The Deer Hunter (Legacy Series Edition) (DVD)

The first time I saw Deer Hunter was a couple of years ago on DVD and let me tell you the quality was crap, so when word was announced that Universal was adding the feature to their first wave of Legacy Series DVDs I couldn't help but crack a little smile.

The Deer Hunter very much deserves special treatment as it ranks up there with the best in terms of Vietnam war stories. Back before Robert De Niro thought he was a comedian he made real films and for those of you that have only seen him in such shitty pictures as Meet the Parents and Analyze This, it is now time to step into the light. Granted if you haven't seen him in Goodfellas, Godfather II or Heat then you have a lot of work to do, but always remember to add Deer Hunter to that list. On top of De Niro's performance you get an early piece of tremendous work turned in by Christopher Walken. While Walken's comedic tenure is far better than De Niro's this is a performance that proves Walken has just as much range as De Niro ever had, without the amount of fan fare.

While this 1978 classic can now be seen with completely remastered audio and video it is a bit unfortunate that the special features included are so lousy, I am honestly not sure why they gave it a two disc release, I am sure one would have been enough.

Aside from the film itself this DVD comes with a painful audio commentary with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and film journalist Bob Fisher and a collection of deleted and extended scenes. The commentary is absolutely brutal as it pretty much relies on Fisher asking Zsigmond questions throughout and some of them range from such important questions as, "Was that bar real?" Then there is the extremely observational comment, "That church is really pretty." Sorry, I didn't make it through 30 minutes of this crap and there was no way I was sticking with it for over three hours.

As for the deleted and extended scenes, correct me if I am wrong, but I believe these were on the earlier DVD release. I am pretty sure I remember them because there are really only three scenes featured, most shown through a couple of different camera angles. While they are actually not that bad, they really aren't new.

All that said, you may think I am beating this one down, but I am really not. The first release of Deer Hunter on DVD was of such bad quality this is a welcomed release. It would have just been nice if such a classic film had received some better treatment in the way of special features. As a simple suggestion, this one really would have benefit from a DTS track.

Overall, if I were to rank the first three releases in Universal's Legacy Series (To Kill a Mockingbird, The Sting, Deer Hunter) DVDs Deer Hunter would come up last, but considering it offers up our first high quality edition of the film I can't complain, it is a must own.