NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Kino Cult Blu-ray (February 2024): Kino Cult have transferred Pat Rocco's Drifter to Blu-ray. It is cited as being from a "2K Restoration from the Original 16mm A/B Negatives Preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive". This is the sixth edition of Kino's new sub-label that is described as; "Kino Cult is a deep dive into unapologetically weird genre cinema, blending recent arthouse discoveries with hundreds of outrageous midnight movies and grindhouse classics. These classics have been amazingly restored and have NEVER looked better!" The first five Kino Cult titles are Lorna the Exorcist, Alien Outlaw, The Dark Power, Sinner - the Secret Diary of a Nymphomania, and Underworld aka Transmutations.

The 1080P image quality of Drifter is quite good considering it is from 16mm. There are floating vertical scratches here and there but texture consistency and reasonable color balance are very pleasing. There is a touch of banding but no impinging damage. It appears as though the source and restoration yielded positive results. It is rendered on a dual-layered disc with a max'ed out bitrate. 

NOTE: We have added 48 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Kino Cult use a DTS-HD Master dual-mono track (24-bit) in the original English language. Drifter has no overtly aggressive effects but does have some funky jazz ("She" by Alan Hawkshaw + Keith Mansfield - played in the opening / closing credits and described as the theme to "Drifter") and the sound is quite clean without egregious weaknesses in the lossless transfer. Kino Cult offer optional English subtitles on their Region FREE Blu-ray.

The Kino Cult Blu-ray offers a new commentary by film historian Finley Freibert (co-author of ReFocus: The Films of Doris Wishman.) He focuses on Independent and exploitation cinema. He has written articles on Pat Rocco's films and discusses the history of the director. This commentary is greatly appreciated as so little has been published about the film. Finley has researched every detail of Drifter from the cast, crew, locations, Jaguar Films, Bizarre Productions and much more. This is excellent work. Included are four short films by Pat Rocco - all made in 1968, none have dialogue (music only) and each are gay-themed with full-frontal male nudity; Autumn Nocturne runs shy of 25-minutes, A Matter of Life has Joe Adair (as 'Joed') and runs 1/4 hour and the final two; Strip Strip and Sunny Boys are both about 3-minutes each. The quality is also surprisingly good via 1080P. The package has an O-card slipcase and reversible artwork (see below.)

Fearless and pioneering gay-rights advocate (notably protesting anti-gay policy in West Hollywood and beyond) Pat Rocco was the first filmmaker to publicly exhibit homosexual erotic films in the United States. His film Drifter, with non-linear timeline flashbacks, includes male and female nudity, however the sensitive portrayal of sexuality is neither explicit nor hardcore. Diverging from his more common 'male nudie' work this would lean to mainstream-appeal with female love interests; neighbor Klamath (Bambi Allen) and park-beauty Karen (Inga-Maria Pinson.) Joe Adair plays a character known as 'Drifter' who, like Midnight Cowboy's Joe Buck, tries his hand as a wanderlust bisexual hustler with his hesitancy expressed as seeking a financial component while rejecting but requiring an intimate connection with his lovers. Men and women want to be with sweaty, slim, tall and muscular 'Drifter' but he is on a journey of self-discovery realizing he has more to offer than one-off erotic fantasy fulfillment. It is both a progressive and earnest psychological portrait of a man meandering to find his identity and deserved of re-appraisal. Pat Rocco's Drifter has rarely been seen outside of gaysploitation-content festivals. I was neither bored nor able to predict where the film was going to lead. The direction and story construction were far more sophisticated than I would have anticipated. Included in the Kino Cult Blu-ray package (their best yet?) is the Freibert commentary and 4 shorts by legendary Rocco that you are unlikely to see anywhere else. I applaud Kino for this Blu-ray release that is whole-heartedly encouraged for adventurous and curious cinephiles. Don't judge this until you have seen it!

Gary Tooze