Last December, Turner Classic Movies aired Fear And Desire, the rarely seen debut feature film from auteur Stanley Kubrick, and there was the unstated assumption that at some point the restored film would make its way to home video. Well, that assumption will become a reality on October 23, when Kino Lorber releases the film on DVD and blu-ray.
Fear And Desire is not a film that Kubrick was especially proud of. Shot independently with a skeleton crew, the film was met with mixed reviews. Kubrick would later refer to it as a “a bumbling amateur film exercise” and would try to quash or at least limit any screenings of the film in later years. He was even rumored to have bought prints of the film with the express intent of destroying them.
The restoration of the film comes courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Given that a catastrophic DVR crash cost me my opportunity to see this movie last year, I am looking forward to the upcoming release. And even the sting of no apparent supplemental materials being mentioned in Kino’s press release is soothed by the fact that the film is finally readily available.
