Blu-ray, DVD Release: Badlands

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: March 19, 2013
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion


Badlands movie scene

Martin Sheen brings murder to the Dakotas in Badlands.

The 1973 crime drama Badlands announced the arrival of a major talent: filmmaker Terrence Malick (Days of Heaven, The Tree of Life).

Malick’s impressionistic take on the notorious Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate killing spree of the late 1950s uses a serial-killer narrative as a springboard for an oblique teenage romance, lovingly and idiosyncratically enacted by Martin Sheen (Apocalypse Now) and Sissy Spacek (3 Women). Badlands also introduced many of the elements that would earn Malick his passionate following: the enigmatic approach to narrative and character, the unusual use of voice-over, the juxtaposition of human violence with natural beauty, the poetic investigation of American dreams and nightmares. This debut has spawned countless imitations, but none have equaled its strange sublimity.

Criterion’s DVD and Blu-ray editions of Badlands include the following features:

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the
Blu-ray edition
• Making “Badlands,” a new documentary featuring actors Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek and production designer Jack Fisk
• New interview with editor Billy Weber about director Terrence Malick’s unique approach to editing
• New interview with producer Edward Pressman
• Trailer
• A booklet featuring an essay by filmmaker Michael Almereyda

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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.