SOUTHERN COMFORT (1981) Dir: Walter Hill BLU-RAY REVIEW

One of my All time favourite film directors is Walter Hill, he created the buddy genre with his brilliant 48 Hours in 1982 and he directed one of my all time favourite films, Streets Of Fire, so there's a lot of love from Mr. Hill here at Cine-Apocalypse. Our U.S based reviewer, Shawn Francis has managed to get a look at Second Sight's upcoming U.K blu-ray of Hill's 1981 Vietnam allegory, Southern Comfort. Check out Shawn's review after the jump...

Written By Shawn Francis

Walter Hill’s SOUTHERN COMFORT is but one of many movies I saw during the early 80s when our family first got HBO, and another cable channel called, Spotlight. I grew up on science fiction and horror movies, but once I had access to cable, I pretty much watched anything that came on. Hill’s movie obviously made an impression because I still remember it.

The plot is simple, nine men from the Louisiana National Guard venture into the bayou for routine maneuvers, but when one of their own pulls a cruel prank on some of the local Cajuns, they turn homicidal and begin hunting down and killing the Guardsmen one by one.

Like with most groups bound together by tragic circumstances you always have the somewhat level headed (aka the ones that’ll live, at least, till the end), here’s there’s two, Spencer (Keith Carradine) and Hardin (Powers Boothe); your outright douchebags (aka the one(s) that kick off the tragic circumstances), again, there are two, but only one, Stuckey (Lewis Smith), who pulls the cruel prank that essentially gets them all killed, with dickhead, Reece (Fed Ward) justifying everything that comes after as being the Cajuns fault; the red herring of a hero, Poole (Peter Coyote), who could probably have gotten most of them out of alive had he not been the first one targeted to die; your mentally unstable(s), Bowden (Alan Autry/Carlos Brown), who makes things infinitely worse at some point, then mentally shuts down and becomes dead weight later on, and Sims (Franklyn Seales), who doesn’t lose it as badly, but dies anyway; the one who gets promoted but is totally ineffectual as the new leader, Casper (Les Lannom), and finally the comic relief, sort of, Cribbs (T.K. Carter).

As you can tell by the names up there this is one of those rare movies where most, if not all, of the principal actors have gone on to major stardom. As I got reacquainted with this film I thought, ‘Hey there’s REMO WILLIAMS (1985), Perfect Tommy from THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZIA (1984), bad guy, Cash Baily, from EXTREME PREJUDICE (1987), that dude who was the deputy on that TV version of IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1988-1995), Dexter from SILVER SPOONS (1983-1987), Nauls from Carpenter’s THE THING (1982), and Keith Carradine and Peter Coyote whom I have seen in a shit load of movies. About the only actor I haven’t seen before, or since, despite the long list of appearances on his IMDB page, is the dude who played Casper.

Even the Cajun hunters have a couple of famous faces, Brion James (BLADE RUNNER, THE HORROR SHOW) and Sonny Landham, (Billy from PREDATOR), who I didn’t recognize, only finding out he was in it when I looked at the cast list on IMDB.

This is also one of those movies where you can see both sides of the issue. You totally understand why the Cajuns are picking off the Guardsmen, but unfortunately sometimes revenge doesn’t consider the individuals, just the whole, and in this case, even though only one, or two, of the Guardsmen really deserves to die, the entire squad is targeted with extreme prejudice; the “innocents” being judged guilty because of simple association. At least, James, at one point is able to see past this and give Spencer and Hardin a fighting chance.

The ending has always perplexed me. I have no idea if Carradine and Boothe survived. I seem to think they should have, but the baffled looks on their faces before the movie fades to black hints at a darker kind of ending.

The 1.85:1 anamorphic blu-ray transfer was excellent looking. There’s only one extra on this disc, a 44:23 minute interview with Walter Hill titled, ‘Will He Live Or Will He Die: Walter Hill On Southern Comfort,’ that’s broken into seven chapters (The Last Patrol, The Swamps, A Displaced Western, The Actors, Cajun Culture, The Music and The Job Of The Director) which covers various aspects of the movie. Since Hill chose not to do a commentary, this interview is the next best thing, in my opinion.

At one point there used to be an anamorphic US DVD in circulation but it’s long been discontinued, until it gets re-released here in the States, for fans of this film, I recommend searching out this UK blu-ray, or the standard DVD, from Second Sight Films.