NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Radiance Blu-ray (November 2025): Radiance have transferred three early films by Robert Hossein to Blu-ray. This boxset has 1955's The Wicked Go to Hell, Nude in a White Car made three years later and The Taste of Violence from 1961. This Blu-ray set delivers exemplary 2K restorations courtesy of Gaumont, presenting each of the three films on separate dual-layered discs in their original black-and-white formats. The 1080P transfers have max'ed out bitrates showcasing clean and consistent HD presentations. The Wicked Go to Hell exemplifies a stark, noir-infused visual aesthetic shot in black-and-white with a 1.37:1 aspect ratio, transitioning from the claustrophobic, hard-edged interiors of a French penitentiary - characterized by shadowy confinement and geometric compositions - to the sun-scorched, expansive rural landscapes of southern France, where lingering, voyeuristic shots on Marina Vlady's form are accentuated by pin spotlights that sparkle her eyes, evoking a sensual yet oppressive atmosphere. The cinematography by Michel Kelber (Bitter Victory, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, French Cancan, Lola Montes) masterfully captures this shift, using dynamic grey tones, rich velvety blacks, and clean whites to heighten psychological tension, with the asymmetric beach house set - built from Hossein's own concept art - serving as a German Expressionist-inspired metaphor for mental entrapment and moral decay. In Nude in a White Car, Hossein refines his visual language into a more intimate, Hitchcockian thriller style, presented in black-and-white at a 1.66:1 aspect ratio, where the modern, up-market townhouse setting - with its multi-level open plans and architectural geometry - becomes a character in itself, enhancing the psychological interplay of deception and desire through confined spaces that mirror emotional entrapment. Cinematographer Robert Juillard (Forbidden Games, Germany Year Zero) delivers consummate imagery with subtle lighting that tastefully handles erotic scenes, leaving much to the imagination while building suspense through shadows and close-ups. The Taste of Violence marks Hossein's bold expansion into widescreen territory, filmed in black-and-white with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio that exploits vast, otherworldly Yugoslavian landscapes standing in for revolutionary Mexico, creating a fatalistic visual poetry through stunning clarity in arid badlands, cornfields, and abstract voids of pure black where figures and horses assume graphic, almost silhouette-like qualities, infusing scenes with gothic dread and psychological depth. Jacques Robin's cinematography shines with technically astonishing shots, including impossible depths of focus merging close-ups and long-shots, avoiding glorification of violence by focusing on aftermaths like hanged bodies against horizons, evoking precursors to spaghetti westerns with a humanist, anti-romantic lens and restored prints offering velvety blacks and fine detail.

NOTE: We have added 162 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Radiance use linear PCM mono tracks (24-bit) in the original French language. The audio presentation across all three discs is uniformly excellent, delivering crisp and immersive soundscapes free of hiss, distortion, or background noise that could detract from the films' atmospheric subtleties. In The Wicked Go to Hell, the mono mix amplifies raw environmental elements like crashing waves, marsh footsteps, and the haunting prison ballad "Black Blues" sung by Bachir Touré, alongside, the actor/director's father André Hossein's (Cemetery Without Crosses, credited with compositions, along with Michel Legrand, in Robert Mulligan's Summer of '42 as well as all three films in this Radiance boxset) dramatic score that swells effectively to underscore paranoia and despair without overwhelming the sparse dialogue; Nude in a White Car benefits from clear auditory details such as rain-slicked streets and echoing footsteps that build nocturnal suspense, complemented by a jazzy, seductive score from André Hossein that pulses with venomous undertones, maintaining subtlety in its psychosexual narrative; while The Taste of Violence leverages "scary silence" and minimalistic sound design to convey emotional barrenness, with pristine echoes of gunfire, wind-swept plains, and the folk-like song "Poderoso Señor" by Severiano Alvarez grounding the ideological critique, all presented with great clarity that highlights the films' innovative use of audio to subvert genre expectations and enhance their fatalistic themes, making this set a benchmark for preserving mid-century French cinema's sonic heritage. It sounds flawless in the uncompressed transfers. Radiance offer optional English subtitles on their Region FREE Blu-rays.

