Ruby - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

In the 1930s, Ruby (Piper Laurie) is accompanying her mobster boyfriend Nicky when he’s rubbed out by his fellow gang members. Ruby, who’s pregnant at the time, goes into labor upon witnessing the violent scene. Sixteen years later, the child, Leslie, is a mute, creepy child who appears to have some sort of connection with the supernatural world beyond. They all live together on the grounds of a drive-in movie theater, surrounded by swampland that harbors as many dark secrets as she and her family do.

Soon enough, terrifying things begin to take place. A projectionist is hanged by a film reel. A concession worker is impaled on a tree limb just outside the property, in the wooded area that surrounds them. Ruby is convinced that Nicky has returned from beyond the grave, in an act of vengeance. She thinks that Nicky died believing that she sold him out and was responsible for his criminal colleagues executing him.

Leslie begins acting as a conduit for the spirit of Nicky. Ruby was made during a long stretch of possession movies that followed the wild box office success of The Exorcist. It also came out just one year after Carrie, for which Piper Laurie was nominated for an Academy Award. Ruby feels like an amalgamation of influences, both modern (for the time) and classic. The drive-in movie theater setting shows an adoration for classic horror films like Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

Piper Laurie, as the aging singer who lives in a fantasy world, with a dark criminal past, is, as always, excellent. She’s the primary draw to this film and turns in a great performance, and chews all of the scenery she can get her hands on. The rest of the movie doesn’t fare as well. There are some excellent sequences of suspense and horror, particularly one in the swamp, where the mists of the wetlands blend the past and the present together as one. But even at a brisk 85 minutes, it feels much longer, with long stretches where not much happens.

When Ruby works, it’s an affectionate work that admires its influences, as it tries to emulate them. At times, it feels like an attempt to do too many things, all at once, without regard to how many tones it’s trying to balance. Hell, I’ll take over-ambition as a problem over a film content with simply being a rip-off any day of the week. While it’s not entirely successful, Ruby is not content with simply being a derivative reshash and is, instead, a fun flick that leads the pack over any number of other Exorcist-flavored imitators from the mid-to-late 1970s.

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra Blu-ray
Ruby possesses the home video market on 4K UHD Blu-ray in a two-disc release, housed in a standard case. The case features reversible artwork, alternate, similar takes, with the mute Leslie on either side, covered in blood—one, a still from the film, artistically rendered, and the other a painting of the same image.

Ruby was shot on 35mm film, and for this release, it was scanned in 4K from its original camera negatives, then graded in Dolby Vision HDR. The film’s cinematographer, William Mendenhall, engulfs much of the action in shadows. The black levels of the shadows never reach a true black, a deep, vacuous void, like a modern film, but the shadowy presentation looks gorgeous, nevertheless. The video transfer is rich in grain, but the darker elements are free of pulsating lens noise. Colors are textured and varied, vibrant with ruby (hence the title) reds, sparkling brilliantly. Focus is soft and dreamlike, filmed through the haze of nostalgia on two fronts: Curtis Harrington evokes a lovely, dreamlike vision of the early 1950s, while Ruby herself fondly remembers her days of glory in the 1930s.

Viewers are treated to a lossless 2.0 mono mix, encoded in DTS-HD MA. For a mono mix, Ruby is robust in overall sound design. There are many creepy sequences with things that go bump in the night, a subtle whistling wind, or scratching at a door, that erupts in a volcanic explosion of all-out horror. Don Ellis’s jazzy musical score plays softly beneath it all. Priority is given to dialogue clarity, which never gets lost in all the madness of the supernatural story.

Ruby comes packed with an offering of special features, both old and new. Audio commentary tracks are available on both discs, while interviews and the alternate “TV version” (which runs longer, at about 95 minutes, and adds extra scenes, while trimming violent content) are exclusive to the Blu-ray disc.

4K Disc

• Audio Commentary - Brand new track with journalist and film historian David Del Valle and filmmaker David DeCoteau
• Audio Commentary - Archival track with director Curtis Harrington and actress Piper Laurie
• Audio Commentary - Archival track with David Del Valle and film historian Nathaniel Bell

Blu-ray Disc

• Audio Commentary - Brand new track with journalist and film historian David Del Valle and filmmaker David DeCoteau
• Audio Commentary - Archival track with director Curtis Harrington and actress Piper Laurie
• Audio Commentary - Archival track with David Del Valle and film historian Nathaniel Bell
• Keeping It Natural (HD 11:36) – New interview with actor Roger Davis
• A Cinematic Summoning (HD 23:20) – New interview with critic and author Kim Newman
• Alternate TV Version of Ruby (SD 1:35:35)- Sourced from video
• Interview (SD 59:11) - With director Curtis Harrington, conducted by journalist and film historian David Del Valle from 2001
• Two Sinister Image Episodes (SD 28:13 / SD 29:07) - with Curtis Harrington hosted by David Del Valle (57 min)
• Theatrical trailer
• Radio spot

Movies like Ruby are a wonderful history lesson on filmic eras. The slew of imitators in the wake of a movie like The Exorcist is just as vast and varied as anything, and it’s fascinating to see what each respective artist does with their influences. Curtis Harrington lovingly crafts a tale of nostalgia and terror, about a woman who can’t escape, or come to terms with, her past. Piper Laurie gives it her all as the title character. Vinegar Syndrome’s release looks and sounds great, backed by a robust offering of special features. Ruby is Recommended.