Two 1985 films from Oscar winning directors have been given 4K UHD plus Blu-ray releases.

Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, long available only on an old bare bones Warner Bros. DVD, makes both its 4K UHD and Blu-ray debut from the Criterion Collection.

This dark comedy follows a computer operator (Griffin Dunne) from New York’s upper east side who makes a date with a girl (Rosanna Arquette) that he meets in a coffee shop on the worst night of his life.

First, he loses all his money as it flies out of the taxicab taking him to the girl’s SoHo loft. The date is a disaster from which he has one bad thing after another happen to him before the night comes to an end.

Among the many denizens of the night that he crosses paths with are Teri Garr, Verna Bloom, John Heard, Catherine O’Hara, Cheech & Chong, and Bronson Pinchot.

Scorsese was at a low point in his career when he made the film. His last film, The King of Comedy, was panned by the critics and ignored by the public. The Last Temptation of Christ, which had been in pre-production, was cancelled, and no one would touch Gangs of New York at that point.

After Hours proved to be an unexpected hit, receiving awards recognition from BAFTA, the Independent Spirit Awards, and the following year’s Cannes Film Festival at which Scorsese won Best Director. His career rebounded with 1986’s The Color of Money, 1987’s resumed production of The Last Temptation of Christ, and 1990’s GoodFellas. Gangs of New York would eventually get made as well.

Extras on the Criterion release include new interviews with Scorsese, Dunne, and others.

William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. was misunderstood by the critics and largely ignored by the public in its initial release. It became a cult favorite in the wake of more modern gangster films like Heat ten years later. It was previously released on DVD in 2003 and on Blu-ray in 2016. Friedkin’s commentary from 2003 was imported for the Blu-ray release and is imported once again for Kino Lober’s 4K UHD release.

Friedkin did not want name actors to play the various Secret Service and FBI agents and master counterfeiters in the film. William Petersen, who plays the lead Secret Service agent, was found by Friedkin’s casting director in a Toronto production of A Streetcar Named Desire in which he was playing Stanley Kowalski. Petersen suggested fellow Chicago based actor John Pankow for the role of his partner. The still relatively unknown Willem Dafoe was brought in to play the expert counterfeiter. John Turturro, Dean Stockwell, Robert Downey Sr., Christopher Allport, and Dwier Brown have featured roles.
Extras on the Blu-ray are imported the Shout! Factory Special Edition of 2016. They include interviews with Petersen and Pankow, and the film’s controversial discarded alternate ending introduced by Friedkin.

King Lorber has four more new-to-Blu-ray releases, one of which was also directed by Friedkin and one of which is introduced by Scorsese.

Friedkin’s 1997 TV version of 12 Angry Men is based on a 1950s teleplay which was the source material for Sidney Lumet’s Oscar-nominated 1957 film version about a lone juror who slowly convinces the other eleven men on the jury to acquit the kid on trial for murder.

Friedkin’s version received multiple Emmy nominations including Best Made-for-TV Movie, Director, Actor (Jack Lemmon) and two Supporting Actors (George C. Scott, Hume Cronyn). Scott and the film’s score won. Many think this version is superior to Lumet’s version in which Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, and Joseph Sweeney had those roles.

Daniel Petrie’s 1997 TV version of Inherit the Wind is based on the Broadway play that was a fictionalized version of the 1925 Scopes Trial in which legendary liberal attorney Clarence Darrow and three-time conservative presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan argue the case of a schoolteacher on trial for the crime of teaching evolution in the deep south.

Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott had the roles played by Spencer Tracy and Fredric March in Stanley Kramer’s 1960 classic. Lemmon in Tracy’s role and Beau Bridges in Gene Kelly’s supporting role of a hotshot reporter were nominated for Emmys.

Some prefer the new version but whether you watch one or both, one thing is clear. What seemed to be something about an event that was deep in the past when the 1960 version came out, seems frighteningly current in today’s political climate.

Scorsese introduces Abraham Polonsky’s 1948 crime thriller, Force of Evil which was a major influence on his early films, most notably Mean Streets.

John Garfield stars as a lawyer caught up in the numbers racket. Beatrice Pearson as his girl, Thomas Gomez as his brother, Marie Windsor in full femme fatale mode, and Paul Fix as a vicious gangster co-star.

Writer-director Polonsky was blacklisted shortly after the film was released. Although he made a living writing under assumed names during the McCarthy era and later managed to get writing assignments under his own name, he did not direct another film until 1969’s Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here.

Previously released on Blu-ray some years ago, the film was given a 4K restoration by Paramount, UCLA, and the Film Foundation. Film Historian Imogen Sara Smith provides commentary.

Film Historian Glenn Kenny’s commentary from an old DVD of 1971’s The Anderson Tapes is the only extra on the first U.S. release of the film on Kino’s Blu-ray.

The non-stop thriller stars Sean Connery, fresh from years of playing James Bond, as an ex-con behind an ingenious heist. Dyan Cannon, Martin Balsam, Christopher Walken, and Alan King co-star. Judith Lowry and Margaret Hamilton steal their portion of the film.

Happy viewing.