Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by rico (A) on February 19, 2007 at 11:45:08

In Reply to: Rico - Did you know this "One-Eyed Jacks" fact? ... posted by Jimmy NYC on February 18, 2007 at 09:06:12:

In 1960 Brando had hired a young director, Stanley Kubrick to work on his next film under the Pennebaker banner, to be the actor's first big screen western, with a working title of A Burst of Vermillion. The pre-production process was troubled and presaged the eventual problems with the resulting film that would become know as One-Eyed Jacks. When no suitable replacement for Kubrick could be found [after kirk Duglas hired Kubrick to direct the troubled "Sparatcus"], Brando took the helm and made his directorial debut. This production is legendary in Hollywood for astonishing record of how much filmstock was shot. Back stories include such incidents as Brando keeping an expensive crew waiting for hours to get just the right light for a short scene and the cast getting drunk to add realism to a scene that ultimately proved to be unusable. Although the film was generally accorded positive—if bemused—reviews, it was also legendary for the costs accrued and the miles of film that was exposed to create the final result. One-Eyed Jacks features the first of the brutal scenes in which Brando's character is masochistically beaten as the Sheriff that he is seeking revenge against turns the tables and cruelly puts him to a bullwhip, then breaks his gun hand with the butt of a pistol. Ultimately, the film is a very enjoyable with many effective sequences and features excellent performances by Karl Malden, Katy Jurado, Ben Johnson and Slim Pickens. The photography emerges as very beautiful and Brando's performance is as weighty as any that has been recorded in a western.

Unfortunately, the DVD situation of One-Eyed Jacks is in a sorry state. There is a disc listed from the Platinum Disc Corporation for $6.99 that was released in November of 2000 and there is a listing that credits Unicorn Video with an upcoming release of the film in January of 2002, priced at $7.99. There is a version of the film on DVD that found in the "under $10" bin that is credited to a Canadian company called Madacy Entertainment. The quality of the disc is horrific and completely unwatchable. Fans of Brando and fans of westerns should go to http://www.criterionco.com/asp/ask_form.asp and request that Criterion buy the rights to One-Eyed Jacks and give it the release that it deserves in The Criterion Collection.