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Film by FFWD Staff Blood Simple starring M. Emmet Walsh, Frances McDormand and John Getz directed by Joel and Ethan Coen Opens Friday, August 25 Plaza Theatre Blood Simple is one of those rare, unforgettable movies that has too many great moments to really pick one as a favourite. It was the first feature film by Joel and Ethan Coen, and the talent they burned to make it provided only a glimmer of the brilliance they’d achieve later on in films like Barton Fink, Miller’s Crossing and Fargo. Still, those subsequent films all have their roots in Blood Simple, a masterful debut by any estimation, and a film that very much deserves the cosmetic restoration it recently enjoyed to bring it up to the Coens’ standards for a theatrical re-release. It is a pleasure to see this film back in theatres, just to witness M. Emmet Walsh’s misanthropic Texan private dick in all his wheezy, ruddy-faced, hayseed glory, coming on like Orson Welles’s Hank Quinlan with a hangover and an overabundance of conventional wisdom. But for all the similarities between the two characters, Quinlan, as a cop who trusted hunches over evidence, was still in some respects a toady for justice, while Walsh’s gumshoe is just a greedy scumbag who’s still too much of a coward, or a moralist, to play both ends against the middle in the name of personal prosperity. It may be only a supporting role but Walsh’s wise-cracking detective is central to this tale of mistrust, betrayal and murder in rural Texas. The story concerns Ray (John Getz), a roadhouse bartender who’s screwing around with his boss’s girlfriend (Frances McDormand). The boss, played by Dan Hedaya, is a remarkably schleppy loser with a mean streak, who doesn’t lie down and die all that easily, though. Enter Walsh’s character, who the bar owner pays $10,000 to kill the adulterous flies in his sweaty ointment. It all goes to hell from there, and pretty soon you wonder whether any of these bumblers can stay out of the fire long enough to save their own skin. It’s a pretty standard noir set-up, but even in their first film, that trademark Coen deadpan comedy and those subtle sight gags were already on display. It’s amazing what can be done with some venetian blinds and different coloured gels for the lights, and the Coens milk all the tension from their surprisingly funny script using many noir motifs, and show off their familiarity with the genre even as they transform it into something distinctly their own. Joel Coen really does some amazing things with very little light in this movie, and the final sequence in McDormand’s loft apartment is probably the most noteworthy. Peppered as it is with homages to Hitchcock, and even Charles Laughton’s Night of the Hunter, you’ll never forget the conclusion of Blood Simple for Walsh’s piercing howl, his famous last words, or the look on his face as the last drip drops.

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