This version or the remake with Lee Marvin?
I loved the remake, but I pick this version. A classic.
"What daring! What outrageousness! What insolence! What arrogance!... I salute you."
The original is far, far better, though the remake has some good points (primarily Lee Marvin and director Don Siegel) and is watchable. Certainly the remake (intended as a TV movie, but ultimately decreed to be too violent) is much better than the awful Double Indemnity TV movie made a few year later. The real downfall of the remake is its low TV production values and--far worse for a film noir--its garish 1960s TV colors. And while it hurts this liberal Democrat to admit, Ronald Reagan was actually pretty good in the remake, his last film role and (I think) his only out and out villain.
shareI rented both from Netflix, in order to see the remake. I finished the original and I must admit that so far it looks better than the remake. I thought the remake would be like Point Blank, but it's production values are way cheesy.
Poets are made by fools like me, but only God can make STD.
Agree that the 1964 version is good, but the 1946 one is much superior - an acknowledged classic of American cinema in general, and film noir in particular, which raises the question:
why does the only DVD version that I have seen (from Criterion Collection) is a double-film DVD, with the 1964 version given the most prominence: it's on the first disc, the cover says "The Killers directed by Don Siegel" and includes a picture of Lee Marvin but none of Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner???? Is Criterion confused as to which version is the classic here? As a result, they're not the only one: I was flipping through the pages to the Rolling Stones magazine's pick of 1000 DVDs, and was at first glad that they picked the The Killers, but then realized they were talking about the 1964 film from the Criterion Collection double disc; the reviewer even makes a comment along the lines "oh yeah, and the DVD also includes the 1946 version which is pretty good too"!!!??
why does the only DVD version that I have seen (from Criterion Collection) is a double-film DVD, with the 1964 version given the most prominence: it's on the first disc, the cover says "The Killers directed by Don Siegel" and includes a picture of Lee Marvin but none of Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner???? Is Criterion confused as to which version is the classic here?
No. Look at it again.
First of all, there is no "first disc". The 2 DVDs are not labeled 1 and 2, they're labeled 1946 and 1964.
Secondly, *both* "Directed by Robert Siodmak" and "Directed by Don Siegel" appears on the front cover, with Siodmak's credit being at the top and Siegel's being at the bottom.
Third, promotional images from both versions appear on the cover. The 1946 B&W image both covers a larger area of the cover and is on top.
The only issue might be that Lee Marvin's face is on the cover and the 1946 cover image does not include any faces. Then again, no single character dominates the 1946 version to the degree that Marvin dominates the 1964 version. Plus, the cover is consistent in that the images from both movies depict the hired killers that set everything in motion. share