The Film (2/5)

The film Steaming in a nutshell is about a few middle-aged women wearing towels or nothing at all who meet in a steam room to discuss life, themselves, men cheating or beating women and getting emotional for over ninety minutes. One of the ladies has a sick daughter; one of them, Josie (Patti Love) is married to a wife beater and shows up at the spa with a black eye.

One day Violet(Diana Dors, Theater of Blood)receives a letter saying that their steam room  is going to be closing down, and all the women part that go there decide to fight to keep it open. We get to see top billed Nancy (Vanessa Redgrave, Blow Up) in a towel for most of the film as well

Admittedly, Steaming isnt something I’d want to see over and over as I wasn’t terribly entertained by it and find women sitting in towels talking in a steam room for nearly ninety minutes to be a tedious viewing.  The performances are good; maybe a little overacting is some parts. Patti Love as Josie has an unforgettable scene discussing sex and her chest, where she overacts like crazy. The film reminded me of The Women meets The Breakfast Club in a steam room setting.  It was somewhat erotic but still not really good filmmaking. This was both Joseph Losey’s and Diana Dors final films.

Audio/Video (4.5/5)

Steaming is given the Blu-ray treatment courtesy of Scorpion Releasing.  The movie is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1:78:1, in 1080p with an MPEG 4 - AVC encode and the results are just outstanding.  The viewing experience was a pleasure to watch. The back of the Blu-ray sleeve boats that the film is presented in “A Brand New HD Master from the original interpositive” and it does look marvelous. Flesh tones, which there is plenty of flesh shown in this film, look great, scenes of the interiors of the steam room look terrific.

The audio used for Steaming is English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. The dialog, music, crying and yelling all come in loud and clear 

Extras (.25/5)

We just get the original trailers for Steaming, City on Fire, Barbarosa, The Last Days of Chex Nous, and Angel Baby

Overall (3/5)

Although I wasn’t a fan of this film, I know that there are fans of this film; every film has a fan base. And for those who do enjoy this movie, with its superior audio and video quality, this is going to be the most definitive release of Steaming for the foreseeable future.