Blu-ray, DVD Release: Seconds

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Aug. 13, 2013
Price: DVD $29.99, Blu-ray $39.99
Studio: Criterion


Seconds movie scene

Rock Hudson gets more than he bargained for when he embarks on a new life in Seconds.

Rock Hudson (All That Heaven Allows) star in Seconds, a sinister, science-fiction-inflected thriller from the fractured 1960s directed by John Frankenheimer (Grand Prix).

The 1966 film concerns a middle-aged businessman dissatisfied with his suburban existence, who elects to undergo a strange and elaborate procedure that will grant him a new life. Starting over in America, however, is not as easy as it sounds, even if the new you looks like, well, Rock Hudson.

This paranoiac movie filled with canted camera angles (courtesy of cinematographer James Wong Howe of Sweet Smell of Success), fragmented editing, and layered sound design is a remarkably risk-taking Hollywood film that ranks high on the list of its  director’s major achievements.

The DVD and Blu-ray editions of the film contain the following features:

• New 4K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Audio commentary featuring director John Frankenheimer
• Actor Alec Baldwin on Frankenheimer and Seconds
• New program on the making of Seconds, featuring interviews with Evans Frankenheimer, the director’s widow, and actor Salome Jens
• Interview with Frankenheimer from 1971
• New visual essay by film scholars R. Barton Palmer and Murray Pomerance
• An essay by critic David Sterritt

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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.