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THEY RE GOING NOWHERE... FAST!

The United States, late 1950s. A time of generational conflict, of immense social change, of bold fashions and toe-tapping music just some of the elements that collide in thrilling fashion in The Loveless, the feature debut of both its star, Willem Dafoe (To Live and Die in LA), and its directors, Monty Montgomery (producer, David Lynch's Wild at Heart) and future Academy Award®-winner* Kathryn Bigelow (Near Dark, Detroit).

A motorcycle gang roars into a small southern town en route to the Daytona races, unnerving and angering the locals with their standoffish attitude and disrespect for social niceties. When one of their number, the charismatic Vance (Dafoe), hooks up with sportscar-driving Telena (Marin Kanter, Endangered Species), he incurs the wrath of the girl s father, setting the gang on a collision course with the rest of the town as simmering tensions boil over into violent retribution.

Raw, angry and honest, The Loveless evokes, with unflinching clarity, both an attitude and a bygone era, exploring the tensions between two very different Americas now fully restored and presented in high definition for the first time in this feature-packed new edition from Arrow Video!

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS

• Brand new 2K restoration from the original camera negative by Arrow Films, approved by co-writer/co-director Monty Montgomery and director of photography Doyle Smith
• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
• Original lossless mono audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• New audio commentary with co-writer/co-director Monty Montgomery, moderated by Elijah Drenner
• No Man's Friend Today: Making The Loveless, new video interviews with actors Willem Dafoe, Marin Kanter, Robert Gordon, Phillip Kimbrough and Lawrence Matarese
• U.S. 17: Shooting The Loveless, new video interviews with producers Grafton Nunes and A. Kitman Ho
• Chrome and Hot Leather: The Look of The Loveless, new interviews with production designer Lilly Kilvert and director of photography Doyle Smith
• Relentless, new audio interview with musician Eddy Dixon
• Extensive image gallery, including on-set photographs, storyboards and original production documentation
• Theatrical trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx
  FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Peter Stanfield

A shame this is US-only. Apparently Icon have the UK rights, so this is another 'maybe' situation similar to Dillinger. Hoping they can get these two sorted eventually...

It is interesting that this was the other 'early 80s debut feature film by major female filmmaker' film that Blue Underground released on DVD in the mid 2000s together with Susan Seidelman's Smithereens, which of course recently got its own Blu-ray upgrade from Criterion.

Not to mention My Beautiful Career!

Very visually confident first feature by Kathryn Bigelow and Monty Montgomery. Willem Dafoe already has screen presence to burn in the lead role, though the acting in the film is wobbly. He’s fine on his own, or in various one-on-one scenes with various women, but the rest of the bikers are a cartoonish bunch, and the interactions amongst them tend to be grindingly false. The film is much stronger as a mood piece than it is as a drama, with the dramatic bits and pieces coming in spurts and adding up to a short’s worth of material. The idea of the bikers being a transitory catalyst in this tiny community is a strong enough basis for a story, but it’s clunkily manifested in this script.