Five Minutes to Live [DVD] [1961]

The Sixties swing in this fusion of music and action from director Ted V. Mikels, which gets a fresh DVD release in this edition from Alpha Home Entertainment. This disc of Girl In Gold Boots shares a curious design feature with Alpha's release of another Mikels title, The Corpse Grinders -- this DVD includes an optional commentary from Mikels, but rather than adding a second audio track, this disc contains two different transfers of the same title with different sound tracks, which is obvious since the version with the commentary is letterboxed at the widescreen ratio of 2.35:1, while the standard audio track is married to an image in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Both transfers are enhanced for anamorphic play on 16x9 monitors, and appear to be taken from the same print, which features a rich color balance but shows some visible wear at the beginning and end of reels, though most of the film looks good. The audio has been mastered in Dolby Digital Stereo, retaining the movie's original mono sound mix, and sounds good for the era. The dialogue is in English, with no multiple language options or subtitles. Along with Mikels' commentary -- which like his other commentaries is upbeat and personable but doesn't tell us much about the film in question -- this disc features trailers for other Mikels pictures released by Alpha. In terms of visual quality, Girl In Gold Boots has the edge on most of Alpha's recent DVD editions of Ted V. Mikels films, but it still falls short of videophile standards.