Day of Anger

[MichaelB]

Tonino Valerii's 1967 spaghetti western has been confirmed as an upcoming Arrow release via a recently-discovered postcard.

[chatterjees]

Its weird that this postcard (the original poster) also depicted Lee Van Cleef as THE UGLY. I have never seen this film, but now very excited for this Arrow release. Arrow needs to release more westerns and war films. I hope that they have got a lot of them from MGM. I hope that one day Arrow will also release Giulio Petroni's Death Rides a Horse (1967), underrated gem starring Cleef and with a great music score by Morricone.

[antnield]

Artwork:

[MichaelB]

Specs announced:

Day of Anger

Pre-order the UK edition of Day of Anger here
North American pre-order will be up soon.

Release Date UK: 30th March 2015
Release Date North America: 31st March 2015
Format: Dual Format Blu-ray + DVD
Starring: Lee Van Cleef, Giuliano Gemma, Walter Rilla
Directed by: Tonino Valerii

Synopsis: When Sergio Leone turned Lee Van Cleef into a major star with For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the actor sensibly stayed in Italy to make several more spaghetti westerns, including this one from Leone’s former assistant Tonino Valerii that genre aficionados rank amongst the best ever made.

Giuliano Gemma plays street cleaner Scott Mary, relentlessly bullied by the people of the small town of Clifton. When legendarily ruthless master gunfighter Frank Talby (Van Cleef) rides into town, Scott seizes the opportunity to lift himself out of the gutter, and possibly even surpass Talby’s own skills. But what is Talby doing in Clifton in the first place?

This lively, intelligent western, notable for the chemistry between its charismatic leads, some memorable action set-pieces (including a rifle duel on horseback that has to be seen to be believed), and a jazzy Riz Ortolani score, is presented here in an exclusive high-definition restoration from the original Techniscope negative.

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:
- Brand new restoration of the original 35mm Techniscope camera negative
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation of both the Italian and International versions of the film
- Original uncompressed mono audio
- Newly translated English subtitles for Italian audio and optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for English audio
- Brand new interview with screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi
- An interview programme featuring archival interviews with director Tonino Valerii and a newly recorded interview with his biographer, Roberto Curti
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Reinhard Kleist
- Booklet featuring new writing on the film by spaghetti western expert Howard Hughes, illustrated with original archive stills

Region: AB/12
Duration: 114 mins (Italian version)/86 mins (International version)
Language: Italian/English
Subtitles: English SDH
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audio: 2.0 PCM
Colour
Discs: 3
RRP £19.99
UK Release Date 30th March
MSRP $39.95
US Release Date 31st March

[MichaelB]

To add to the specs above, I can now confirm that both cuts will be presented in English, with an Italian-language option for the longer cut. All three soundtracks will come with English subtitles (for translation or HOH, where appropriate).

We also decided to present the Tonino Valerii and Roberto Curti interviews as separate items, and have added a selection of trailers. There's also something that we're calling a "deleted scene", although it was only actually deleted from the longer cut of the film - for some reason, it's present in the shorter cut. There's no question that its removal was deliberate (the cutting is too frame-precise for it to be an accident), so we resisted the temptation to splice it back into the longer cut - the Wild East DVD did do this, but they didn't offer the shorter cut as an alternative viewing option.

[MichaelB]

Blu-ray.com gives full marks for picture quality.

[MichaelB]

And the Beev says "What a brilliant Blu-ray package."

[MichaelB]

DVD Talk:

Nearly every Spaghetti western released so far on Blu-ray stateside has passed through my hands, and I'm sorely tempted to say that Day of Anger is the best looking of them all. Newly transferred from the original Techniscope negative, this presentation is dazzlingly detailed and exceptionally well-defined. Day of Anger is so crisp and colorful that its most impressive moments look as if they belong to a production decades more recent than this.