Gun Crazy (Collector's Box Blu-ray + DVD + Book)

Limited Collector’s Edition

By Joseph H. Lewis – With Peggy Cummins, John Dall, Russ Tamblyn

Bart has always been fascinated by firearms. Returning to his hometown after years away from his family, he meets Laurie, a star sniper at a carnival show, and falls head over heels in love. But, determined to live comfortably, Laurie will drag Bart into a series of increasingly daring robberies…

BOTH MYTHICAL AND LITTLE-KNOWN, THE MASTERPIECE OF FILM NOIR BY JOSEPH H. LEWIS IN ITS DEFINITIVE EDITION

For an extraordinary film, extraordinary treatment: the book contained in this box set tells in an incredibly detailed and documented way, over a period of ten years, the tortuous genesis of GUN CRAZY. Because before becoming a pretext for the tour de force of director Joseph H. Lewis, GUN CRAZY was a card to play by the improbable King brothers at Monogram in their quest for respectability as legitimate producers in Hollywood.

But the story goes back even further, to February 1940, when the then-popular writer MacKinlay Kantor’s short story, Gun Crazy , appeared in the mainstream weekly The Saturday Evening Post. The saga continues with the novelist’s tortuous and improbable collaboration with the former bootleggers, with the film having to be shot at one point in Kantor’s hometown of Iowa, with him behind the camera.

But it was mainly thanks to Frank King’s vision and perseverance that GUN CRAZY became the radical and hard-hitting film we know: first by hiring (under the table) the skilled blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, then by taking advantage of Joe Lewis’s departure from Columbia to secure his services. These were decisive in more ways than one in making GUN CRAZY a breakthrough film (both in style and content) that would influence Godard and the New Wave; but Eddie Muller’s book proves without a doubt that Lewis was working on crucial foundations owed to others – something that has never been addressed in detail by any historian or critic of the film until now.