Blu-ray, DVD Release: Riot in Cell Block 11

By
Laurence
– January 22, 2014Find Others: Blu-ray, DVD, Movie, New Release, NewsGet More: , , ,

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: April 22, 2014
Price: Blu-ray/DVD Combo $39.95
Studio: Criterion

Riot in Cell Block 11 movie scene

Prison justice is dispensed in Riot in Cell Block 11.

Early in his career, Don Siegel (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Private Hell 36) made his mark with 1954’s Riot in Cell Block 11, a sensational and high-octane low-budget film noir crime drama set in a maximum-security penitentiary.

The brainchild of producer extraordinaire Walter Wanger (Foreign Correspondent), the hard-hitting film is a ripped-from-the-headlines social-problem picture about prisoners’ rights that was inspired by a recent spate of uprisings in American prisons.

In Siegel’s hands, the movie is at once brash and humane, showcasing the hard-boiled visual flair and bold storytelling for which the director would become known and shot on location at Folsom State Prison, with real inmates and guards as extras.

Criterion’s Blu-ray/DVD Combo edition of the film contains the following features:

• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New audio commentary by film scholar Matthew Bernstein
• Excerpts from the director’s 1993 autobiography, A Siegel Film, read by his son Kristoffer Tabori
• More!
• One Blu-ray and one DVD, with all content available in both formats
• A booklet featuring an essay by critic Chris Fujiwara, a 1954 article by co-producer Walter Wanger, and a 1974 tribute to Siegel by filmmaker Sam Peckinpah

Buy or Rent Riot in Cell Block 11
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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.