New Release: Once Upon a Time in the West Blu-ray

Once Upon a Time in the West movie scene

Henry Fonda is bad to the bone in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West.

Director Sergio Leone’s glorious and acclaimed 1969 western Once Upon a Time in the West made its Blu-ray debut on May 31, 2011, from Paramount Home Entertainment.

If you’re a diehard Leone fan like me (Once Upon a Time in America baby!), you’ve got to be pumped about this movie’s release. I personally can’t wait to see the opening sequence — one of the greatest in movie history — in glorious high-definition. And my wife says she’s psyched to check out bad ass Henry Fonda’s baby blues rendered in Blu-ray.

The Once Upon a Time in the West Blu-ray carries a list price of $19.95.

All the extras from Paramount’s 2003 2003 Collector’s Edition DVD of the film were ported over to the Blu-ray. Here’s a complete list of what’s on there:

  • restored feature film (165:49 min.)
  • theatrical feature film (165:10 min.)
  • commentary with contributions by directors John Carpenter (Escape From L.A.), John Milius (Conan the Barbarian) and Alex Cox (Searchers 2.0), film historians Sir Christopher Frayling and Dr. Sheldon Hall, cast and crew
  • featurette “An Opera of Violence”
  • featurette “The Wages of Sin”
  • featurette “Something to Do With Death”
  • featurette “Railroad: Revolutionizing the West”
  • featurette “Locations Then & Now”
  • production gallery
  • theatrical trailer

Paramount issued three other westerns on Blu-ray on May 31: Big Jake (1971), the Richard Harris (The Field) starrer A Man Called Horse (1970) and Rio Lobo (1970), the last film directed by the great Howard Hawks (Bringing Up Baby).

 

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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.