Product description

The Big Sleep (Special Edition) [DVD] [1977]

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Binding : DVD
EAN : 5037115249838
Label : ITV DVD
Manufacturer : ITV DVD
Publisher : ITV DVD
Release date : 2007-06-11
Title : The Big Sleep (Special Edition) [DVD] [1977]
Actor : Array
Audience rating : Suitable for 15 years and over
Format : PAL
Languages : Array
Number of items : 1
Original release date : 1977-01-01
Region code : 2
Running time : 95
Studio : ITV DVD
Theatrical releaseDate : 1977

Customer reviews

review by: date: 2009-03-07 rating:

Who thought this was a good idea and how drunk were they at the time?
The Big Sleep has to be the most bizarre pitch of the 70s: giving Michael Winner carte blanche to transfer Philip Marlowe from LA's mean streets to the Green Streets of suburban England. With so many of the stellar supporting cast just so terribly wrong for their parts - a drunken Richard Boone with his leg in a cast as an unintentionally comical Lash Canino, Sarah Miles with the worst wardrobe and the biggest Afro you've ever seen on a white woman displaying all the sex appeal of a decomposing antelope in the Lauren Bacall role, Edward Fox as a bookie, John The Thief of Bagdad Justin as a glass-eyed gay blackmailer and Richard Todd as the police commissioner - it's only Robert Mitchum who keeps the thing afloat, even managing to keep a straight face when confronted with such dangerous characters as Dudley Sutton and Derek Deadman. On one level it is perversely watchable without ever being gleefully bad, but like almost all of Winner's films it shows his amazing ability to flatten any material he gets his hands on. Still, at least Mitchum amused himself on the set telling any passing Arabs he saw that Michael Winner was forcing the cast to give 25% of their salary to Mossad and then giving them the director's home address - "You can't miss it, it's the one with the effigy of Yasser Arafat hanging from the chimney." br / br /After being available as an extras-free DVD for years, ITV's spefcial edition DVD adds a decent collection of extras - an introduction and audio commentary by an emaciated but unapologetic Michael Winner, a 5-minute making of short from the film's 1978 release, an interview with Maxim Jacubowski on Chandler and a somewhat whimsical 'on location' short with a bearded Robert Powell complete with umbrella trying to make the most of some ill-fitting hardboiled dialogue as he revisits the film's UK locations. Curiously the film's original trailer has not been included.

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