Blu-ray, DVD Release: Easy Rider

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: May 3, 2016
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion


From 1969, the biker adventure-drama Easy Rider remains the definitive counterculture blockbuster.

The down-and-dirty directorial debut of former clean-cut teen star Dennis Hopper (Blue Velvet), Easy Rider heralded the arrival of a new voice in film, one pitched angrily against the mainstream. After the film’s cross-country journey—with its radical, New Wave–style editing, outsider-rock soundtrack, revelatory performances by a young Jack Nicholson (Five Easy Pieces) and even Peter Fonda (Dirty Mary Crazy Larry), and explosive ending—the American road trip would never be the same.

easyrider-1Criterion’s Blu-ray and DVD editions of the American classic contain the following features:

  • Restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director of photography László Kovács, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Alternate 2.0 and 5.1 surround soundtracks, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray
  • Two audio commentaries, one from 2009, featuring actor-director-writer Dennis Hopper, and the other from 1995, featuring Hopper, actor-writer Peter Fonda, and production manager Paul Lewis
  • Born to Be Wild(1995) and “Easy Rider”: Shaking the Cage (1999), documentaries about the making and history of the film
  • Television excerpts showing Hopper and Fonda at the Cannes Film Festival in 1969
  • Interview from 2010 with BBS Productions cofounder Steve Blauner
  • Theatrical trailers
  • An essay by film critic Matt Zoller Seitz

 

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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.