Search - Badlands

"He wanted to die with me and I dreamed of being lost forever in his arms." A young couple goes on a Midwest crime spree in Terrence Malick's hypnotically assured debut feature, based on the 1950s Starkweather-Fugate murders. Fancying himself a rebel like James Dean, twentysomething Kit (Martin Sheen) takes off with teen baton-twirler Holly (Sissy Spacek) after shooting her father (Warren Oates) when he tries to split the pair up. Once bounty hunters discover their riverside hiding place, Kit and Holly head toward Saskatchewan, leaving dead bodies in their wake. As the law closes in, however, Holly gives herself up -- but Kit doesn't hold it against her, as he basks in his new status as a momentary folk hero. Inaugurating the use of voice-over narration that he would continue in Days of Heaven (1978) and The Thin Red Line (1998), Malick juxtaposes Holly's flat readings of her flowery romance-novel diary prose with the banal and surreal details of their journey. Singularly inarticulate with each other, Kit and Holly are more intrigued by mythic celebrity gestures, as Holly peruses her fan magazines and Kit commemorates key moments before orchestrating a properly dramatic capture for himself (complete with the right hat). The sublime visuals lend a dreamlike beauty to the couple's trip even as their actions are treated casually; Malick neither glamorizes Kit and Holly nor consigns them to the bloody end of their fame-fixated predecessors in Bonnie and Clyde (1967). With the couple's opaque dialogue and Holly's fanzine dream narration, Malick further denies an easy explanation for their crimes. Made for under 500,000 dollars, Badlands debuted at the 1973 New York Film Festival, along with Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, and was released within months of two other outlaw-couple road movies, Steven Spielberg's The Sugarland Express and Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us. Although Badlands did not make an impression at the box office, its pictorial splendor and cool yet disquieting narrative established Malick as one of the most compelling artists to come out of early-'70s Hollywood. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Martin Sheen - Kit Carruthers
Sissy Spacek - Holly Sargis
Warren Oates - Mr. Sargis, Father
Alan Vint - Deputy
Ramon Bieri - Cato

1975

Film Presented ()

Venice International Film Festival

Terrence Malick

Terrence Malick's startlingly assured debut, Badlands, comes to DVD with a widescreen transfer that preserves the original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and a standard full-frame 1.33:1 image. Malick is an exceedingly visual director, making the inclusion of the full-frame image completely superfluous. A closed-captioned English soundtrack is rendered in Dolby Digital 5.1, while a French soundtrack has been recorded in Dolby Digital Mono. Subtitles are available in those two languages as well. There are no extra features on this disc. Hopefully one day a deluxe version of this classic will see the light, but until then this acceptable, if less than thrilling, release will have to suffice. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

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18	Bugsy (R)
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8	Missing (PG)
28	Rebel Without a Cause
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24	Lawrence of Arabia [Limited Edition] (PG)
3	The Wild One (NR)
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2	Rollercoaster (PG)
8	Broadway Danny Rose (PG)
22	The Outlaw Josey Wales (PG)
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7	The Big Red One (PG)
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23	Easy Rider [30th Anniversary Special Edition] (R)
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8	Duel [Collector's Edition] (PG)
1	The Art of Dying (R)
97	Thelma & Louise [Widescreen] (R)
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3	The Boys Next Door (R)
34	Smokey and the Bandit (PG)
19	Midnight Run (R)
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11	The Gauntlet (R)
2	Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (R)
3	The Wild One (NR)
3	They Live by Night/Side Street (NR)
2	Backtrack (R)
33	The Texas Chainsaw Massacre [1974] [Special Edition] (R)
10	Smokey and the Bandit II (PG)
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7	Cadence (PG-13)
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4	Days of Heaven (PG)
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6	The Sicilian (NR)
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1	Pocket Money (PG)
9	The Final Countdown (PG)
17	The Wild Bunch (R)
4	Ride the High Country (NR)
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These movies cover the same subjects as Badlands...
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3	Targets (R)
4	Starkweather (R)
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11	In Cold Blood (R)
44	Kalifornia [Special Edition]
S	Pretty Poison (R)
5	The Sugarland Express (PG)
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41	True Romance [Widescreen/Fullscreen]
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14	A Perfect World (PG-13)
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