Vinegar Syndrome Film Archive Presents: Reviver 4 (Blu-ray Review)
Director
Hank AldrichRelease Date(s)
1979 (September 29, 2026)Studio(s)
The Sunbeam Film Co. (Reviver/Vinegar Syndrome)- Film/Program Grade: See Below
- Video Grade: See Below
- Audio Grade: See Below
- Extras Grade: A
- Overall Grade: A+
Review
Spoiler alert:
The movie hidden within this set is 1979’s little seen Robin. Written and directed by art director and fine artist Hank Aldrich (Who Killed Teddy Bear?), most of what we knew previously of this film came from Temple of Schlock’s Chris Poggiali. That is, until the fine folks at Vinegar Syndrome up and found the film and its supporting elements sitting in a garage waiting to be restored and released it as the fourth entry in my new most favoritist Blu-ray series: Reviver. What’s great about this volume and the series in general is the fact that they know it’s a sum of the whole. Robin on its own is a fine film. It’s an oddity and has its merits, but a release of this film by itself would have been a blip in the physical media world; scrolled past on a list of upcoming releases. Fifty people maybe, would know what it was and be like, “Oh, snap—Robin’s finally coming out!” But paired with the story of it’s being found and its restoration—that makes for a real must see in my opinion. That has been the wondrous thing about Reviver: it’s all about the packaging, and archive director and Reviver’s architect Oscar Becher understands this. Volume Two was a one-two punch of lost Filipino films no one asked for but were exceptionally interesting to see—even with their excessive damage, framing them as a gift of pure luck getting a chance to see in any quality. Volume Three was a dense pile of shorts, again, many of which would have low click-throughs if they were posted online, but thrown together with running commentary, it became one of my favorite releases this year. This, Volume Four, is equal parts Robin and an in-depth documentary about the trials and tribulations Becher went through to get it out on disc so it could stop being a simple footnote.
Robin (Playboy Playmate Monica Tidwell) is an artist’s model and runaway NYC sex worker hiding out in Maryland, trying to leave that life behind. She becomes the object of desire for two men: Joe a struggling artist and pizza fan, and sad sack real estate lawyer Harry Phelps (Lee Dorsey), a married man with a wife out of town for months on end taking care of an ailing mother. Robin feels sorry for Joe and just wants to be supportive of his art, entertaining his late-night visits to her motel room. But she ends up falling hard for Dorsey, who also seems to be running from a past life, with plans to run again—this time with Robin. Really that’s pretty much what the story is, with some strong character moments and melodramatic story reveals. That is, up until a climax straight out of a Brontë novel that pulls together a series of strings centered around a solid mix of Robin’s past catching up with her and a complete chance encounter. It’s an interesting ending and makes all that proceeding it that much better.
As it is with previous releases, the magic starts when you put the disc in—no menus, Reviver just auto-starts (however you can exit to the menus where everything is housed). The show begins with a newly remastered theatrical trailer pulled from the original camera negative. It looks great and doesn’t spoil the film. We then get the main feature, newly scanned and fully restored in glorious 4K from its 35mm original camera negative with assists from other original elements when needed—all color corrected by VS’s own Joe Rubin and looking like a wonderfully preserved film from the 70s. Here on Blu-ray we get a 1080p transfer at a clean 1.85:1. There are a few moments of damage, but that’s fine. It helps to see the film as close to what it was when it came out in theaters. This is a film that doesn’t need a facelift. Colors are well represented and thought out in the color correction process, grain is natural and blacks are clean. Sound is DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (with English subs) and is bright and serves the film well without any distortion. Music tracks were also remastered and added in.
We are then thrust headlong into the supportive special material. First up is Lost and Found, an interview with film historian Chris Poggiali detailing the work he put into trying to shine light on lost films from the grindhouse era and beyond, which included his discovery of Robin. It’s an enlightening look at the work that went into the 90s era of info dump websites—and I say that lovingly, as a fan of those websites that are slowly going away. Next up is the second gem in the crown that is Reviver Volume 4, Reviving Robin. As I said up above, this is a feature-length documentary by Peter Flynn who chronicled the entire process of bringing Robin to disc where we see Oscar Becher find the material, comb through the material, restore the material, research the production, and interview stars Lee Dorsey and Monica Tidwell and musician Kip Carmen. We also join Joe Rubin as he explains the art of color correction. The entire process of releasing Robin is covered here and it’s wondrous. At no point from when I put this disc in, did I pause or turn it off—this set had my attention front to back. Rounding out the experience are outtakes with a newly restored cut of the song featured in the film, What a Woman by Kip Carmen and a mini version of the doc, Winding Through: Reviver 4 which is a standard for all these Revivers. It stands apart from the longer form version but retreads a lot of the same information. These are also posted on VS’s Youtube for promo, so I will cut the retreading some slack.
ROBIN (FILM/VIDEO/AUDIO): B-/A/A
Reviver Volume 4 is another must own entry in this series. I breathlessly await the next one and can’t wait to see what they find in the archive to point a spotlight on. If you haven’t tried any of these out yet, do yourself a favor and grab one, any one, and try it out. My bet is, once you do, you’ll be tracking them all down.
- Todd Doogan