Olive Films will release on Blu-ray director Joseph H. Lewis'
The Big Combo (1955), starring Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte, Brian Donlevy, Lee Van Cleef, and Jean Wallace. The preliminary release date set by the studio is September 24th.
The Big Combo has been Restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive in association with the Film Foundation. The film has been newly re-mastered in High Definition by Olive Films and Ignite Films.
Raw and violent, steeped in the film noir tradition, this cult classic ventures into the seamy gangster underworld, oozing with seediness and low-life characters. Far ahead of its time,
The Big Combo takes a dark, disturbing look at the battle between Leonard Diamond (Cornel Wilde), a good cop, and Mr. Brown (Richard Conte), a sadistic crime boss - and the cool blonde who gets caught in the middle (Jean Wallace, married to Wilde in real life at the time).
With the help of the gangster's ex-girlfriend, Diamond is determined to bring down the cunning gangland kingpin. But the gangsters are ruthless. They savagely pummel Diamond and conduct gut-wrenchingly brutal acts of torture that were unusual on screen at the time of the film's release 1955. With its unflinching direction by Joseph Lewis,
The Big Combo was a worthy predecessor of later explicitly violent films that honestly explored unsavory worlds.