Blake Edwards on Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

So far as I know, Breakfast at Tiffany's, 10 and Victor Victoria are the only films directed by Blake Edwards to get a Blu-ray release, leaving most of his best work to the old format. Setting aside the runaway hits in the Pink Panter franchise, some of Edwards' best work is vastly underrated. Time for the studios to reconsider their Blake Edwards holdings, and give audiences a chance to catch up on his lesser known films. We're talking state of the art cinema and some very wise storytelling from one of the cinema's finest directors. I would like to see the following on Blu-ray:
The Man Who Loved Women, 1983

S.O.B., 1981 uncut and uncensored

The Tamarind Seed, 1974 a special favorite of mine

The Carey Treatment, 1972

Wild Rovers, 1971

Darling Lili, 1970 restored, in both versions

The Party, 1968

Gunn, 1967 unreleased to home video in any format

What Did You Do In the War Daddy? 1966

The Great Race, 1965

A Shot In the Dark, 1964

The Pink Panther, 1963

Days of Wine and Roses, 1963

Who would like to see more Blake Edwards on Blu-ray?

The poster art by Jeff Davis (Mad Magazine) for The Party is such a hoot, here's an enlarged detail (let's show it BIG, Mr Crawford, please):

The original Pink Panther is out in the UK as a region free title on a BD-50 with DTS 5.1HD sound, extensive extras.

Pretty sure Pink Panther is out in the US too. I can swear I've seen it.
Put me down for SOB, which is my favorite of Edwards' films and The Carey Treatment which is based on a great book by Michael Crichton called "A Case of Need" which was written before he started using his own name and was still in med school in Boston.
One you didn't mention is Switch, his final film with Ellen Barkin and Jimmy Smits.

Given that THE CAREY TREATMENT and WILD ROVERS recently appeared as Warner Archive titles, I wouldn't expect to see them on Blu anytime soon.
SON OF THE PINK PANTHER (93) was his (and Herbert Lom's) final movie. (Lom, 94, is still with us.)
THE TAMARIND SEED is one of those movies that seems to have disappeared on these shores, even on cable.
One I'd like to see: EXPERIMENT IN TERROR, which is OOP on DVD. Twilight Time could do a good Blu of this Columbia title, with its Mancini score isolated.

Wasn't there a director's edit of The Carey Treatment before James Aubrey recut it? And doesn't that suvive in the vaults? There may be an opportunity there.
MGM should have known when they made a poster showing one cowboy hugging another on a horse that they were shooting WILD ROVERS stone cold dead at the box office. Despite critical praise and positive word of mouth, the film failed. It remains a fine and memorable western, very humanistic, one of the best westerns of the 1970s. Give it a commentary and a featurette -- I recorded the theatrical preview featurette off TCM recently -- and it will invite consumer interest. Also, this is one instance where the studio had better change the poster.

S.O.B. and Vic/Vic (the movie) should both be Special Editions
Tamarind Seed (there's at least a making-of out there somewhere)
That's Life! (extremely rare but diverting)

We got The Days and Wine and Roses' TV version from Criterion, so I'd love to come full circle and let them do the film version which is devastating.

Experiment In Terror is an oop Columbia DVD.
It can still be had if you're willing to pay the price:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000092T6C/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=
I'm not.
But it's an excellent suspense thriller and it would look fine on Blu-ray. An isolated score is a good idea.

Mark Oates said:

The original Pink Panther is out in the UK as a region free title on a BD-50 with DTS 5.1HD sound, extensive extras.

Click to expand...

. . . and superb picture quality.

Regarding "Victor/Victoria" --- I believe that only the inferior stage version has been released on Blu-Ray, so I wouldn't place "V/V" among "the only films directed by Blake Edwards to get a Blu-ray release."
An HD version of "V/V" has been available on cable for quite some time---I recall seeing it on HD Net at least 5 years ago.

Actually Warner Bros. holds the rights to Victor/Victoria, as it was an MGM production made prior to 1986.

Much to my annoyance, V.V. and S.O.B. have both been long out of print on DVD.

Thanks for posting all those posters and in hi-res too. Most of these I hadnt seen before.
I'm hoping the rest of the Pink Panthers will appear on Blu this year and hopefully The Party as well.

I would love to have the original film Victor/Victoria on Blu-Ray, along with The Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, The Party, the rest of the Sellers-era Pink Panther series, S.O.B. and Micki + Maude.

Richard--W said:

Wasn't there a director's edit of The Carey Treatment before James Aubrey recut it? And doesn't that suvive in the vaults? There may be an opportunity there.
MGM should have known when they made a poster showing one cowboy hugging another on a horse that they were shooting WILD ROVERS stone cold dead at the box office. Despite critical praise and positive word of mouth, the film failed. It remains a fine and memorable western, very humanistic, one of the best westerns of the 1970s. Give it a commentary and a featurette -- I recorded the theatrical preview featurette off TCM recently -- and it will invite consumer interest. Also, this is one instance where the studio had better change the poster.

Click to expand...

