Blood Simple [Director's Cut] (1984) - [DVD5] [2008]

The debut film of director Joel Coen and his brother-producer Ethan Coen, 1983's Blood Simple is grisly comic noir that marries the feverish toughness of pulp thrillers with the ghoulishness of even pulpier horror. (Imagine the novels of Jim Thompson somehow fused with the comic tabloid Weird Tales, and you get the idea.) The story concerns a Texas bar owner (Dan Hedaya) who hires a seedy private detective (M. Emmett Walsh) to follow his cheating wife (Frances McDormand in her first film appearance), and then kill her and her lover (John Getz). The gumshoe turns the tables on his client, and suddenly a bad situation gets much, much worse, with some violent goings-on that are as elemental as they are shocking. (A scene in which a character who has been buried alive suddenly emerges from his own grave instantly becomes an archetypal nightmare.) Shot by Barry Sonnenfeld before he became an A-list director in Hollywood, Blood Simple established the hyperreal look and feel of the Coens' productions (undoubtedly inspired a bit by filmmaker Sam Raimi, whose The Evil Dead had just been coedited by Joel). Sections of the film have proved to be an endurance test for art-house movie fans, particularly an extended climax that involves one shock after another but ends with a laugh at the absurdity of criminal ambition. This is definitely one of the triumphs of the 1980s and the American independent film scene in general. –Tom Keogh







MOVIE:
DIRECTOR: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen (uncredited)
COUNTRY: United States
YEAR: 1984

Cast
John Getz Ray
Frances McDormand Abby
Dan Hedaya Julian Marty
M. Emmet Walsh Loren Visser
Samm-Art Williams Meurice
Deborah Neumann Debra
Raquel Gavia Landlady
Van Brooks Man from Lubbock
Señor Marco Mr. Garcia

Credits
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Screenplay: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Cinematography: Barry Sonnenfeld
Costume Design: Sara Medina-Pape
Editing: Ethan Coen (as Roderick Jaynes), Joel Coen (as Roderick Jaynes), Don Wiegmann







DVD:
DVD RELEASE: September 16, 2008
STUDIO: MGM
SYSTEM: NTSC
SCREEN: 1.85:1
Color
AUDIO: English Dolby Digital 2.0
SUBTITLES: English, French, Spanish
RUNTIME (MOVIE): 99 minutes

EXTRACTION:
ENGINE: DVD Fab
DVD: 1 Full Single-Layer DVD
FILE EXTENSION: Image (.iso)
FILE SIZE: 4.3 GB