Nico Mastorakis pushes the envelope with 1990s erotic thriller IN THE COLD OF THE NIGHT, on Blu-ray/DVD combo from Vinegar Syndrome.

Scott Bruin (WALKING TALL's Jeff Lester) is a handsome and successful Los Angeles fashion photographer with a different model in his bed nightly. Lately, however, his sleep has been troubled by nightmares in which he brutally murders a woman in various ways. The dreams become so vivid that he nearly strangles his latest bedmate Lena (Shannon Tweed, NIGHT EYES II) in his sleep. When his neurologist (SALEM'S LOT's David Soul) can find nothing physically wrong with him stemming from a concussion after a recent motorcycle accident, Scott starts to think he is losing his mind until he spots the woman of his dreams in real life; that is, her image on a T-shirt designed by boardwalk artist Rudy (John Beck, AUDREY ROSE). When Kimberly Shawn (Adrienne Sachs, BEST OF THE BEST) turns up on his doorstep after learning of his inquiries, it is to warn him off under the belief that he is another one of the private investigators hired by her rich and controlling ex-lover. She eventually invites him into her life – including lunch with her ornithophobic mother (Tippi Hedren, MARNIE) – and her bed which happens to be situated in the sprawling beach house featured in his dreams, but she remains unknowable in other ways to him from the mysterious nature of her work to whether she feels as deeply about him as he does her. He also starts to fear that he will hurt her when the dreams come back.

Made at the start of the 1990s erotic thriller boom, Nico Mastorakis' IN THE COLD OF THE NIGHT plays like a bigger budgeted attempt compared to the likes of NIGHT EYES or BODY CHEMISTRY, coming as it did before the genre went really mainstream with BASIC INSTINCT and lead to a production boom in the genre as direct-to-video and Skinemax filler. Mastorakis obviously had higher aims for the picture as a sort of follow-up to his previous high-tech thriller BLIND DATE with Lester as another psychologically and romantically-troubled protagonist but adding paranoia and conspiracy angles while turning Sach's idealized woman into more of an ambiguous femme fatale. The erotic elements are very much in keeping with the genre from slow motion, moonlit sex scenes to the sax and synth scoring, while the actual content of these scenes never ventures beyond what one has come to expect of their ilk. The middle of the film drags when it should be at its most compelling, with Lester only a bit less of a blank slate than Sachs while the odd supporting cast seems randomly dropped in from Hedren and Beck to Tweed, Mastorakis' son-in-law Brian Thompson (VAMP), and THE BEASTMASTER himself Marc Singer. Most amusing to the nerdier members of the audience will be what passes for futuristic and high-tech from the Sony Mavica floppy-disc digital camera to the Kimberly's laserdisc collection which seems to be stocked solely with the films of Nico Mastorakis (including a clip from his superior thriller THE WIND). While the solution is a bit of a letdown, it is an odd, uneven journey getting there.

One of the films from the late 1980s and early 1990s that lead to the creation of the NC-17 rating after battling the MPAA who wanted to award it an X – another being Philip Kaufman's HENRY & JUNE – IN THE COLD OF THE NIGHT went almost direct-to-video from Republic Pictures in 1991 in NC-17 and R-rated versions (the former also on laserdisc from Image Entertainment). Mastorakis remastered the film for a 2003 DVD from Image Entertainment, but it turned out to be the R-rated cut. Derived from a new 4K scan of the original camera negative, Vinegar Syndrome's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray is truly a thing of beauty from the neon and laser opening sequence to the many close-ups of bare, wet, and sweaty flesh to come. What once looked like hazy MTV cinematography here looks like nineties Los Angeles color noir. The Ultra Stereo track was remixed in 5.1 for the DVD and the Blu-ray's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is largely front-oriented but makes use of the surrounds nicely for the dream sequences and some of the more involved location scenes like the climactic car chase (the original mix is included in lossless 2.0). Optional English SDH subtitles are also provided.