New edition of The Grand Duel is coming to blu-ray on May 7. This film has previously been on bare bones, but pretty great looking blu-ray for quite some time (reviewed here). This new edition from Arrow Video has a new restoration and a wealth of great looking extras.
Official information from Arrow Video below-
The Grand Duel is an archetypal spaghetti western which boasts many of the genre’s classic hallmarks including action-packed gunfights, wild stunts and an impressive climactic showdown...
Genre stalwart Lee Van Cleef (The Big Combo, Day of Anger) stars as a gnarled ex-sheriff called Clayton who comes to the aid of young Philipp Wermeer (Alberto Dentice), a fugitive framed for the murder of a powerful figure called The Patriarch. Clayton helps Philipp fend off attacks from bounty hunters in a series of thrilling shootouts before the two make their way to Jefferson to confront three villains known as the Saxon brothers, and reveal who really killed The Patriarch.
A complex tale of revenge penned by prolific giallo writer Ernesto Gastaldi (Torso, The Case of the Scorpion's Tail), The Grand Duel benefits from a beguiling central performance from Lee Van Cleef and assured helmsmanship from Giancarlo Santi (assistant director to Sergio Leone on The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West). Add to this brew a memorable and tuneful score by composer Luis Bacalov (Django, Milano Calibro 9) and the stage is set for one of the grandest of all the Italian westerns.
SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS
• New 2K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative
• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
• Uncompressed mono 1.0 LPCM audio
• Original English and Italian soundtracks, titles and credits
• Newly translated English subtitles for the Italian soundtrack
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for the English soundtrack
• New audio commentary by film critic, historian and theorist Stephen Prince
• An Unconventional Western, a newly filmed interview with director Giancarlo Santi
• The Last of the Great Westerns, a newly filmed interview with screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi
• Out of the Box, a newly filmed interview with producer Ettore Rosboch
• The Day of the Big Showdown, a newly filmed interview with assistant director Harald Buggenig
• Saxon City Showdown, a newly filmed video appreciation by the academic Austin Fisher
• Original Italian and international theatrical trailers
• Extensive image gallery featuring stills, posters, lobby cards and home video sleeves, drawn from the Mike Siegel Archive and other collections
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Matt Griffin
FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Kevin Grant and original reviews
This film has a great score but to me is a little over the top. But fun.
ReplyDeleteFirst I read of this film was in Variety when it was announced to start production in Italy in 1972. AlpaAppare Lee did this just after completing The Magnificent Seven Ride. This movie was titled Showdown at High Noon in Variety. Then later The Big Showdown. I saw it twice at two different drive inn theatres in 1977. The credits were different. One was white sequence letters with the title obliviously changed from the original as Grand Duel was a blue yellow title card that encompassed the entire screen. Second time I saw it the opening credits were RED and crawled across the screen.