| Blood Simple | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Joel Coen |
| Written by | Joel Coen Ethan Coen |
| Produced by | Ethan Coen |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Barry Sonnenfeld |
| Edited by |
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| Music by | Carter Burwell |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by | Circle Films |
Release date |
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Running time | 96 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1.5 million[2] |
| Box office | $2.7 million[2][3] |
Blood Simple is a 1984 Americanindependentneo-noircrime film written, edited, produced and directed byJoel and Ethan Coen, and starringJohn Getz,Frances McDormand,Dan Hedaya andM. Emmet Walsh. Its plot follows aTexas bartender who is having an affair with his boss's wife. When his boss discovers the affair, he hires aprivate investigator to kill the couple. It was the directorial debut of the Coens and the first major film ofcinematographerBarry Sonnenfeld, who later became a director, as well as the feature-film debut of McDormand.
The film's title is derived fromDashiell Hammett's novelRed Harvest (1929), in which theContinental Op muses, "This damned burg's getting me. If I don't get away soon I'll be going blood-simple like the natives."[4][5] Stylistically, the film has been noted for its blending elements of neo-noir,pulp crime stories and low-budgethorror films.[6] In 2001, adirector's cut was released, the same year that it was ranked No. 98 onAFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills.
Texas bartender Ray and housewife Abby drive through a downpour at night, discussing Abby's bad marriage to Ray's boss, Julian Marty. They have sex at a motel. Loren Visser, aprivate detective, takes photos of the tryst and delivers them to Marty. When a caller informs the couple they are being watched, Abby grabs some belongings, including apistol Marty gave her. Ray goes to the bar to demand his back pay from Marty, who tells Ray that Abby will betray him as she did Marty, and when confronted will say, "I haven't done anything funny."
After a botched attempt to kidnap Abby, Marty offers Visser $10,000to kill her and Ray. Visser tells Marty to go fishing and he will call him when the job is done. Visser breaks into Ray's home and steals Abby's gun. He shows Marty photos of the murdered couple, one of which Marty secrets in his safe while retrieving the $10,000. Visserdouble crosses Marty and shoots him with Abby's gun. He drops the gun and grabs the money but forgets his cigarette lighter as he leaves.
It is revealed that Visser doctored the photos to appear that Abby and Ray had been shot. Ray discovers Marty's body, accidentally discharging Abby's gun when he steps on it. He cleans the crime scene, puts the gun in Marty's pocket and the body in his car. Marty is still alive, albeit barely. Ray begins to bury Marty in a shallow grave when Marty aims the gun and pulls the trigger three times, falling on an empty chamber each time. Marty screams as Ray takes the gun and finishes burying him.
The next morning, Ray tries to explain to Abby that he "cleaned it all up." Abby says, "I haven't done anything funny," which leads to an argument. Visser telephones but does not speak when Abby picks up. She assumes and tells Ray that it was Marty. Ray places her gun on a table as he leaves. Meurice, another bartender, tells Ray about a phone message Marty left regarding money stolen from the safe—Marty's cover for the $10,000 he paid Visser.
While burning the doctored photos, Visser realizes that Marty kept one, and that he left his lighter. His attempt to break into the safe is thwarted by Abby, who thinks Ray damaged the safe and realizes Marty might be dead. She has a nightmare of Marty warning her that Ray will kill her as well. She confronts Ray, who tells her Marty was still alive when he buried him.
Ray opens the safe and discovers the doctored photo. He goes to Abby's apartment to warn her. Visser kills Ray with a rifle shot from a rooftop across the street. Abby smashes her lightbulb and hides in the bathroom.
Visser enters the apartment and searches Ray for the lighter, and finds Abby has climbed out of the window into the next apartment. She stabs him with Ray's knife, pinning his hand to the sill. As she backs away, Visser empties his gun into the wall, then punches through it to remove the knife. Returning to her apartment, Abby picks up her gun and shoots Visser through the bathroom door. She says, "I'm not afraid of you, Marty," and Visser, lying wounded, laughs and responds, "Well, ma'am, if I see him, I'll sure give him the message."
