ADDITION: Severin - Region FREE 4K UHD (October 2026): Severin have released Jess Franco's She Killed In Ecstasy to Blu-ray and 4K UHD. Visually, She Killed in Ecstasy is among the most striking films Franco ever made. Manuel Merino’s (Vampyros Lesbos, Count Dracula, The Devil Came from Akasava) photography makes inspired use of the modernist architecture of the Alicante coast, most memorably Ricardo Bofill’s stepped, green-hued apartment complex on the cliffs above Calpe. Miranda is framed against flat blue sky, angular concrete and glass in compositions that feel equal parts fashion spread and nightmare. The interiors are just as considered. The Johnsons’ clinical white laboratory, with its rows of specimen jars, gives way to moonlit rooms bathed in cold blue light, and Franco’s restless zooms and saturated color heighten the hallucinatory mood. Severin’s She Killed in Ecstasy arrives on 4K UHD with a new scan from the original camera negative. That alone is notable, given that Synapse was told back in 2000 that the negatives were unusable. It sits on a dual-layered 4K UHD disc in 2160P with HDR10 and Dolby Vision, at a very high video bitrate that stays near its peak throughout. The accompanying Blu-ray is also dual-layered, with almost double the total bitrate of Severin’s single-layered 2015 BD disc, and the 4K UHD carries over 2.5X the video bitrate of the new Blu-ray. The improvement over the 2015 transfer is substantial, and it goes beyond resolution. The older Blu-ray’s grading wandered between pale and cool, bleached, and warm amber depending on the scene, with blacks that sat at a lifted gray. The new scan is consistently more natural, dense and balanced, with true black levels. Skin tones have shed the 2015 orange push and look far more lifelike. Saturated hues, like the red sweater, the purple shawl and the deep blue Calpe sky, are richer but never overcooked. The UHD’s advantage over the new Blu-ray is in resolution and grain fidelity rather than color. In close-ups, the gains are a revelation. Soledad Miranda’s skin texture, the depth of her eyes, individual strands of hair, the lace of the wedding veil and every bead of sweat on a face in extreme close-up resolve in a way no previous transfer approached. Grain is present throughout and looks organic, heaviest in open skies, with no sign of filtering. Night interiors are noticeably darker and more contrasty than in 2015 Blu-ray, which gives the moonlit scenes a striking blue-and-black look at the cost of a little shadow detail the brighter older transfer revealed. The 1.66:1 aspect ratio is retained, though the older transfers, including Severin’s own 2015 Blu-ray, show a shade more information in the frame, most noticeably on the right edge. The difference is marginal and doesn’t compromise any compositions. Beyond a very infrequent speckle and the odd frame-specific mark, the image is clean. The runtime matches the restored cut, which reinstates footage missing from the German domestic version. Very pleasing.

It is likely that the monitor you are seeing this review on is not an HDR-compatible display (High Dynamic Range) or Dolby Vision, where each pixel can be assigned with a wider and notably granular range of color and light. Our capture software is simulating the HDR (in a uniform manner) for standard monitors. This should make it easier for us to review more 4K UHD titles in the future and give you a decent idea of its attributes on your system. So our captures may not support the exact same colors (coolness of skin tones, brighter or darker hues etc.) as the 4K system at your home. But the framing, detail, grain texture support etc. are, generally, not effected by this simulation representation.

NOTE: We have added 54 more large resolution 4K UHD captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

The audio is also a large step up. The original German track is offered in DTS-HD Master 2.0 at 24-bit, an upgrade over the 2015 Blu-ray’s 16-bit linear PCM. As noted in our earlier review, the post-dubbed dialogue has its share of sync looseness and some echo-reverb, which appear inherent to the source rather than flaws of the transfer. Within those limits, the track is clean and consistent. The extra bit depth benefits Manfred Hübler and Siegfried Schwab’s score (Vampyros Lesbos) most of all, giving its lounge grooves, fuzzed guitar and sitar textures more presence and separation than before. Its lounge-jazz, psychedelic guitar and sitar-tinged cues drift beneath the action like a narcotic pulse. Those same tracks later resurfaced on the ’90s club compilations that did so much to bring Franco’s work to a new generation. On-screen text often in English. The second disc Blu-ray is Region FREE and Severin's 4K UHD is, like all from this format, also Region FREE.

Severin 4K UHD package extras have been expanded, and the headline addition is Ecstasy in Rage, an all-new interview with Stephen Thrower, author of Murderous Passions - The Delirious Cinema Of Jess Franco. At almost 3/4 hour, it’s nearly three times the length of his 2015 piece and goes considerably deeper into the film’s themes, production and place in the Franco-Miranda cycle. Also new is In the Land of Franco Part 13, the latest installment of Severin’s ongoing location series, running over 20 minutes. Carried over from 2015 are Jess Killed in Ecstasy, a 17-minute interview with Franco discussing the film, and Sublime Soledad, a 20-minute appreciation of Miranda from historian Amy Brown, which is a good, affectionate piece. Frequent Franco star Paul Muller reflects on the director for 6.5 minutes. The German trailer appears on both discs. Note that the 2015 Blu-ray edition’s bonus soundtrack CD is not included here, so collectors who value it will want to hang on to their earlier copy.