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Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: MGM HOME VIDEO (UNDER FOX)
EAN: 0883904112853
Feature: From the celebrated filmmaking team of Joel and Ethan Coen (Fargo, No Country For Old Men), comes this visually stunning tale of a double-cross - and murder - in a small town. Starring John Getz, Frances McDormand and Dan Hedaya this "fiendishly clever" (Roger Ebert) movie will grab you by the throat - and never let go until the final frame! When Marty (Hedaya), the owner of a backwoods
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Languages: EnglishOriginal LanguageEnglishSubtitledFrenchSubtitledSpanishSubtitled
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
MPN: M111285
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code: 1
Release Date: September 16, 2008
Running Time: 96 minutes
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Theatrical Release Date: 1984
Features:- From the celebrated filmmaking team of Joel and Ethan Coen (Fargo, No Country For Old Men), comes this visually stunning tale of a double-cross - and murder - in a small town. Starring John Getz, Frances McDormand and Dan Hedaya this "fiendishly clever" (Roger Ebert) movie will grab you by the throat - and never let go until the final frame! When Marty (Hedaya), the owner of a backwoods
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
A man hires a sleazy private eye to have his wife & her lover killed byt the killer decides that murdering the husband would be the perfect crime instead. Studio: Tcfhe/mgm Release Date: 09/16/2008 Starring: M Emmett Walsh Dan Hedaya Run time: 96 minutes Rating: R
Amazon.com essential video:
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
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Blood Simple: 6 out of 10: Some movies are victims of their own success. Alien is a great film but it seems a little slow nowadays and the plot while very fresh in 1984 has been done to death. (I still love it mind you but if I saw it for the first time this year I would probably wonder what the big deal is) The surprise is gone. I bring that up because at its time Blood Simple was a critics darling. A breath of very fresh air in our nations multiplexes. Not anymore.
This kind of noir has been done to death since the Coen brothers revived it twenty plus years ago and Blood Simple through no fault of its own suffers as a result. The plot of the jealous husband and double crosses has had so many spins of the same record (1/2 of them seemingly starring Tim Matheson) that the original simply doesn't have the freshness or power it undoubtedly had back in '84.
The movie has great strengths still however. Seeing Frances McDormand looking this cute reminds me of see Lucille Ball or Bette Davis in one of their first films when they were sex objects. And while John Getz gets swallowed up in his straight role Dan Hedaya (Cheers) on the other hand plays sleazy so well I forget I have seen it so many times since.
Overall very well done if slightly slow paced and certainly worth a view just too familiar to encourage a repeat viewing.
Rating:  -
the dvd was in perfect condition just as described. arrived promptly. and being from Tx. ( where the movie takes place )i enjoyed watching it in my home just as much as i did seeing it in the theatre when it first came out.
Rating: -
Jealousy, affairs and counter affairs, private eyes and sleuth, fishing and phishing in the private life of other people, the Coen Brothers are at it again. It was obvious the cuckold was not supposed to hire the private eye to eliminate his spouse and her lover. It was obvious too the lover was not supposed to get back to the bar of the cuckold, find the dead body - but was he dead really - and then get rid of it in some field, a live burial mind you. It was obvious the private eye should not have forgotten his lighter in the office of the cuckold bar owner because that could only cause the death of an innocent, well, an innocent, way of speaking for a cuckold maker - isn't it what they call coveting the wife of your neighbor in some sacred books? - in the most spectacular way possible. In the same way that the lighter will put the sleuth on the tracks of the lady of the tale and there the Coen Brothers are going to be best of them all and it is the most un-innocent and guilty man who will finally pay - the hard way - the bill of that adulteress. And what's more she will be the boss of the bar where there is another bar tender that may interest her, especially since he is slightly black, a change from all her Caucasian affairs. Perfect conclusion for a Machiavellian machination.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID
Rating: -
This DVD version seems to have tampered with the original movie quite a lot, as far as I can tell from the discussions about it. Since I never watched the film before, surprisingly, that is not an issue for me. So my positive opinion of the film is not a statement on the quality of this special DVD edition.
The film is, pure and simple, basic and essential Coen brothers. There is a straight line to Fargo and the latest, as per this moment, Burn after Reading. Criminals are bunglers. Situations are misunderstood. Motives are error prone. People don't talk to each other. When they try, they will not be listened to. The absurdity of life under violence causes amusement and embarrassment. We laugh and wonder why.
The story in a nutshell: a bar owner receives proof that his wife has cheated him with one of the bar keepers. He offers the private eye, who had taken the photos, money for killing the couple. Then we start a series of doublecrossings, misunderstandings and misinterpretations, leading to some clumsy murders.
Center piece of visual nausea is a bundle of fishes on the desk of the bar owner, lying there for unspecified time and causing associations of megastinks, reminiscent of Polanski's rabbit in the nauseating movie with Deneuve, ages ago.
Frances MacDormand was spectacular as a young and most of the time surprised woman. Wondering about her men and their ways. Odd creatures.
Rating: -
The "director's cut" is pretty much identical to the regular version, but there is a deliberately pompous intro sequence, and an even funnier optional voice over commentary from a pretentious "film critic" with some real issues. The commentary was obviously written by the Coen brothers themselves as a parody of their academic critics, some of whom become obsessed with trivial details. The account of how the opening sequence was supposedly filmed had me literally rolling on the floor!
As for the movie itself, it's a classic neo-noir. All the acting and characters are over-the-top caricatures of film noir "types," but even more scary for all that. A great great movie.
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