Independent British distributors Eureka Entertainment (Masters of Cinema) have detailed their upcoming Blu-ray releases of Monte Hellman's
Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) and Peter Watkins'
Punishment Park (1971). Both will hit retail shelves on January 23.
Two-Lane Blacktop
With the melancholy open-road epic
Two-Lane Blacktop, American auteur Monte Hellman (
The Shooting,
Cockfighter, and the recent
Road to Nowhere) poeticised the beautiful, terrible rootlessness of his nation in the era of Vietnam. Funded by Universal in a bid to recreate the success of
Easy Rider – by giving a number of filmmakers $1m and final cut – Hellman's effort is now regarded as one of the key films of the New Hollywood renaissance of the early 1970s.
Special Features:
- New restored high-definition master, supervised and approved by Monte Hellman
- Original mono soundtrack and optional newly remastered 5.1 mix
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hearing-impaired
- Audio commentary by Monte Hellman and associate producer Gary Kurtz
- On The Road Again: Two-Lane Blacktop Revisited, a 43-minute video piece in which Monte Hellman revisits the film's locations
- Somewhere Near Salinas, a 28-minute interview by Monte Hellman with singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson
- Sure Did Talk To You, a 24-minute video piece by Monte Hellman, interviewing producer Michael Laughlin, production manager Walter Coblenz, and the director's son Jared Hellman
- Rare archival screen-test footage of James Taylor and Laurie Bird
- Original theatrical trailer
- Optional music and effects track
- A lavish 36-page booklet featuring rare production imagery, the words of Monte Hellman, and more!
Punishment Park
Both controversial and relentless in its depiction of suppression and brutality, Punishment Park was heavily attacked by the mainstream press and permitted only the barest of releases in 1971. However, like Haskell Wexler's
Medium Cool (1969) and Robert Kramer's
Ice (1969), Peter Watkins' film has established itself as one of the key, yet rarely seen, radical films of the late 1960s/early 1970s. Giving voice to the disaffected youth of America that had lived through the campus riots at Berkeley, the trial of the Chicago Seven and who were witnessing the escalation of the Vietnam War,
Punishment Park was named by Rolling Stone as one of their top ten films of 1971 and has earned many admirers in the four decades since its release.
Special Features:
- Newly restored high-definition transfer (shot on 16mm, Punishment Park has been remastered from a new 35mm print struck from the restored 35mm blow-up negative held in Paris)
- 30-minute video introduction by Peter Watkins
- Full-length audio commentary by Dr. Joseph A. Gomez (author of the 1979 book Peter Watkins)
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- 40-page booklet with two essays and reprints