![]() ![]() The film has a great start, is fresh-looking and engaging and likable for most of its runtime. Movie Teacher" spiels to Erika - who couldn't care less, but has been now exposed to a few Matheson adaptations, including a couple of Twilight Zones and The Legend of Hell House - I realized that she had never seen I Am Legend, a film that I have come to think of as a disappointment and wasted opportunity (I wrote about it here, giving it a better review than I recall having done, but my dominant impression of the film since has been one of "meh"). This is definitely a worthy upgrade.Įven more exciting: having gone, prior to sitting down to Duel, on one of my "Mr. Keep an eye out for the face of a young Spielberg in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, reflected in the phone booth when Weaver is trying to call the police at the Snake-a-rama. Like every cut of the film, it feels a little padded at 89 minutes, and makes me wonder what the original 74 minute long broadcast version would play like (one scene apparently added to flesh it out for theatrical release, involving a stalled school bus, is perhaps my favourite scene in the film, but some of the filler, like a conversation between Mann and his wife, feels exactly like that: filler). ![]() But though the film (shot in 1971, and released theatrically in 1972) was originally shown in a 1:33 aspect ratio, the theatrical cut - which was used as the basis of the Blu - looks superb, was prepared with Spielberg's involvement, and presents much better on a flatscreen than the old DVD ever could. I had considered playing it for Erika before, but it would have been my full-frame, standard-defintion DVD. I hadn't realized that Steven Spielberg's first film, Duel - based on a Richard Matheson story in which a lone car driver squares off against a giant truck, driven by an unseen madman set on his destruction - was available as a widescreen hi-def Blu-Ray, until stumbling across it at Sunrise Records the other day, for a mere $11.99. ![]()
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