Another great review. Thanks very much, Cas.
I'm glad that you mentioned Alabama's sunglasses. I'd read a few rumours that video quality on the new UHD was very good and the thing that I was most looking forward to, visually, was seeing what they looked like on-screen. The new UHD didn't disappoint. I've always loved those glasses but the previous home media releases didn't do (or couldn't do) them justice. But I was very much wowed by the new release. They have never looked so realistically metallic and that turquoise blue really pops. A fantastic video presentation finally does True Romance justice.
I've loved True Romance since the very first time that I saw it. I'm probably the perfect age for this film, which is perhaps the greatest Generation X movie of them all. Me and my friends had all very much enjoyed Reservoir Dogs when it was released in 1992, when I was 22. We were excited when we learnt that the film-maker, Quentin Tarantino, had written the script for Tony Scott's new film. What a pairing that was. The director of arguably the most visually appealing films of the 90s teaming up with a young film-maker who embodied all the pop culture references and in-jokes that Generation X had grown up with.
One of my friends was lucky enough to go on holiday with his girlfriend to California in late summer 1993 and when he got back, he couldn't stop sing the praises of True Romance. Our little group was all stoked to see it after, so when it was released in the UK a few weeks later, we booked tickets to go see it in Leicester Square the weekend of release. It didn't disappoint and I've been a huge fan ever since and True Romance has sat easily in my top 5 movies since.
That winter we went back-packing in Thailand for a few months. In Bangkok I bought a pirate copy of True Romance on VHS that became my most prized video. It was uncut, in a letterbox format and had an outstanding video quality. Much better than most legal VHS releases of any films. The official True Romance VHS, when it eventually came out, was cut and only pan and scan. A few months later, I lent the VHS to one of my mates who, inexplicably, taped over it with a few episodes of Eastenders. I was absolutely livid, and from that day on I have never lent any of my VHS, DVD, Blu-ray or UHD to anyone ever again. Just not worth the risk as a film buff and AV enthusiast.
In 2016, I visited Los Angeles for the first time with two friends (one of them the mate who first saw True Romance in California back in 1993) and we visited many classic and cult film locations as part of our trip. From Laurel & Hardy to Blade Runner to Halloween to Point Break to Brian De Palma's Body Double, it was a dream for a life long film buff. As we were all True Romance fans, we visited a few of the filming locations, although many of them are no longer there. I've attached a photo that I took of the cinema where Clarence and Alabama first meet watching the Sonny Chiba marathon. Although that scene is set in Detroit, the exterior shots were filmed at the Vista Theatre in the Los Feliz area of LA. The steam coming out of the pavement was a special effect to make it look like cold, wintry Detroit. We also rented an apartment in Beachwood Canyon partly because that's where Dick and Floyd's Apartment is meant to be located.
It was just fantastic watching the new True Romance UHD last weekend. I hadn't watched the blu-ray for about 5 years previously and despite knowing the film inside-out it was so enjoyable watching the eye-popping new transfer.