Eva Man (and The Return of Eva Man) Blu-ray Review

Mondo Macabro

Blu-ray Release: November 11th, 2025

Video: 1.85:1/1080p/Color

Audio: Spanish DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0

Subtitles: English

Run Time: 84:09; 81:57

Director: Antonio D'Agostino and Zacarías Urbiola

At a glance, the statuesque beauty Eva (Eva Robin's) appears to be like any other beautiful woman, but one scientist (Attilio Dottesio) believes she's destined for something special: a scientific breakthrough which he hopes will bring about world peace. What divides men and women? Sexual inequality. The solution? A woman like Eva Man, who is a hermaphrodite, born with both a penis and a vagina. Through scientific experiments, he's increased her libido with something called a sexmaker, and given her a ring that gives her control over which side of her sexuality she'd like to indulge. Of course, there are many men -- impotent men -- who would kill to have that kind of libido, and who have less savory things in mind than world peace.

Eva Man and The Return of Eva Man are, frankly speaking, not especially good movies. For softcore features, they're adequately made, even if the plots will bring Julianne Moore's line as Maude Lebowski to mind more than once ("the story is ludicrous"). That said, they are fascinating cultural artifacts thanks to their leading lady, Eva Robin's (the apostrophe is intentional), who was fully living as an out transgender woman back in 1979. Although she is probably most famous for playing a key role in Dario Argento's Tenebrae in 1982, Eva Man provided her with a leading role two years earlier than that, with the sequel coming out the same year as Argento's film.

While there is a plot, it's pretty superfluous. In addition to potentially being the key to solving all of society's problems worldwide, Eva has a day job as a detective, with a man who may or may not also be her romantic partner (Brunello Chiodetti). Neither of them seem to be very good at detecting, as he is unaware of her unique qualities, and despite a lengthy speech from the scientist in which he tells her that everyone will be after the sexmaker, she is completely baffled when a couple of goons (Giuseppe Alotta and Fabián Conde) attempt to kidnap her for the evil Professor Popov (Ramón Centenero). Popov hopes that the sexmaker will solve his erectile dysfunction, allowing him to sleep with his wife (Sara Mora) again, all while she sneaks off and sleeps with his driver instead (Marco Casanova). The sequel offers pretty much the same cast and plot, only this time the researcher (now inexplicably named Professor Pissinger) has also invented a libido gun that can be fired at people to literally have them make love, not war, and Centenero and Mora play different characters, a Nazi general and his dominatrix wife, with Alotta as a mole who sports a Genghis Khan mustache and a ponytail that inexplicably appears to grow out of an afro. Sure, why not? The movie also sports a new blonde henchman whose part largely consists of being violently beaten by both the heroes and the villains (bordering on "Simpsons 'Cape Feare' rake territory).

Much like the plots, the softcore material is clunky. In their quest to keep things softcore, the sex scenes have a tendency to hold anything resembling actual sex at arm's length. Both movies are filled with several scenes of two or more people writhing around on each other, vaguely suggesting oral sex, and featuring lots of missionary humping. By the end of the original Eva Man, director Antonio D'Agostino seems to have lost his interest in even that, cutting around a couple of sex scene setups to the aftermath, and a long stretch of the sequel (credited to Zacarías Urbiola for tax reasons) features no sex. Not that the scenes don't have any erotic value -- if you like seeing naked women, there's plenty to go around between the two films, including not just Robin's and her lover, Ajita (softcore star Ajita Wilson), but also another softcore star, Renata Napolitano/Annj Goren, playing a maid named Christina. (In one of the few scenes that ought to have been deleted from either movie, Alotta and Conde rape Christina while she's asleep in a setup for an awful gag involving a police officer who is more concerned about where they've parked than the sex crime they're committing right in front of him. At least she seems unfazed by it?)

Given all that, it might seem like there's not much to get out of Eva Man or its sequel, but despite the films' potentially sleazy softcore ambitions, there's a certain innocence to them. It would be hard to argue that a movie built around the appeal of seeing a trans woman in the nude wasn't at least a little fetishizing or exploitative, yet at the same time, the way D'Agostino and Urbiola put Robin's in the spotlight is no different than the way they spotlight Wilson, or Napolitano/Goren, or even Chiodetti. Despite the rape scene previously mentioned (or perhaps "inappropriately including"), the films maintain a silly and lighthearted tone (the second film feels like an intentional comedy) that seems to exude from Robin's herself, especially in a carefree pool sequence that appears multiple times throughout the first film and even pops up in the second, with Robin's and Wilson (who end up being the lesbian co-leads of the two movies) outright frolicking in the sun. One of the catch-22s of contemporary sensitivity is that films can end up choked by a form of respectability politics, one where any film about an underrepresented group, such as trans people, must be An Important Picture. The Eva Man movies are built around the fact that Robin's is a trans woman, but the execution is so unassuming, they become oddly charming -- a pair of silly, sexy, amateurish adventures that focus on Eva as an action hero more than anything else.

