPI	?	Music	None Given

    When writing a review, I try to do the material justice, by placing it in its historical context and trying to appreciate the film as it was intended to be appreciated. Sometimes it is just too difficult. Thinking about what I was going to write about this film led me to the same words over and over again: tawdry, lurid trash.

    The film is ostensibly about the women's liberation movement. However, the three leading female characters are all played by transvestites who were prominent in the Andy Warhol collective: Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis.

    The story concerns the efforts of these three women to break away from the shackles of their men. Candy (for example) wants to be a movie star. Together they decide to become lesbian career women. The film is shot in an improvisational style, which means that there are a few blurred shots, a lot of waffling on about nothing in particular and some very poor and undisciplined acting. The audio is also poorly recorded, making this a chore to watch. This looks like someone's amateur home movies, and I guess that that is essentially what this film was.

    The direction is by Paul Morrissey, though some sources suggest that it was co-directed by Andy Warhol, who is credited as a producer. Morrissey wrote the turgid script, though as I mentioned above a lot of it seems to be improvised.

    If you think from the above that I did not like the film, you would be right. But it has its supporters. Some people find it funny and entertaining, even thought-provoking.

Video

    The film is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.37:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced. The original aspect ratio seems to have been 1.37:1, so we are not missing much here.

    The film is not very sharp and some of it looks quite murky and indistinct. It appears that it was transferred from a VHS tape. Grain is a constant problem, as is video noise. There is some minor aliasing, but nothing especially severe.

    Colour is adequate, so the original transfer to video must have been from decent material, although dirt and other film artefacts are present.

    The film is presented on a single-layered disc with no subtitles. The absence of subtitles is an issue for this film, as it was poorly recorded and a lot of the dialogue is indistinct.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There is a single audio track in glorious English Dolby Digital 1.0.

    As mentioned above, dialogue is often unintelligible due to the poor original recording. The dynamic range of this recording is severely restricted, with a loss of body to the sound. It is often quite boxy-sounding.

    There seems to be no music score for this film and obviously no surround nor subwoofer use.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    No extras are provided.

    This film has been released on DVD in Region 1 by Image Entertainment in the early days of DVD: 1998. I have only found one review of this disc, but the link is broken. I suspect that the transfer will be different from this one (i.e. better), but as I cannot be sure I will have to call this a draw.

    This underground film should have stayed buried in my opinion. Other reviewers and some critics can see something in this that I cannot, so make up your own mind.

    The video quality is quite poor.

    The audio is difficult to understand, though I do not think the digital transfer is to blame.

    There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall