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

ADDITION: Kino Blu-ray (September 2026): Kino have brought all five of Bernard Borderie's Angélique films to Blu-ray as the "Complete Five Film Collection": Angélique, Angélique: The Road to Versailles, Angélique and the King, Untamable Angélique and Angélique and the Sultan. We reviewed the Lionsgate DVD set in 2008, HERE. All five films come from new 4K restorations by StudioCanal. They are spread across three dual-layered Blu-rays. Angélique, the longest at almost two hours, sits alone on the first disc. The Road to Versailles (about 105 minutes) and Angélique and the King (about 104 minutes) share the second, and Untamable Angélique (about 86 minutes) and Angélique and the Sultan (about 97 minutes) share the third. Because it has a disc to itself, Angélique has a video bitrate higher than films two and three and also higher than films four and five. The paired films still have high bitrates, and I couldn't see any compression issues on any of them. All five are in the original 2.35:1 widescreen ratio. The improvement over the DVDs is dramatic. Our 2008 DVD captures now look badly compromised by comparison, with a cold blue-gray cast, rainbow color smearing and details that simply disappear. On the Blu-rays, colors are rich and natural. Mercier's auburn hair and brown eyes are restored, and blood is red again: Hossein's facial wounds in the first film and the dying man's soaked shirt in Angélique and the King were nearly invisible on the DVD. In Angélique and the King the purple piping returns to her velvet riding jacket. In Untamable Angélique her slave-auction costume becomes vivid purple satin, and in Angélique and the Sultan her headdress, which read as silver on the DVD, is revealed as gold with pearl drops under a saffron veil. Detail is excellent throughout: tapestries, lace collars, carved furniture, Moorish tilework and the embroidered textiles of the Sultan's court. Contrast is well handled, and the night scenes, like the garden celebration in the first film, hold their shadow detail without crush. There's no sign of excessive noise reduction or edge enhancement, and the grain looks natural and film-like. There are a couple of anomalies. In The Road to Versailles, at least one close-up of Mercier looks out-of ratio - horizontally squeezed, which elongates her face (see capture HERE.) It's probably an issue with the source element or the original anamorphic lensing rather than the transfer. Untamable Angélique has a deliberately diffused, hazy bedroom shot, which is part of the original photography. Of the five, Angélique and the Sultan looks the best: crisper and more consistent, even though it shares its disc. These 1080P Blu-ray transfers are a huge upgrade and the best these films have looked on home video. Overall an impressive upgrade if the sources remain with minor inconsistencies.

NOTE: We have added 190 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-rays, Kino offer the original French audio in DTS-HD Master dual-mono (24-bit) and the English DUB in similar but 16-bit, for all five films. Dialogue is clear, with no hiss, crackle or dropouts. The big asset is Michel Magne's (Symphony for a Massacre, OSS 117 Vice and Virtue aka "Le vice et la vertu", Monsieur Gangster,) score. Its sweeping, yearning main theme runs through all five films, and it shifts toward heroic fanfare in the later adventure installments. It has limited range, as you'd expect from mid-'60s recordings, but it's faithful and free of distortion. Kino offer optional English subtitles in a white font with a black border, with the same translation as the DVDs, on their Region 'A'-locked Blu-rays. The menus are now in English, which fixes one of my gripes about the 2008 set.

The Kino set adds three new audio commentaries. Tim Lucas, author of the Mario Bava biography All the Colors of the Dark, covers the first film and talk about his misconceptions of the series now seeing the Angélique character as an intelligent survivor and the films sumptuous, if abbreviated version of the books. That's a nice fit, since Mercier had just starred in Bava's Black Sabbath. Film critic Simon Abrams (Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone) takes on The Road to Versailles, at his usual furious pace - and film historian Samm Deighan (Hysterical Excess and Inhuman Ecstasy) covers Untamable Angélique. and finds the series unjustly neglected and she comments on the historical context of the film series. Fans of these commentarists can expect the best - as they always deliver. Each disc also has the same selection of trailers for related Kino titles: Black Sabbath, Cartouche, Enough Rope, Last Known Address, OSS 117: Panic in Bangkok and Vice and Virtue. Several tie in with the set. Black Sabbath features Mercier, Cartouche is a period swashbuckler with Jean Rochefort, and Vice and Virtue stars Robert Hossein. 

