This film is a Blu-ray ‘must’ for any film collection. It is a time capsule of a period of American history that now seems totally alien compared to the country we live in today. This film deeply impacted our culture in a lot of unexpected ways: just look at the soundtrack alone. ‘Born to be Wild’? Started here, as did ‘The Weight’, which has been used in about six million commercials over 50 years. There’s also a lot of fun cameos like a four year old Bridget Fonda running around and Phil Spector (mostly known now for his hair and murdering someone) playing a wealthy man buying drugs.
The picture on the disc is crisp and clean, though I wonder if maybe the colors have been oversaturated just a touch (buy a copy and decide for yourself). As with all Criterion releases the extras are robust, though for this release they appear to be mostly ported over from previous releases. This is probably owing to the fact that so many of the key cast and crew are no longer with us. Even so, what is there is quite excellent, including multiple commentaries and multiple documentaries.
Extras:
Audio Commentary by Dennis Hopper
Audio Commentary by Hopper, Fonda, and Lewis
Born to be Wild and “Easy Rider”: Shaking the Cage documentaries
TV footage of Hopper and Fonda at Cannes
Interview with Steve Blauner
Theatrical Trailers
Adam Ruhl is a writer and life long Cinephile. He is the Executive
Cinema Editor of Pop Culture Beast’s Austin branch; covering festivals,
conventions, and new releases. When not filing reports, Adam can be
found stalking Alamo Drafthouse Programmers for leads on upcoming
DrafthouseFilms titles. Adam once blocked Harry Knowles entrance to a
theater until he was given extra tickets to a Roman Polanski movie.