After writing thescreenplay, the Coen brothers shot a preemptive dummytheatrical trailer forBlood Simple, which showed "a man dragging a shovel alongside a car stopped in the middle of the road, back towards another man he was going to kill" and "a shot of backlit gun holes in a wall."[8] The trailer featured actorBruce Campbell, playing the Julian Marty role, and was shot by recent film school graduateBarry Sonnenfeld.[9][10]
After completing the trailer, the Coens began exhibiting it with the hope of persuading investors to help fund a full-length feature film.[9] Daniel Bacaner was one of the first people to invest money in the project. He also became its executive producer and introduced the Coens to other potential backers. The entire process of raising the necessary $1.5 million took a year.[11]
Blood Simple was shot in several locations in the towns ofAustin andHutto, Texas, over a period of eight weeks in the fall of 1982. The film spent a year inpostproduction and was completed by 1984.[12]
Blood Simple was Frances McDormand's screen debut.[8] All Coen brothers films are co-produced and co-directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, although Ethan was credited as the sole producer and Joel the sole director until 2004. The Coens share editing credit under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes.[13]
WhileBlood Simple was only a modest box-office success, it was a huge critical success. It holds a 94% rating onRotten Tomatoes based on 111 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The critical consensus reads: "Brutally violent and shockingly funny in equal measure,Blood Simple offers early evidence of the Coen Brothers' twisted sensibilities and filmmaking ingenuity."[14]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 83 out of 100, based on 33 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[15]
Janet Maslin wrote: "Black humor, abundant originality and a brilliant visual style make Joel Coen'sBlood Simple a directorial debut of extraordinary promise. Mr. Coen, who co-wrote the film with his brother Ethan, works in a film noir style that in no way inhibits his wit, which turns out to be considerable." She cites a "long, late-night tracking shot from one end of the Neon Boot bar to another actually tracks along the surface of the bar itself—and when there is a drunk passed out on the bar, the camera simply lifts up and flies over him, then continues on its route."[16]
Pauline Kael called it "a crude, ghoulish story with thriller themes," but was effusive about the performance ofM. Emmet Walsh as Visser.[7]
Gene Siskel andRoger Ebert each gave it a positive review onAt the Movies.[17][18][19] In his review for theChicago Sun-Times, Ebert wrote: "A lot has been written about the visual style of “Blood Simple,” but I think the appeal of the movie is more elementary. It keys into three common nightmares: (1) You clean and clean, but there’s still blood all over the place; (2) You know you have committed a murder, but you are not sure quite how or why; (3) You know you have forgotten a small detail that will eventually get you into a lot of trouble."[20]
The film grossed $2.7 million worldwide.[2] Its first big public viewing was the USA Film Festival inDallas, followed by theSundance Film Festival, where it received the Grand Jury Prize. The brothers took the film to theToronto Film Festival, theCannes Film Festival, and the New York Film Festival. They were very proud of their film, particularly in light of having raised the funds using their self-made trailer.[21]
InThe Atlantic,Christopher Orr writes: "It all began here, and not merely for the Coens themselves.Blood Simple was the first feature starring Joel Coen’s soon-to-become wife,Frances McDormand; the first scored byCarter Burwell, who’s collaborated—often, as here, magnificently—with the Coens on all their subsequent scores; and the first shot by cinematographerBarry Sonnenfeld, who also worked on the Coens’ next two films before embarking on his own directorial career... It is no small miracle—and a testament to the Coens themselves—that so many exceptional talents connected so early in their respective careers."[4]
The film was referenced in a 1992 episode (Master Ninja II) of the cult satiricalsci-fi TV seriesMystery Science Theater 3000 as well as a 2017 episode ("Backfire") of the TV seriesDesignated Survivor.[25][26]
Some audio extracts of this film are used in the song "Quotation For Listening", byOn Thorns I Lay on their albumEgocentric, released in 2003.
The originalMCA Home VideoVHS tape andLaserDisc was released on October 10, 1985, with a 96-minute running time.[27] The film was released onUniversal Pictures Home Entertainment VHS for a second time in 1995 with a 99-minute run time.[28] Unusual for such an exercise, the "Director's Cut" is some three minutes shorter than the original 1985 theatrical release. The Coens reduced the run time with tighter editing, shortening some shots and removing others altogether. Additionally, they resolved long-standing rights issues with the music; the original theatrical version of the film made prominent use ofThe Four Tops' "It's the Same Old Song" (1965); the Coens had replaced it withNeil Diamond's "I'm a Believer" (1966) for the 1995 U.S. home video edition on VHS. The Director's Cut reinstated the Four Tops track.[29]
Universal Home Video released aDVD version of the film in 2001, and again in 2005 as part of a DVD box set titledThe Coen Brothers Collection. ABlu-ray edition was released in 2011 by20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.[30]
In 2016,The Criterion Collection released the film on Blu-ray and DVD, featuring a new 4K digital transfer supervised and approved by Barry Sonnenfeld and the Coens, along with various new special features.[6] In 2024, The Criterion Collection released the film on4K Ultra HD for the first time as a combo pack which includes the 2016 Blu-ray disc as well.[31]
| Original Motion Picture Soundtracks: Raising Arizona and Blood Simple | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Soundtrack album by | ||||
| Released | 1987 | |||
| Genre | Film score | |||
| Length | 39:26 | |||
| Label | Varèse Sarabande | |||
| Coen Brothers film soundtracks chronology | ||||
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| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [32] |
Carter Burwell wrote the film'sscore, the first of his collaborations with the Coen brothers.Blood Simple was also the first feature-film score for Burwell, and after his work on this film, he became a much-in-demand composer inHollywood.[33] As of 2024, he had scored sixteen of the Coen brothers' films.[33]
The score forBlood Simple is a mix of solo piano and electronic ambient sounds. One track, "Monkey Chant", is based onkecak, the "Ramayana Monkey Chant" ofBali.[34]
In 1987, seven selections from Burwell'sBlood Simple score were released on a 17-track album that also features selections from the soundtrack of the Coens' next film,Raising Arizona (1987).
Blood Simple selections on the 1987 album:
Other songs from the film that are not on the album:[1]
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Sundance Grand Jury Prize: U.S. Dramatic 1985 | Succeeded by |