Video

Although the packaging uses a singular form to describe the restoration, I am going to make the guess that both Eva Man and The Return of Eva Man are both new 4K restorations from the original camera negatives. These are nice-looking presentations that feature minimal print damage or debris, a nice level of film grain (which can fluctuate from scene to scene), and decent colors (albeit ones that can look a little washed out and tend a bit toward the cooler side of the temperature spectrum), with detail on the softer side -- in other words, pretty much what you would expect from low-budget softcore filmmaking from 45 years ago. For those who have seen these movies before on lower-resolution DVDs or VHS tapes, this will probably be a revelation; for those just viewing the movies for the first time, this is one of those presentations that never wows but which is also probably a solid 7.5 or 8 in every category.

Audio

Sound is a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track in Spanish, with English subtitles. Both films sound relatively clean and clear, with any distortion or muffling of the sound coming from the original recordings rather than the new track. Really, it's the same story as the PQ, something that might be a little more impressive to those who have already seen copies of the films that were in worse condition, although this being a 2.0 track without much flair to speak of, I'd be more inclined to give this a 6.5 or a 7. As far as the subtitles go, I did not notice any typographical errors during either of the films.

Extras

In addition to The Return of Eva Man, Mondo Macabro has included several extras, including an interview with Eva Robin's and a commentary by two trans film critics.

• Audio commentary on Eva Man by film critics Willow Catelyn McKay and Caden Mark Gardner - McKay and Gardner, authors of the book Corpses, Fools, and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema, sit down to discuss the original Eva Man. The pair provide a blend of well-researched information about the film and its participants, as well as helping to contextualize it within the history of transgender cinema (including how it stacks up to certain contemporary examples). Unsurprisingly, much of the track is devoted to Robin's and her history, with both praising the star's charisma.

• "All About Eva" Interview with actor Eva Robin's (21:16) - Robin's discusses how she first came to work with Antonio D'Agostino and the experience of making Eva Man, including learning midway through that funding had run out. She touches on how liberated she felt at the time, filming the movie at a property that connects to Tenebrae, working with Ajita Wilson and how Wilson served as sort of a motherly figure to her, her dancing skills (or lack thereof), awareness of the "hardcore" versions of the film, upcoming stage and screen work, how she regards the films, and some personal thoughts about her own relationship to her body and being trans.

• Interview with cinematographer Hans Burmann (22:42) - This lengthy sit-down with the cinematographer for both films will not enlighten viewers much about the making of Eva Man, which he barely touches on, but rather provides a general overview of his career.

• "Echoes of Eva" Interview with sound recordist Luciano Muratori (11:16) - Muratori has a few more memories of Eva Man specifically, including his memories of seeing Robin's nude for the first time, but he too also speaks generally about his career and working on similar low-budget productions.

• "Chiaro e Scuro: The Double Life of Antonio D'Agostino" Video Essay by Ian Highbee (20:14) - This video piece examines the division between D'Agostino's recognition in the art world and his lengthy career working in pornography, a venue that allowed him to keep making political and ambitious films even if the effort wasn't always appreciated (as well as touching on the number of other, more well-known filmmakers who also made pornography as a side hustle without it being viewed in such a divisive manner).

• "Solving the Ajita Wilson Mystery with Alex Mendibil" Interview with Alex Mendibil (47:58) - As advertised, this examines the life of Eva Man co-lead Ajita Wilson, whose life was surrounded by rumors and conjecture. Like Robin's, Wilson was also a trans woman, although she had undergone gender reassignment surgery by the time Eva Man was filmed. This detail speaks to the closeness that Robin's speaks about in her interview, and the chemistry they have in the films. Mendibil traces the arc of her career, starting out in modeling and later moving into films, all while debunking various urban legends and widespread misconceptions about her career and life. It's a well-made piece, although, as one can guess by the lengthy running time, definitely aimed at fans of Wilson.

• "Metamorphosi" Short Film by Antonio D'Agostino (13:20) - An art piece from later in D'Agostino's career. While the title may suggest otherwise, it has no relation to Eva Man, but it is nice that it was included, especially given Highbee's discussion of how the pornography and artist sides of D'Agostino were so often kept separate from each other.

• Alternate Spanish Ending to Eva Man (0:15) - As mentioned in a caption card that plays before Eva Man, the initial feature is presented with the more well-known ending of the film. However, there's not much reason to have included this "alternate ending" -- the ending on the feature presentation has an added scene, and this is just the exact same footage preceding that scene, except with a "FIN" title card over it.

Also, the version of Eva Man that Genre Grinder received to review is technically the "standard edition" of the disc. Those who order from Mondo Macabro directly can also choose a Limited Edition that comes in a red case and with reversible cover artwork, with each side featuring an original poster design for Eva Man and The Return of Eva Man, as well as a booklet and some postcards. The poster artwork for the original film is quite provocative; those who get either version of the disc will see the very suggestive imagery on the menu when selecting a film, or you can look at both designs right now on the Mondo Macabro website -- NSFW.

Conclusion

The Eva Man movies are the definition of "what they say on the tin" -- 1980s softcore porn movies with a trans star. For better or worse, they are time capsules of a certain time and place, and in being time capsules, they are interesting to view through the lens of social, sexual, and political history (and it helps that they are oddly innocent). As such, Mondo Macabro has preserved both films with strong A/V presentations and a nice selection of extras. Recommended.

The images on this page are taken from the Blu-ray and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression. Since the disc has two films on it, some additional screenshots for both films are attached below.