Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Screenplay: Jesús Ferrero and Pedro Almodóvar
Starring: Assumpta Serna, Antonio Banderas, Nacho Martinez, Eva Cobo, Julieta Serrano, Chus Lampreave, Carmen Maura, Eusebio Poncela, Bibi Anderson
Country: Spain
Running Time: 106 min
Year: 1986
BBFC Certificate: 18
Before he became a Hollywood superstar, Antonio Banderas worked five times with the great Spanish auteur director Pedro Almodóvar on some incredibly bold and daring films.
These included Labyrinth of Passion (1982), Law of Desire (1987), Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989), with the pair making eight films together in total, as they’d also reunite two decades later for The Skin I Live In (2011), and working together again on I’m So Excited! (2013) and Pain and Glory (2019), for which Banderas received an Oscar nomination.
Missing from this list is another of the pair’s early collaborations, Matador (1986), which is the subject of this review thanks to a brilliant new dual-format 4K UHD and Blu-ray edition from Radiance.
Almodóvar is one of my favourite directors, mostly thanks to his early movies which are visually astonishing, outlandish melodramas that are incredibly entertaining and full of plenty of themes, subtext, commentary and style to dissect and discuss.
Matador was the director’s fifth film and his penultimate one before his breakout hit, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, brought him into the mainstream with worldwide acclaim.
It opens with a man pleasuring himself as he watches graphic horror film scenes of women being murdered and assaulted. We discover that the man is a former bullfighter called Diego (Nacho Martinez) who had to give up the profession when he was gored and is now a bullfighting teacher, who gets his kicks from slasher films.
One of Diego’s students is Ángel (Antonio Banderas), who suffers from vertigo, questions his sexuality and has a strange dream about a woman killing a man with a silver hairpin during sex.
In an effort to prove himself, Ángel attempts to rape Diego’s girlfriend Eva (Eva Contes) in an alley at knifepoint. He is stopped part way through by Eva, immediately looks ashamed, and turns himself into the police to confess. During his confession he’s shown a series of crime scene photos and confesses to a series of murders. Eva refuses to press charges and the police are dubious about whether Ángel has committed any of the other crimes, but enter lawyer Maria (Assumpta Serna) to defend him. She, like Diego and Ángel, has her own secrets, and a silver hairpin…
First and foremost, this is a cracking little erotic thriller, the murder mystery being the backdrop for us to get to know the trio of main characters (Diego, Ángel and Maria), their kinks, desires, motivations and foibles – and their secrets, which come full circle to that murder mystery.
The title is linked to bullfighting, obviously, which relates to Diego, but the dance between matador and bull is also playfully used between male and female characters. Matador means to kill, or be a killer too – a central theme to the film.
The script is very good, giving each of the characters a chance to shine after we are thrown into the plot, and giving enough breadcrumbs throughout for us to try to guess how it will all pan out. There’s some wonderful dialogue and Almodóvar also uses cinema itself very well, including the opening shots of Diego watching horror films – including Mario Bava’s influential giallo Blood and Black Lace (1964) and Jess Franco’s controversial Bloody Moon (1981) and a cinema screening of King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun (1946), which is highly influential on Matador‘s ending.
Matador is beautifully shot, with some scenes filmed in such a way to build up the tension, like Ángel watching a woman as she showers against a backdrop of thunder, lightning and rain. Another sees Ángel’s mother urging him to hurry up and get ready for dinner, in a scene where she is shot talking to him through a window that morphs her face. These are just two of the incredibly visually stimulating shots in the film. There’s some wonderful uses of colour and Madrid locations are also fabulously used throughout.
The film is impeccably acted all round, particularly Banderas in only his tenth role, whose grip on reality seemingly gets worse as the film goes on and he imagines a series of murders. Serna is also fabulous in a duplicitous role; she’s a lawyer so should be on the straight and narrow, but little nuggets throughout suggest there’s more to her than meets the eye. Serna plays this well in a daring role where she gives her all, as do other actors, thanks to the graphic sex and nudity. Almodóvar’s younger brother Agustin also makes a cameo as a police officer, and the director also appears in an uncredited cameo.
Matador is a proactive erotic thriller from the great Pedro Almodóvar, which features some truly jaw dropping scenes and twists and turns and is also a heck of a lot of fun. It’s beautifully shot, impeccably acted and grips from start to finish. Almodóvar considered it one of his weaker efforts but I feel that’s harsh, it’s a cracking film that I’m delighted has been given the 4K treatment.
Film: 
Matador is released on dual-format 4K UHD and Blu-ray by Radiance on 20th April 2026. The new transfer, approved by Almodóvar and produced in 2025, is simply phenomenal. The director’s films are always incredibly visual, and the restoration showcases his eye for interesting shots and beautiful colour schemes perfectly. The colours pop, there’s plenty of fine detail, with the image having an almost three-dimensional quality, and there are no blemishes. It’s a fabulous transfer, and the audio sounds great too, with the dialogue, effects and music all coming across strongly. It’s a quite wonderful audio-visual presentation all round.
4K UHD and Blu-ray limited edition special features:
4K restoration approved by Pedro Almodóvar
4K UHD and Blu-ray presentation of the feature
Original mono audio presented with lossless encoding
Interview with Almodóvar expert José Arroyo (2026, 30 mins)
‘Jonathan Ross Presents For One Week Only’ episode on Almodóvar’s cinema, featuring interviews with Pedro Almodóvar, producer Agustín Almodóvar, stars Antonio Banderas and Carmen Maura, and more (1991, 54 mins)
Newly improved English subtitle translation
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow
Limited edition booklet featuring new writing by critic Guy Lodge and an archival interview with Almodóvar
Limited edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings
The 4K disc only contains the film, with the two on-disc extras appearing on the Blu-ray disc, with the film.
Almodóvar expert José Arroyo’s 30-minute piece is very good. Arroyo talks about the importance of Almodóvar both as a director but also how his films shine a light on the Spain of the time. Arroyo talks about how Almodóvar has grown as a filmmaker, why he is a fan of the director and his films and why Matador is a key work. Arroyo talks about some of the scenes including the audacious opening, the humour and its themes. It’s a great piece as an intro to the director and to the film.
The episode of Jonathan Ross Presents For One Week Only is excellent. It’s a really good 54-minute documentary giving an insight to Almodóvar and his way of working at the time. There are some wonderful interviews and footage, as well as clips from the director’s films. We learn about Almodóvar’s upbringing, hear from his collaborators and peers and get a fabulous insight into Almodóvar as a person, including some of his earliest memories, and as a director. This is a real gem of a documentary and among my favourite extra features of the year already.
I wasn’t provided with the booklet so am unable to comment on it, though I’m always impressed with Radiance’s booklets so have no doubt this will be top-drawer as usual.
So, it’s a small selection for extras but what’s provided is excellent and enhances the viewing experience.
Radiance have provided an astoundingly good audio-visual presentation for the UK 4K UHD and Blu-ray debut of Pedro Almodóvar’s provocative fifth film Matador, an erotic thriller which holds the attention from start to finish. Extras are slim but what’s included is brilliant: a great new appreciation and a quite wonderful archival documentary which features a wealth of interviews.
Disc/package: 