Radiance Films packs this limited edition set with an abundance of insightful supplements that deepen appreciation for Robert Hossein's directorial oeuvre, starting with newly recorded audio commentaries by critic Tim Lucas (Pause. Rewind. Obsess. One Man’s One Year Escape into Cinema) on each film - meticulously researched tracks that delve into production backgrounds, cast and crew biographies, stylistic choices, source material adaptations from Frédéric Dard, and connections to broader cinema history like influences on Sergio Leone, providing comprehensive context for The Wicked Go to Hell's sadistic noir elements, Nude in a White Car's psychosexual twists, and The Taste of Violence's anti-romantic western innovations. I learned so much listening to these commentaries. The Blu-ray disc for The Wicked Go to Hell includes the fresh 1/4 hour "Picking Strawberries" featurette by historian Lucas Balbo (Euro Girls Illustrated,) discussing the film's origins from novel to stage to screen, the directorial handover mystery, and archival footage of Hossein and Jean Rollin praising its isolation and dread sequences; shared across the set is Howard S. Berger's "Behind Marked Eyes: The Cinematic Stare of Robert Hossein" (running shy of 1/2 hour), exploring Hossein's acting-to-directing transition, thematic obsessions with jealousy and sexuality, combative lighting, prowling cameras, and POV shots, illustrated with posters and genre insights; for Nude in a White Car, there's a 2019, 10 minute, Gaumont interview with actress Marina Vlady (2 or 3 Things I know about Her, Chimes at Midnight,) reflecting on her marriage and collaborations with Hossein, his cinematic approach, and the oppressive thriller vibe of the film involving her sister-in-law. We also get Samm Deighan's (The Legacy of World War II in European Arthouse Cinema) 17 minute visual essay "The Evolution of the Femme Fatale in Classic French Cinema", tracing the trope from 1930s poetic realism through New Wave subversions, linking to Hollywood noir and forgotten titles with themes of intruders and doubles; The Taste of Violence extras feature a new 7 minutes of Alex Cox's (Introduction to Film: A Director's Perspective) appreciation, lauding the use of silence, non-sensationalized violence, and intimate character focus that influenced Leone, and C. Courtney Joyner's (The Westerners: Interviews with Actors, Directors, Writers and Producers) 25 minute interview on Zapata Westerns, contextualizing the subgenre's revolutionary backdrops, bleak pessimism, and lineage to films like Duck, You Sucker and The Wild Bunch; rounding out the package are trailers for each film highlighting their gritty allure, reversible sleeves with original and new artwork by Time Tomorrow, and a limited edition booklet with new writing by Walter Chaw (A Walter Hill Film) on Hossein's underappreciated style plus translated archival pieces by Lucas Balbo, making this a treasure trove of scholarly and archival material that elevates the set beyond mere film preservation to a vital reappraisal of Hossein's contributions.

Robert Hossein's early directorial efforts in the 1950s and early 1960s, marked by his transition from acting to helming films, reveal a filmmaker deeply invested in exploring the darker facets of human nature through suspenseful narratives infused with psychological depth, moral ambiguity, and ritualistic interpersonal dynamics. His debut, The Wicked Go to Hell blends French noir elements with erotic tension and violence, structured in tripartite acts - prison torment, escape, and downfall - highlighting themes of rivalry, betrayal, and feminine wiles, while Hossein's style employs atmospheric black-and-white cinematography and dramatic scoring by his father, André Hossein, to amplify psychological confinement and moral erosion. Building on this foundation, Nude in a White Car - another Frédéric Dard adaptation - shifts to a more intimate psychosexual thriller, following unemployed performer Pierre Menda (Hossein), who is seduced by a mysterious nude woman in a Cadillac before she tries to kill him; tracing the vehicle leads him to sisters Eva (a wheelchair-bound polio victim) and Hélène, whose mansion becomes a web of deception, affection, and revelations that Eva is the ambulatory, psychopathic seductress. Thematically, it delves into cruelty through sexual manipulation and sibling rivalry, portraying sex as a venomous tool in ambiguous relationships, with psychological ambiguity overturning viewer assumptions in a tight narrative of surprises and moral irony. By 1961's The Taste of Violence (Le goût de la violence,) Hossein ventures into proto-spaghetti western territory, setting a fatalistic tale in a fictional Central American revolution where guerrilla leader Perez (played by Hossein) kidnaps President Larangana's daughter, Maria, for a prisoner exchange, only for the cross-country trek to unravel amid betrayals, peasant ambushes, and massacres that expose the futility and corruption of revolutionary ideals. Themes expand to political violence and existential despair, rejecting romanticized rebellion in favor of a cycle of destruction where success breeds moral decay and failure yields horror, symbolized by abstract imagery like hanged rebels and horizon-staring futility. Stylistically, they evolve from confined noir spaces emphasizing geometric compositions and tension (The Wicked Go to Hell and Nude in a White Car) to expansive, fatalistic landscapes (The Taste of Violence), all in black-and-white with André Hossein's music underscoring grim atmospheres, while Hossein's dual role as director-actor infuses personal intensity. Radiance Films' "Wicked Games: Three Films By Robert Hossein" stands as a remarkable limited edition Blu-ray box set that not only revives three underseen early directorial efforts from a multifaceted French cinema talent - The Wicked Go to Hell with its Dostoyevskian depravity, Nude in a White Car and its Hitchcockian psychosexual intrigue, and The Taste of Violence as a prescient proto-spaghetti western critiquing ideological violence - but does so with top-tier 2K restorations that shine in video and audio quality, preserving the black-and-white artistry, atmospheric soundscapes, and André Hossein's evocative scores in pristine form; bolstered by an exhaustive array of new and archival extras that provide deep dives into production histories, thematic analyses, and genre influences through commentaries, featurettes, interviews, and essays, this collection serves as an essential short retrospective for cinephiles, highlighting Hossein's innovative blend of noir, erotic thriller, and political western elements that anticipated later trends while remaining rooted in moral ambiguity and human erosion, ultimately earning high recommendations for its educational value, technical excellence, and role in championing an unsung stylist's legacy in a beautifully packaged format that's a must-own for fans of mid-century European genre cinema. I enjoyed all three immensely but will make a special note to Nude in a White Car - wonderful noir excesses. A very strong recommendation.

Gary Tooze