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One of the classic Westerns of its era starring Veronica Lake as Connie Dickson

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Release date: 5th March

One of the classic Westerns of its era, Ramrod stars Veronica Lake as Connie Dickson, a headstrong cowgirl who’s plans to marry a sheep rancher are thwarted when a powerful local cattle baron, Frank Ivey (Preston Foster), and her own father (Charles Ruggles), force her fiancé to flee town.

Refusing to kowtow to these powerful men, Connie inherits her ex-fiancés land and determines to run the ranch with the help of her new ramrod, reformed alcoholic Dave Nash (Joel McCrea). But Dave’s diplomatic attempts to resolve the dispute fall upon deaf ears and a bloody turf war on the open range ensues.

With Ramrod, Andre DeToth (a Hungarian-American director who has earned praise from Tarantino and Scorsese) skilfully creates a dangerous world of greed, lies and murder whilst garnering superb performances from McCrea and Lake, two of the biggest Hollywood stars of the 1940s.

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS
• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation transferred from original film elements
• Uncompressed Mono 1.0 PCM audio soundtrack
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Audio commentary by film scholar Adrian Martin
• Andre DeToth in Conversation with Patrick Francis, far-reaching audio-only interview conducted by the documentary filmmaker
• Newly-filmed appreciation by expert on American genre films, Peter Stanfield
• Andre DeToth Interviewed at the National Film Theatre, a career-spanning archival interview from 1994, conducted by writer and broadcaster Kevin Jackson
• Gallery of original promotional images
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sean Phillips

FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by Adrian Danks, contemporary reviews and production stories

I already wrote at length about this superlative film elsewhere, but it's one of De Toth's best, one of the quintessential noir westerns of the B&W era.

Maybe not as stylistically interesting as some of his other masterpieces, but with a sharp sense of interrelation between characters, charting the way a few tiny acts of ego-driven hubris ripple outwards and tear apart a frontier community. Its look at a community existing precariously over a sinkhole anticipates the "return of the repressed" narrative of De Toth's other great western Day of the Outlaw, just as it's incoherent femme fatale and male-emasculation-anxieties bleed directly into the masterful Pitfall.

Just wondering if anyone has ordered and/or received their Arrow version of Ramrod, and if it actually is locked to "B" or, like Arrow's Force of Evil in their Noir box, it wound up being region free. Both films were previously available from Olive in the US, and I'd love to replace my copy with this new version.

It played on my Region A US player.
I'm a tad disappointed by the visual aspect. I remembered it was a new restoration but it actually isn't. It seems OK but is coarse, relatively dirty and shaky, and well just a typical dated master.

Thanks for the info, Tenia.