In Rome, Inspector Anna Mari receives a macabre surprise for her birthday when an email lands in her inbox from someone calling themself “The Card Player”, and claiming to be the one responsible for the recent kidnapping of a British tourist. In a sadistic twist, the kidnapper challenges the authorities to a game of online poker to determine whether the young woman lives or dies. When the Police Commissioner forbids his team to go through with the game, the maniac brutally slaughters the tourist before their very eyes via webcam, later dumping the body in a river. As more and more women are abducted from the streets of the Italian capital and subjected to the same treatment, Anna Mari joins forces with Irish policeman John Brennan and young poker whizz-kid Remo in an attempt to beat The Card Player at their own deadly game.
A later giallo offering from the master of the form, Dario Argento’s (Deep Red, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) THE CARD PLAYER takes all the familiar trappings of the genre and plants them firmly in an early 2000s milieu, complete with a fittingly pulsing, contemporary electronic score by Claudio Simonetti (Suspiria, Tenebrae). Co-scripted by regular Argento collaborator Franco Ferrini (Phenomena, Demons) and featuring gruesome corpse special effects from Sergio Stivaletti (Cemetery Man), Vinegar Syndrome is delighted to present THE CARD PLAYER in its world UHD debut, newly restored in 4K from the original camera negative and loaded with a full deck of both new and archival extras.
directed by: Dario Argento
starring: Stefania Rocca, Liam Cunningham, Silvio Muccino, Adalberto Maria Merli, Claudio Santamaria, Fiore Argento
2003 / 103 min / 1.85:1 / English, Italian DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
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