Liliana Cavani’s mucho-controversial picture, The Night Porter, is getting a re-release by Anchor Bay on Blu-ray and DVD. The film sort of kicked off that rather grotty Naziploitation subgenre which saw rather decadent sex pictures given a Nazi makeover. They were accused of eroticising Nazi iconography, especially the uniforms, and being a tad insensitive towards victims of the fascists. However it is fair to say Cavani’s movie cannot be lumped in with those others because of it was well made and serious with its intentions, no matter the mixed reception it received critically.

The film boasts production design by Dante Ferretti, too, and is released on 30th July. Special Features include interviews with the director, Rampling and writer Italo Moscati.

Vienna, 1957. Max (Dirk Bogarde), a former Nazi concentration camp officer, is now employed as a respectable night porter at one of the city’s most luxurious hotels. Still anguished by the guilt of his actions during the war, he attempts to relieve his conscience by devoting himself to his work while awaiting the upcoming trial of himself and his fellow Nazi officers. But one fateful evening Max’s disturbing past catches up with him in the form of the beautiful and alluring Lucia (Charlotte Rampling). Now the wife of a respected American classical composer, almost 15 years earlier Lucia was a teenage concentration camp inmate and Max’s lover in an aberrant sado-masochistic relationship. Bound by their memories and uncontrollably drawn to each other, Max and Lucia rekindle their bizarre love affair. But their future together becomes threatened by other ghosts from the past…

UK Release Date: 30th July