Blu-ray, DVD Release: Detour

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: March 19, 2019
Price: DVD $22.69, Blu-ray $27.99
Studio: Criterion


Emerging from Poverty Row in 1945 was Detour, a movie that, perhaps more than any other, epitomizes the dark fatalism at the heart of film noir.
As he hitchhikes his way from New York to Los Angeles, a down-on-his-luck nightclub pianist (Tom Neal) finds himself with a dead body on his hands and nowhere to run-a waking nightmare that goes from bad to worse when he picks up one helluva vicious femme fatale in cinema history, Ann Savage’s monstrously conniving drifter Vera. From that point on, bad, bad things begin to ensue.
Working with no-name stars on a bargain-basement budget, B auteur Edgar G. Ulmer turned threadbare production values and seedy, low-rent atmosphere into indelible pulp poetry. Long unavailable in a format in which its hard-boiled beauty could be fully appreciated, Detour haunts anew in its first major restoration.
Criterion’s new editions contain the following:
* New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
* Edgar G. Ulmer: The Man Off-Screen, a 2004 documentary featuring interviews with filmmakers Roger Corman, Joe Dante, and Wim Wenders and actor Ann Savage
* New interview with film scholar Noah Isenberg, author of Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins
* New program about the restoration of Detour
* Trailer
* An essay by critic and poet Robert Polito
Buy or Rent Detour

About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.