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Blast of Silence

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Swift, brutal, and black-hearted, Allen Baron's New York City noir Blast of Silence is a sensational surprise. This low-budget, carefully crafted portrait of a hit man on assignment in Manhattan during Christmastime follows its stripped-down narrative with mechanical precision, yet also with an eye and ear for the oddball idiosyncrasies of urban living and the imposing beauty of the city's locations. At once visually ragged and artfully composed, and featuring rough, poetic narration by Lionel Stander, Blast of Silence is a stylish triumph.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:

- New, restored digital transfer
- Requiem for a Killer: The Making of “Blast of Silence”
- Rare on-set Polaroids
- Locations revisited in 2008
- Theatrical trailer
- PLUS A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Terrence Rafferty and a four-page graphic-novel adaptation of the film by acclaimed artist Sean Phillips (Criminal, Sleeper, Marvel Zombies)

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Gordon wrote:A German DVD of this obscure gem is now available: Xploited Cinema listing ($27.95), or: Amazon.De listing ($25.50)

- Fullscreen Version
- English and German audio options
- Optional German subtitles
- Audio Commentary by Allen Baron
- Trailer

The Cinefacts review basically states that that brightness and contrast are good, but the detail is lacking and grain/noise is prominent throughout. This is a site that tends to exaggerate weakness in transfer, though.

Incredible that they bagged an Allen Baron commentary! What a bonus. I'll share my thoughts when my copy arrives.

Is there an idea on what the ratio should be on this film? I actually was lucky enough to watch this DVD in a form (cough, won't say how) and it looked pretty tremendous although it would appear that it was framed for something besides fullscreen. The fact Barron appears to present a commentary though would seem to say that he approves of it being fullscreen. Blast of Silence was the 2nd best film I saw this summer outside of Don't Look Now so I will probably pick this up at some point.

I was unaware of this dvd release until today (this is what I get for not visiting this part of the forum)! I would love to hear Allen Baron's commentary, but I don't own a dvd player that is PAL/multi-region friendly. This release can only lead to a R1 release, and, hopefully, the eventual emergence of Baron's Terror in the City.

Sonofabitch! I was just talking about this film with an old director friend of mine who attended a screening of it recently here in NYC via invite of the producer or director (cant remember), and had his brains spattered across the walls by it. Apparently there are major similarities between this film and TAXI DRIVER, to such an intense degree, that he had no doubt that Schraeder & Scorsese lifted from it, tributed it, or were at least unconsciously via previous influence riffing off it without realizing it. He's going to send me a VHS dub the director gave him. Chomping at the bit.

Yo gordo-- how the hell did these caps slip right by us?

The disc looks excellent, and the commentary is by director Baron himself. I have a cruddy vhs rip from a terrible dub which filtered down to me from Baron himself who gave it to another director who is a friend of mind, but the copy is terrible. This is screaming for an R1 release (especially owing to the worship of the film via Scorsese who lifted quite a bit from its' aesthetic, unabashedly too it seems), but I may just go for the pal.

One of the most blackhearted narrative voice-over's in the history of the film. ("You look at all the people walkin around enjoyin christmas and ya wanna kill em all... they make ya sick")

Beaver caps

Cool movie.

A DVD of BLAST OF SILENCE just came out in France (under the title of BABY BOY FRANKIE), and it includes an EXCELLENT hour-long documentary called REQUIEM FOR A KILLER by Robert Fischer and Wilfried Reichart in which Allen Baron revisits the New York locations 30 years after the filming of BLAST.

Here's a nice review of the documentary (in French w/ screencaps)

Just received the German edition of BLAST OF SILENCE. Great film, and the DVD looks very nice.

Did anyone have any inkling that Criterion was gonna release this? I've never seen this...know it only by its reputation.

Tribe

The movie itself was brought up several times, non referenced to Criterion. Super news imo.

Cinephrenic wrote:The movie itself was brought up several times, non referenced to Criterion. Super news imo.

I'm looking forward to it...I love this obscure little noir films!

Tribe

Tribe wrote:Did anyone have any inkling that Criterion was gonna release this? I've never seen this...know it only by its reputation.