Angélique was the most popular European film series of the '60s. It was adapted from Anne and Serge Golon's best-selling novels, and the first film alone sold around 60 million tickets worldwide, 44 million of them in the Soviet Union. Michèle Mercier (Shoot the Piano Player (1960), The Second Twin (1966), Cemetery Without Crosses (1969), Creature with the Blue Hand (1967) and Black Sabbath (1963) plays Angélique Sancé de Monteloup, the daughter of an impoverished noble family. In the first film she is married off to Joffrey de Peyrac, played by Robert Hossein (The Wicked Go to Hell, Nude in a White Car, The Taste of Violence, Rififi, Vice and Virtue, Cemetery Without Crosses, Le Professionnel): the scarred, limping, fabulously wealthy Count of Toulouse. She comes to adore him, but his learning and his gold make enemies at court, and he is condemned to the stake as a sorcerer. The Road to Versailles follows the widow into the Parisian underworld among the thieves led by her childhood friend Nicolas (Giuliano Gemma - The Leopard (1963), A Pistol for Ringo (1965), Day of Anger (1967) and Tenebrae (1982.) From there she climbs back up through a thriving tavern business and a calculated marriage to her cousin Philippe (Claude Giraud). Jean-Louis Trintignant (A Man and a Woman, Amour, And God Created Woman, And Hope to Die, Confidentially Yours, Deadly Sweet, Death Laid an Egg, Is Paris Burning?, Le combat dans l'île (aka Fire and Ice), Love at the Top, My Night at Maud's, Spotlight On A Murderer, The Conformist, The Crook, The French Conspiracy, The Great Silence, The Man Who Lies, The Sunday Woman, Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train, Three Colours: Red, Trans-Europ-Express, Z,) has a memorable turn as the scruffy satirical poet Claude Le Petit. In Angélique and the King, Louis XIV (Jacques Toja) pursues her and sends her on a diplomatic mission to the Persian ambassador. Untamable Angélique and Angélique and the Sultan turn the series into swashbuckling adventure. Learning that Joffrey may still be alive, she crosses the Mediterranean and is caught up with pirates, slavers and the harem of a Moroccan sultan, and Hossein returns for the rescue. Jean Rochefort (Cartouche (1962), The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe (1972), The Clockmaker of St. Paul (1974), The Hairdresser's Husband) is a constant presence as Desgrez, the lawyer-turned-policeman who is her loyal ally. I had never seen these films in 2008, and I said then that I was anxious to see each next installment. That still holds. The episodic, cliffhanger structure is addictive, and it's soap opera with a very big budget. Borderie already knew his way around period adventure, and it shows in the lavish costumes, sets and crowd scenes. Some may find it cheesy, and the later films' Orientalist adventures are very much of their time, but the series plays it all with conviction. Henri Persin (camera and electrical on Charade) shot all five films, and the series has a lush, storybook look: candlelit interiors, extravagant costumes and big crowd scenes built at Billancourt and Cinecittà, plus location work at Versailles. His compositions tend toward the tableau, like a painting of a court scene, with Mercier nearly always at the center. As the films move south to the Mediterranean and North Africa, the palette shifts from the greens and velvets of the French court to the ochres, golds and intricate tilework of the Sultan's palace. That's exactly where the new restorations shine brightest. Magne's (Symphony for a Massacre, OSS 117 Vice and Virtue aka "Le vice et la vertu", Monsieur Gangster,) score ties the five films together, and the English DUB is available for anyone who wants it, but the original French track is the way to go. Angélique: Complete Five Film Collection on Blu-ray is a fantastic upgrade over the ancient Lionsgate DVDs. The films are unashamed period soap opera: lavish, melodramatic, sometimes silly and very entertaining, anchored by a star turn from Michèle Mercier that shows why these films played to tens of millions across Europe and beyond. StudioCanal's 4K restorations, presented in 1080P with high bitrates and 24-bit lossless French audio, finally show the color and detail the DVDs hid, and the three new commentaries add real value. Fans of the series won't hesitate. For anyone curious about the most popular European costume adventures of the '60s, this is an easy recommendation to that faithful group.

Gary Tooze