I picked up the Russian All Region NTSC disc and watched it last night. It's an Italian print with an anamorphic 1.78:1 transfer and may be the same source as the Anchor Bay disc, though the AB disc appears to be composed just slightly tighter at the top. For example, on the AB disc the MC at Masoch Club has part of his head slightly cropped off, while the Russian disc has just a slight bit more of info on top to avoid the cropping. It's really negligible.

The Russian disc has Italian, English and Russian audio with Russian and English subtitles, while the AB disc Italian and English audio with English subtitles. On the Russian disc, if you choose the Russian audio, it plays over the Italian track simultaneously, so it may be a commentary track, but I don't think so.

On the Russian disc the Italian track is mixed nicely with Piero Piccioni's fabulous score prominent, while the English track is muffled with Piccioni's score buried in the mix. The AB disc is just the reverse with the English being the better of the two mixes.

Since I prefer the mix with Marcello Mastroianni's voice, I prefer the Russian disc for the superior Italian audio mix.

Since the AB disc is OOP, I sold mine online this morning for a nice little sum, :) the R0 NTSC Russian disc is a nice alternative. I've seen copies for sale at Amazon.com and Xploited.

Happy Hunting! ^_^

The Russian track is likely an overdub rather than a dub. Usually someone narrates the opening credits and then one man and one woman overdub all of the male and female roles (kind of like the overdubbing on documentaries or the news when the speaker is foreign).