Lions Gate - Region 1 - NTSC vs. Wild Side Video - Region 2 - PAL vs. Olive Films - Region FREE - Blu-ray vs. Arrow Films - Region FREE - Blu-ray vs. Kino - Region 'A' - Blu-ray

The Kino Blu-ray offer a new audio commentary by Film Historian Imogen Sara Smith. She talks about how this is one of her all-time favorite noirs, heightened poetic language, a lot on Abraham Polonsky being black-listed, the complex musical score, and John Garfield (another black list victim) and significantly more... it is at her usual high standard and essential for Noir devotees. Also included is the same Martin Scorsese introduction from a decade, or so, ago. Lastly is a trailer for Force of Evil and a few other related films.

Abraham Polonsky's "The Force of Evil" was adapted from Wolfert's novel Tucker's People. Joe Morse (Garfield) is a lawyer who works for ganger's who are involved in the consolidation of the numbers racket in New York City which will absorb Joe's older brother Leo (Thomas Gomez) business. The script incorporates subtle biblical references to Cain and Abel. The Force of Evil has often been considered the apex of the 'dark cinema' cycle. There is some wonderful cinematography by George Barnes (The File on Thelma Jordon, Something to Live For, The War of the Worlds.) This is very strongly recommended and the Kino has a new transfer and essential Imogen Sara Smith commentary.

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ADDITION: Arrow Films - Region FREE - Blu-ray - November 17': Arrow's Four Film Noir Classics Limited Edition has The Dark Mirror, Secret Beyond the Door..., Force of Evil, and The Big Combo. They are not sold separately by Arrow at present and are only available in this boxset. There are other Blu-ray releases, like this Olive Film edition here, and we have compared many captures.

Limited Edition set of only 2000 copies!

The Arrow 1.33:1 transfer has a max'ed out bitrate - it is darker, cleaner, finer grain and has richer black levels. It doesn't seem to have the speckles of the Olive or they are not as prominent on the Arrow. The Arrow is, once again, the best in terms of image.

Arrow is also better than the Olive Blu-ray in the audio - Arrow's 24-bit linear PCM mono vs. the DTS-HD Master (16-bit) track.  It sounds excellent in the uncompressed. Arrow also add optional English (SDH) subtitles (see sample below) on their Region FREE Blu-ray disc.

Another commentary - this one by Glenn Kenny and Farran Smith Nehme. I have not yet indulged but will do so soon. There is a 3/5-minute introduction to Force of Evil by Martin Scorsese also found, as the only extra, on the Olive Blu-ray plus Arrow include some new supplements. An Autopsy on Capitalism is a 38-minute visual essay on the production and reception of Force of Evil by Frank Krutnik, author of In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre, Masculinity. He also does some excellent commentary on two selected Force of Evil themes by Krutnik running about 20-minutes in total. There are two fascinating radio programmes about 'Un-American Activity Witch Hunts' as addressed by Hollywood stars - each piece running about 1/2 hour plus an hour long Lux Radio Theatre broadcast of Body and Soul with Garfield. The package offers reversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Scott Saslow for all films and a hardback book featuring new writing on all the films by noir experts and critics including Michael Brooke, Andrew Spicer, David Cairns and Tony Rayns and others.

The whole Four Film Noir Classics Limited Edition package is fantastic - one of the best of the year. Noir aficionados should consider this Region FREE, 4 Blu-ray, set a must own! 

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ADDITION: Olive Films - Region FREE - Blu-ray - June 12':  This is quite a big jump over the less polished SD visuals. The 1080P image is brighter, with more layered contrast and appears significantly sharper. The HD transfer shows some pleasing grain and supports the films deft cinematography to a much higher degree. Olive Films add the original mono track in a clean lossless rendering and add a classy Scorsese discussing and extolling the film (with spoilers) citing it as an important work in influencing many of his works from Mean Streets to Raging Bull. I'm very pleased with how Force of Evil a/v has turned out on Blu-ray and give this important film package a strong recommendation.

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ON THE DVDs: The French Region 2 is horribly yellow/green, flat, dull, contrast boosted, has ghosting and is hazy... and to top it off it has forced French subtitles. It eclipses the Region one in Extras (not hard) but many of the features do not have English subs (and are with French audio). I don't see any extensive cropping on either issue. Notice the total time - this indicates that the Region 2 DVD was taken from a NTSC source and not converted before digitizing to PAL. So it will have inherent artifact problems as well as ghosting (see last capture).  Easy choice as the image on the Region 2 is so dreadful - Region 1 all the way!

One note: I do like the French cover a lot better!

- Gary W. Tooze