NOT AT ALL, this is the last pic I would have expected get The Treatment.

Frankly I think it's an eclectic little "noir" but it's pretty low budget and and a lot of folks will find it a bit campy (for that reason).

Great film--saw it a few months back at Film Forum as part of a triple feature with Cop Hater and The Tattooed Stranger. The brutally pessimistic opening shot/monologue is really fantastic.

This makes me hopeful that Edward Dmytryk's odd little film "The Sniper" will get released. I saw it a few years ago at the NW Film Center (when they still had The Guild Theater) and it was great. low (LOW) budget, campy and way over the top... but its actual SF locations from 1952 are just gorgeous.

HerrSchreck wrote:Frankly I think it's an eclectic little "noir" but it's pretty low budget and and a lot of folks will find it a bit campy (for that reason).

But you dig it, right?

Tribe

I LOVE this movie...and I'm in shock right now!!!

Wow...a holy grail for me. I am flabbergasted.

I've never even heard of this film, releases like this are why I love the company though

I have a blown out vhs that was actually passed on to me thru a director friend of mine who sat with the director of BLAST, a cruddy vhs that he got from him (he also got a dvd, and then gave me the vhs. Apparently if you check the original thread for this film, which I'd expect to be linked in here to this thread as there has been a discussion on this film before, there is a decent release of this film which came out around a year ago and features commentary by Baron the director, which I assume will be ported over to the CC... caps for that release are here on the beev). My tape and his dvd precede the official release of the film in R2 in 2006, though, and both look like a snowstorm.

Yeah it's a nasty, fun, little piece of Antisocial z-budget noir... like one of the more fun pics you'd find on a Kit Parker Forgotten Noir 2-fer, where you get two flicks for nine bucks. And you get Larry Tucker, the gigantoid dude who played Pagliacci in Shock Corridor. There's a bit of visible SCorsese influence spangled throughout the film, apparently Marty was / is a big fan of the film. Location shooting, guerrilla style on-the-fly, lots of voice over narration, a disembodied gravelly voice talking to you the viewer as though you are the hitman on the screen (clever device, as it drags you into the pic) saying shit like "You look around at all the people on the street, you hate people, they make ya sick to yer stomach, but you stay focused, you try and put outa yer mind how sick people make ya," etc.

There's not an awful lot to it, but it's got a surface cool to it... just not the kind of picture (and I have tons of this stuff in my rack) I'd shell out premium quantities of dracma for. We'll see what tier it falls into. If they bounce it into the upper tier for porting an R2 commentary, no go Bobo.

Releases like this-- Great Little Noirs You Never Heard Of In Your LIfe-- are always coming out.

HerrSchreck wrote:There's not an awful lot to it, but it's got a surface cool to it... just not the kind of picture (and I have tons of this stuff in my rack) I'd shell out premium quantities of dracma for. We'll see what tier it falls into. If they bounce it into the upper tier for porting an R2 commentary, no go Bobo.

Start saving up, Schreckster; it's listed at the lower price.

What was the last release that was this light in supplements?

domino harvey wrote:What was the last release that was this light in supplements?

This isn't the thread for it, but Vengeance Is Mine makes Blast of Silence look stacked.

domino harvey wrote:What was the last release that was this light in supplements?

According to IMDB, the making-of documentary is a full hour.

Well okay then I guess it's not as bad as it seemed at first "on set Polaroid" glance.

They didn't port over this brand new commentary by the director?

Wtf?

HerrSchreck wrote:They didn't port over this brand new commentary by the director?

Wtf?

Could've been unavailable, or Criterion didn't think the movie warranted the bump in price up to $40 a commentary would bring on such a (relatively) obscure title (though it would've been nice of them to get it and pull a Crazed Fruit/Clean, Shaven, etc and price it at $30). Or Criterion though the commentary had too much overlap with the doc to be worth pursuing. The exclusion of the commentary may make this release fall short of being absolutely definitive, but it still looks like it'll offer a decent array of features (strange to be director-approved without the commentary, but I guess in most cases that only applies to the transfer anyways).