Wild Rovers got recut by the studio and we had heard many years later someone with MGM/Turner let him go back and fix it, but there wasn't enough left to make it right. So according to the Edwards family the latest version may be a bit closer, but is still not his original cut.
However I know fans of Darling Lili do NOT like his half hour shorter cut, as some of the star's best moments were lost. Paramount Homevid people were surprised he wanted to take out so much rather than reorganize or put anything back. When they heard about an overture and exit music being on the album, they quickly added them back so the running time of the new version wouldn't look quite so short. When the Directors' Guild did a retro salute in the early 90s, they ran the original cut rather than the new one because that's what the studio sent out. Makes you wonder if they ever made prints of the cut version.

Blake Edwards' career as a screenwriter and director is overdue for re-evaluation by film historians. Edwards wrote screenplays for most of the films he directed, and his films have certain recurring themes. The transition from youth into middle-age was addressed humorously in such films as 10, The Man Who Loved Women, and That's Life! Hollywood film-making is satirized gently (and not so gently) in films like The Party, SOB, and Sunset. Gender roles and identities are also a theme running through such films as Switch, Victor/Victoria, Micki & Maude, and Gunn.

Henry Mancini scored many of Edwards' films, and composed the memorable "Moon River" for Breakfast At Tiffany's, The Pink Panther theme, and the sublime theme to Peter Gunn. Edwards created the Peter Gunn TV series and wrote and directed a number of episodes. Edwards revived Peter Gunn twice, in a theatrical feature with original star Craig Stevens in 1967 (Gunn) and again in a 1988 telefilm (Peter Gunn) starring Peter Strauss.

My HTF icon is the theatrical poster from Gunn(1967) because I like the 60s Bond-style artwork and I love the character and TV series. I hope to see Gunn released on DVD or Blu-ray and I am trying to promote the film in my own little way since it has never been released in any format, be it VHS, Beta, laserdisc, or DVD. There is a myth floating around still that there is an international cut of Gunn with nude footage of star Sherry Jackson. This is apparently just a myth, however, according to a recent interview by Jackson: http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/classic-movie-in-new-york/the-times-they-are-a-strange-thing-sherry-jackson-and-the-end-of-the-1960s?cid=PROD-redesign-right-next

Gunn is an underappreciated and little seen film that I would love to see released in its original aspect ratio on disc, and it would be nice to see the complete TV series released finally as well.

Operation: Petticoat would also be nice to see on BD. Tony Curtis used his time with Cary Grant to good effect since he later copied Grant's accent in a few scenes in Some Like It Hot. If the studios are listening, I for one will buy every Blake Edwards film released on BD.

Thanks for recapping Blake Edwards' career and pointing out some of the themes of his films. He also wrote several films for other directors (particularly Richard Quine) and a handful of telefilms. I would add that he was an actor's director and a fine editor; his pacing and comedy timing were impeccable. But not all his films were comedies. Serious drama and character arc underscore all his work, some films more than others, and it keeps the comedies grounded in characters we can relate to. Days of Wine and Roses is a gut-wrencher about alcoholism destroying marriage and destroying lives. That scene where Jack Lemmon reluctantly goes back to the motel to console wife Lee Remick is heartbreaking. One look at her and he knows how far he's come, that he cannot save her, and that she cannot help herself. It's all downhill for her now. He is completely helpless and on the verge of succumbing like she did if he doesn't get out of there. So he abandons her. Just an unforgettable scene. Ingmar Bergman couldn't have directed it better. Wild Rovers starts out jovial with some perfectly pitched comedy but gradually escalates into tragedy with a story that has no real antecedent in the genre. To see what Edwards finds in the western is to wish he made more of them.
Most people have seen Operation Petticoat and Breakfast at Tiffany's, but I think home video enthusiasts would welcome the chance to watch the earlier films Blake Edwards wrote and directed. He always worked in color (except Days of Wine and Roses) and in a widescreen ratio, so the films fit right in with today's HD monitors. I'll bet his early films are full of surprises.
Breakfast At Tiffany's, 1961 on Blu-ray and DVD

This Happy Feeling, 1960

High Time, 1960

The Perfect Furlough, 1959

Operation Pettifocat, 1959 on DVD

Mister Cory, 1957

He Laughed Last, 1956

Bring Your Smile Along, 1955

S.O.B., Victor/Victoria, and Skin Deep are being released today on DVD via the Warner Archive.

I am happy that these are available on DVD rather than being out of print but I am astonished that any one of these titles is not being prepared for release on Blu-ray.

S.O.B. was apparently one of Edwards' favorite films. It was certainly one of his most personal films since much of it was autobiographically based on his experiences dealing with Hollywood executives. There was an Academy sponsored screening of S.O.B. on September 30, 2010, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Los Angeles. Blake Edwards was present to introduce the film and was accompanied by his wife Julie Andrews and daughter Jennifer Edwards. I had tickets to this event but was unable to attend at the last minute, to my continuing regret. Sadly, Edwards passed away several months later.

Victor/Victoria may be considered one of Edwards' masterpieces. Although Edwards adapted the material, rather than creating new material as he did with most of his screenplays, the film deals with the theme of gender identity and confusion, a theme running through many of his other films like Switch and Gunn.

Skin Deep is a fun and entertaining film. It is worth the price of admission for the "light saber" scene alone. I remember seeing this film in a packed movie theater and everyone in the audience was practically falling out of their scenes with laughter during that scene. It is still funny on television but there is something to be said for the shared experience of viewing a comedy with an audience when laughter becomes infectious.

The first two films most definitely deserve to be on Blu-ray. Their placement in the archives is a bit puzzling and a little depressing, too.