Fatal Beauty Blu Ray Review (MGM)

Fatal Beauty is a 1987 action comedy film directed by Tom Holland (Child’s Play, Fright Night, Thinner, Tales from the Crypt, The Langoliers, and The Temp). It was written by Hilary Henkin (Road House, Wag the Dog, Romeo is Bleeding, and Blue Heaven) and Dean Riesner (Dirty Harry, Play Misty for Me, Coogan’s Bluff, and The Enforcer). It was produced by Leonard Kroll (Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment, Walk like a Man, and Doin’ Time). It grossed $12,046,526 worldwide at the box office. Rita Rizzoli (played by: Whoopi Goldberg from Ghost, Sister Act franchise, The Color Purple, The Lion King, Star Trek franchise, and Made in America) is an ambitious narcotics cop with a plethora of disguises. When a huge drug shipment is hijacked by Leo Nova (played by: Brad Dourif from the Child’s Play/Chucky franchise, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Blue Velvet, Dune, Spontaneous Combustion, The Exorcist III, Halloween franchise, Alien: Resurrection, and The Lord of the Rings franchise) and Earl Skinner (played by: Mike Jolly from Three O’Clock High, The Dirty Dozen, and Eve of Destruction). The thieves don’t know that the drug is unusually pure and packs of ‘Fatal Beauty’ begin turning up next to too many dead bodies for it’s deadly aftermath. Mike Marshak (played by: Sam Elliott from The Big Lebowski, Rush, Hulk, A Star is Born, Road House, Ghost Rider, Shakedown, and Tombstone) is sent by the original owner of the drugs to keep close to Rita during her investigation. Can they get along enough to work together???? Fatal Beauty is a fun 80’s action comedy directed by horror veteran Tom Holland. He proves that he could do any genre behind the camera. It’s a real shame that he didn’t do more stuff like this back in the day. It has a solid mix of humor, action, crime, and drama. A dangerous and uncut drug is stolen by some small time gangsters. All hell breaks loose when it hits the streets. Whoopi Goldberg gives one of her most underrated performances as tough cop Rita Rizzoli. She’s creative when it comes to law enforcement, she loves going undercover to solve her crimes. Whoopi was at her prime during this, this is one of her best roles. Sam Elliott is top notch as Mike Marshak. He works for the drug kingpin but he feels like he’s not responsible for all this chaos and he just considers it a job. The more time that he spends with Rita, he starts to change for the good. Their chemistry is pretty damn good together. Brad Dourif damn near steals the show as the low rent thug Leo Nova. It’s a smaller role but his character makes a big impact in Fatal Beauty. He’s really the one that creates all this fear in the streets when he pushes these uncut drugs to customers. Fun fact, this is the performance that got Dourif the iconic Charles Lee Ray aKa Chucky gig which changed his entire career. The rest of the impressive supporting cast is loaded with all kinds of familiar faces which includes Mike Jolly, Rubén Blades (Predator 2), Harris Yulin (Scarface), John P. Ryan (It’s Alive franchise), James Le Gros (Phantasm II), Mark Pellegrino (Supernatural), Cheech Marin (From Dusk Till Dawn), M.C. Gainey (Con Air), Larry Hankin (Friends), Jennifer Warren (Slap Shot), Charles Hallahan (The Thing), David Harris (The Warriors), Neill Barry (Amityville 3-D), Clayton Landey (The Blob), Michael Champion (Total Recall), and Michael DeLorenzo (A Few Good Men). Fatal Beauty tries to do something a little different when it comes to the popular 80’s action comedy sub-genre and I can appreciate that. It has a good amount of action and violence. There’s some nudity and it’s packed with dark humor balances out everything. Fatal Beauty keeps the suspense and tension consistent. It’s a blast, so much fun, and always entertaining. It has some quality replay value to it. Fatal Beauty almost never gets brought up anymore, it’s better than it’s reputation. RECOMMENDED!!!! Let’s discuss this high definition presentation from MGM! This 1080p (1.85:1) transfer appears to be the exact same restoration as the 2016 Olive Films home video release. It’s still a major improvement compared to it’s original DVD and VHS versions. It has an English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track on the disc. The audio is solid but it’s not really a explosive type of feature so don’t expect anything crazy here besides the characters obviously. All of the dialogue is very clean, the chaos is elevated, and the music has a solid boost to it. It has English SDH subtitles. There’s no extras on this release. Don’t let the artwork fool you, this is a pro pressed home video release and it’s not a BD-R. It’s available everywhere right now including MovieZyng.com!!!!