Moonlighting Wives

"Retro-Seduction Cinema has brought a number of titles from director Joe Sarno's catalog to DVD, and his 1964 feature Moonlighting Wives has been given a digital upgrade by the company. While the film is quite mild even by the standards of 1960's sexploitation -- there's no nudity, and the hanky-panky is talked about rather than shown -- it's a well-written melodrama of sinful suburbia, and still entertaining more than four decades after its initial release. However, this release doesn't look especially good; transferred to disc in its original full-frame aspect ratio of 1.33:1, the surviving elements used for this release are full of scratches and splices, and while the color balance of the surviving prints has been corrected and looks good, that doesn't change the flicker of the image or the blunt absence of frames here and there. The audio, mastered in Dolby Digital Stereo but maintaining the original single-channel sound mix, fares a bit better, with the lively score sounding quite fine. The dialogue is in English, with no subtitles or multiple language options included. Bonus materials include an interview with Joe Sarno, in which he talks about the production of Moonlighting Wives, as well as trailers for several other Sarno titles released through Retro-Seduction. The disc also includes a short subject on how the film elements were restored for this release (confirming that this film could and did look a lot worse than it does here, its flaws notwithstanding) and a well-written essay from Michael J. Bowen in the accompanying booklet. While the presentation on DVD isn't all one might hope for, as a movie Moonlighting Wives holds up quite well, and fans of the genre will want to give it a look even in somewhat compromised form."