Full Body Massage (1995)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Trailer-Shadows Of The Peacock, The Last Seduction Trailer-Just A Gigolo, Laura
Rating
Year Of Production	1995
Running Time	89:28
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Nicolas Roeg
Studio Distributor	Showtime Umbrella Entertainment	Starring	Mimi Rogers Bryan Brown Christopher Burgard Elizabeth Barondes Gareth Williams Patrick Neil Quinn Heather Gunn Gabriella Hall Brian McLane William Fuller Lynette Bennett Rachel Nolin Michael Edmonds
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$24.95	Music	Harry Gregson-Williams

    Ah . . . finally a movie that promises a happy ending!

    Written by Dan Gurskis, Full Body Massage is a made-for-cable 'cheapie', directed by Nicolas Roeg of Walkabout fame.

    In the story, Nina (Mimi Rogers) is the uptight and bossy owner of an art gallery. A strong-willed career-woman who lives alone in a lavish mansion, Nina surrounds herself with art works and toy boys. Nina escapes her stressful life with a weekly massage from a young handsome man, Douglas (Christopher Burgard), who certainly pushes the boundaries of what's considered a massage.

    One day, instead of her usual masseuse, a rough and ready Aussie bloke, Fitch (Bryan Brown), turns up as an unexpected substitute.

    Fitch is intelligent, but lacks tact. Blunt, honest, and probing, Fitch and Nina clash from the very beginning, with their conversations exploring a number of touchy subjects.

    All through this warring massage we are treated to new age philosophy and images of Mimi Rogers' breasts from every angle.

    Also, to err . . . flesh the story out a bit more, we are also treated to countless nude flashbacks and soft-core fantasies from both individuals.

    Despite the big names, the movie is pretty cheaply made and it aired originally on Showtime in 1995.

Video

    The video quality is acceptable to watch, but the image more resembles a VHS tape rather than a DVD.

    The very grainy transfer is presented in its original (pre-widescreen) cable television aspect ratio of 1.33:1, full frame.

    The sharpness, black level and shadow detail suffer throughout. There is also some low level noise occasionally.

    Despite being only 10 years old, the colour seems to have suffered with age, and often looks a little brown and murky. The white walls look a slightly dirty grey.

    There are no serious problems with MPEG artefacts, but the grainy image often looked a little pixelated. Film-to-video artefacts appear in the form of aliasing, such as on the car grille at 2:14, or the window blinds to 4:46. Plenty of film artefacts appear throughout, and some of them are large and distracting.

    No subtitles are present.

    This is a single-sided, single-layer disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio is limited and usually sounded mono (the audio collapsing into the centre speaker), but as the film is primarily composed of dialogue it gets the job done. The only audio option is English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s).

    The dialogue quality and audio sync are fine.

    The limited musical score is credited to Harry Gregson-Williams, and seems to consist of some light jazz numbers, which suits the film.

    The stereo audio is not surround encoded, and thus there is no surround sound presence or LFE activity.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    Not surprisingly, there are no extras relating to the film.

Menu

    A simple menu, it is static with audio.

Umbrella Trailers

   Shadows Of The Peacock, The Last Seduction, Just A Gigolo, and Laura.

    Full Body Massage is zoned for all regions. Fortunately, our version is PAL.

    Watch it with a box of tissues . . . for the touching drama of course.

    The video quality is poor.

    The audio quality is very limited.

    There are no genuine extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall