British distributors Eureka Entertainment have announced that they will release on Blu-ray director Andre De Toth's western Day of the Outlaw (1959), starring Robert Ryan, Burl Ives, and Tina Louise. The release will be available for purchase on December 7.
Synopsis: As in George Stevens' Shane, the place of action of Andre De Toth's demented Western Day of the Outlaw is once again the state of Wyoming and the contested land of the homesteaders. Day of the Outlaw was one of Westerns at the twilight of the studio era in which anything might go, and director De Toth, the creator of two infamous idiosyncratic films — the groundbreaking 3D House of Wax and the naturalistic Sterling Hayden-starring noir Crime Wave — here firmly established his pedigree as one of the maverick directors such as Nicholas Ray for whom boundaries proved only elastic consequence.
The magnificent Robert Ryan portrays Blaise Starrett (surname itself an evocation of the family in the earlier Stevens film Shane) who comes between a landowner (Alan Marshal) and his wife (Tina Louise). But after a band of outlaws ride into town headed by Jack Bruhn (Burl Ives), Starrett must rise to the occasion and defend the hostage townsfolk while redeeming his own advances towards the landowner's wife.
Filmed on a shoestring budget, Day of the Outlaw proved to be an enduring touchstone for the directors of the French New Wave; it came to exemplify De Toth's resourcefulness around budgetary limitations and the (here often snow-strewn) difficulties of the shoot. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Andre De Toth's Day of the Outlaw in a Dual Format edition for the first time in the UK.
Watch what happens to the woman… Watch The West explode!
Special Features:
A video appreciation by filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
24- PAGE BOOKLET containing a new essay, vintage writing on the film, the words of De Toth, rare archival imagery, and more!