Mondo Macabro moves "beyond erotica" with the Spanish psycho-thriller IT'S NOTHING MAMA, JUST A GAME on Blu-ray.

His family fortune dwindling with the ruin of his family plantation and the profits of their local chicken processing factory controlled by his father's alcoholic brother Don Manuel (Francisco Rabal, L'AVVENTURA), Juan (David Hemmings, BARBARELLA) spends his days lounging in a hammock and hunting game; that is, viciously running down girls on horseback and letting his dogs tear them apart. His uncle is on to something in trying to prove his mental instability to wrest total control of the estate; however, his mother Louise (Alida Valli, SUSPIRIA) is an enabler and the aged housekeeper Maria (Lucila Herrera) who raised him can see no bad in him even when feeding his captive prey. After the apparent accidental death of latest housemaid Lucia (Nuria Gimeno, BELL FROM HELL), the official story is that she was killed by a vengeful dog for taking away her puppies, but there are whispers among the locals about Juan's culpability. In spite of these concerns, the opportunity for financial security is enough for the factory's watchman (Enrique Soto, MAYA) to offer up his daughter Lola (Andrea Rau, DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS) for the vacant position in the household, and for her fiancé to dismiss her worries when Juan gets handsy. When Juan imprisons Lola in the stables intending to starve her into submission, and Louise arranges jobs for Lola's father and fiancé in the city, Lola must use her own wits and cunning to beat Juan at his own game.

IT'S NOTHING MAMA, JUST A GAME is one of actor Hemmings lesser-seen films, and undeservedly so since he turns in a chillingly perverse performance during an uneven period between his international stardom and his move behind the camera as producer and director. His boyish looks faded by alcoholism and graying temples that made him look a decade past his thirty-three years actually suit a young man in a state of psychologically-arrested development; indeed, one regrets that Hemmings did not bring something of this characterization into his lead in Dario Argento's DEEP RED with that film's protagonist's self-deprecating remarks hinting at Freudian neuroses. Flashbacks to his childhood ("Sugar tasted so much sweeter then") in which he witnesses his father's seduction of a farm girl and his father's conflicts with his uncle and the farm workers posit the threat as coming from without, and Juan grows into an adult seemingly without realizing his father's abuse of his position (Rabal plays his father in the flashbacks as well). He seems as entitled as he is petulantly childish in his demand that his mother bring Lola into their house in spite of the suspicions of the locals ("Where would they be without us," he asks). More conventionally styled than her iconic Louise Brooks look in DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS, Rau gives a more expressive performance that pays off in the wonderfully ambiguous ending in which the tables are predictably turned but one is left to wonder if it is not a variation on the game which both sides find more amicable. IT'S NOTHING MAMA, JUST A GAME was one of three more internationally-marketed Euro-thrillers by Spanish veteran writer/director José María Forqué along with IN THE EYE OF THE HURRICANE and TAROT, but it may the most rewarding in its less conventional plotting.

Released in the United States by Joseph Brenner Associates first as a sexy softcore film LOLA and then as psychosexual thriller titled BEYOND EROTICA – also the title used for the home video release from Prism Entertainment – IT'S NOTHING MAMA, JUST A GAME has long been unavailable on home video apart from the usual tape-ripped dreck from Substance (who also put out TAROT in similarly poor condition). Mastered from a brand new 4K restoration of the original camera negative, Mondo Macabro's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray looks simply stunning, restoring the tropical greens, rugged textures of clothing, architecture, hair, skin, and various shades of sweaty flesh, far more effectively conveying the atmosphere of decay than the washed out tape source. English and Spanish DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono tracks are provided; the former seems to be of slightly inferior quality but it features Hemmings' own voice (everyone else including Valli are dubbed), and optional English subtitles are also provided.

Extras start off with an audio commentary by film historian Kat Ellinger who discusses the film's criticism of colonialism and authoritarianism during the Franco regime, gothic elements including inheritances and hereditary madness, and the open interpretation of the ending. She also notes that Spanish censorship would not have allowed the film's original setting in Andalusia, as well as parallels with Carlos Saura's acclaimed but hard-to-see ANA Y LOS LOBOS. Ellinger is not the only one who highlights the film's family gothic elements as Chris O'Neill's visual essay "Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely" (18:23) highlights the film in its discussion of Hemmings' career, noting that it was one of his last lead performances but that he remembered little about it in his autobiography other than the setting and finding a snake living in his hotel room.