RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK: 4K UHD Blu-ray re-issue (Paramount, 1981) Paramount Home Video
Today, the George Lucas brand is
primarily known for two enduring film franchises: Star Wars
(1977-present) and Indiana Jones (1981-present). While the first film in
this latter franchise – 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark – remains
undeniably, its best, the retrospective demonization of 1984’s Indiana Jones
and The Temple of Doom is largely unwarranted, while the third and fourth
installments - part 3’s ironically titled, Indiana Jones and the ‘Last’
Crusade (1989), and, much delayed, but eventually released Kingdom of
the Crystal Skull (2008) are but wan ghost flowers, riding the coattails of
that elusive spark of creative genius that so dominated the first two efforts.
1981 was an interesting turning point in Hollywood lore, the industry still
reeling from Michael Cimino’s $40 million belly flop, Heaven’s Gate, to place
the once venerable United Artists on the auction block. Virtually all the seemingly indestructible
titans in the American film biz had either teetered or were teetering on the
brink of extinction. Warner Bros., purchased outright by corporate leviathan,
Kinney – a mortuary company in 1969, was in corporate influx. MGM officially
closed its doors, following a hostile takeover by Vegas financier, Kirk
Kerkorian. Thanks to its diversification into television and theme parks,
Universal kept its corporate operations as a picture-making company. Ironically,
Paramount, to have suffered its’ fallow slump in the mid-60’s, was resurrected after
the studio was acquired by mega-oil and gas giant, Gulf + Western, reluctantly
to appoint actor come mogul, Robert Evans as its CEO. Under Evans’ tutelage,
Paramount did a complete about-face, courting bankable stars and directors,
and, producing home-grown product to make it the envy of this survivor’s list.
A handful of movies released
alongside Raiders of the Lost Ark also bear brief mention, if only to
comparatively asset the competition. There was the curiously antiseptic
melodrama, Absence of Malice, made by Sydney Pollack for Columbia (on
the brink of its own renaissance), Uni’s darkly purposed horror, An American
Werewolf in London, WB’s adult comedy, Arthur, UA’s Blow Out,
an edgy thriller from Brian De Palma, the indie-made (but distributed thru
Warner Bros.) Chariots of Fire – to take home the lion’s share of
Oscars, Condorman, and, The Devil and Max Devlin, the Walt Disney
company’s two bizarre forays into the adult live-action market, director, Sam
Raimi’s independently made, shot on a shoestring, and, utterly bone-chilling
horror, The Evil Dead and Paramount’s sincerely blundered thriller, The
Fan – sporting a high-quality cast but precious little else, resulting in a
botched gumbo of missed opportunities. UA bounced back with another installment
in the perennially popular James Bond franchise, For Your Eyes Only,
Universal made the sick little slasher, The Funhouse with Tobe Hooper,
and the fundamentally flawed Ghost Story, headlining a waxworks of
one-time greats - Fred Astaire, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Melvyn Douglas and John
Houseman.
Horror was big, as Rick Rosenthal’s
incredibly faithful sequel, Halloween II, managed to rekindle the chills
of the John Carpenter original. Uni and Sylvester Stallone teamed for a sizable
hit with the terrorist-themed, Nighthawks, Hollywood legend, Henry Fonda
marked an end to his career and life on a high note: the heartfelt, On
Golden Pond for ITV opposite another legend of the old home guard,
Katharine Hepburn, with whom, even more incredibly, he had never worked before,
while Steve Martin attempted a Fred and Ginger-esque homage in the costly, but
poorly received Pennies from Heaven. Warren Beatty made an epic – Reds.
George Cukor, dusted off an old Bette Davis/Miriam Hopkins’ melodrama, Old
Acquaintance, for co-stars, Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen – the
almost as good, Rich and Famous. Cinema’s goodie-two-shoes, Julie
Andrews bared her breasts for hubby, Blake Edwards’ silly little sex-farce S.O.B.,
and Bo Derek showed her more than perky rack, though not much else, clinging to
a rippling Miles O’Keeffe in the ill-fated reboot of Tarzan the Ape Man.
So, to suggest there was nothing
quite like Raiders of the Lost Ark on Hollywood’s radar in 1981 is an
understatement. Spielberg’s desire to revive and elevate the classic B-grade action/adventure
yarn that captured his boyhood imagination, was, ironically, just what was
needed. Initially turned down by
virtually every major studio, the film that introduced audiences to the uber-rugged
archaeologist/fortune hunter, Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark was
the quintessential B-serial, adding considerable cache to Spielberg’s already
impressive canon. It’s too easy to consider Raiders a Spielberg
picture, as it was actually begun under George Lucas even before he had
finished penning the script to Star Wars (1977). Alas, the idea for this
fantasy/adventure set in WWII languished as fertile fancy until Lucas took a
much-needed vacation to Hawaii. Meanwhile Spielberg had purchased the rights to
an unrelated screenplay by Philip Kaufman. Although this project would never
reach fruition, upon being asked by Lucas to direct Raiders,
Spielberg remembered how much he appreciated Kaufman’s prose and hired him to
outline the story concept for this film. In the final phase of its
pre-production, writer, Lawrence Kasdan was brought in to polish off the
dialogue.
The name Indiana actually belongs
to Lucas’ dog – a Malamute that also served as Lucas’ inspiration for Chewbacca
in Star Wars. Although Spielberg concurred with Lucas that Indiana was a
fine first name, Lucas’ choice of ‘Smith’ left Spielberg cold and was
eventually changed to ‘Jones’. Tom Selleck was Spielberg’s first choice to play
the lead after Lucas resisted casting Harrison Ford yet again. Ford had
previously appeared for Lucas in American Graffiti (1973) and then, even
better, as the hotshot flyer, Han Solo in Star Wars. Mercifully,
Selleck’s CBS iron-clad commitments to TV’s Magnum P.I. precluded his
involvement. So, Lucas rather begrudgingly fell back on Ford as his second
choice. With skyrocketing costs at home, England’s Elstree Studios would serve
as the primary production house, with cast and crew moving to Hawaii, and
later, Tunisia for exteriors. Only two years before, Elstree had been the scene
of a devastating fire to ravage its backlot during the shooting of Stanley
Kubrick’s horror classic, The Shining (1980). Hence, in a planned
sequence for Raiders, where Marion Ravenwood’s (Karen Allen) bar
is burned to the ground, Spielberg made extensive personal assurances to the
executives that his policy would be ‘safety first’. Flame retardant was liberally
sprayed everywhere with firemen standing by, extinguishers drawn, to ensure no
such disaster occurred on his set. In Tunisia, whole portions of the city had
their television antennas removed so Spielberg could lens wider vistas from
Sallah’s (John Rhys-Davies) rooftop apartment. Today, this same feat would have
been accomplished by a little digital scrubbing in a computer software program
during post-production. Spielberg would later admit the Tunisian shoot was
among the most challenging of his entire career – buffeted by stifling heat and
a virulent bout of food poisoning to level everyone except Spielberg who had
had the good sense to import all his food from England.
Raiders of the
Lost Ark opens large, in the Mayan jungles where Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford)
has just recovered an ancient golden idol from a trap-infested temple. However,
his harrowing conquest is diffused when rival archaeologist, Rene Belloq (Paul
Freeman) arrives to claim the prize as his own, having bribed the natives with
trinkets to do his bidding. Barely escaping with his life, Indy returns to
Oxford University where he is approached by FBI agents who express interest in
his knowledge of the Ark of the Covenant, the final resting place for the
tablets Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. Whoever possesses the ark commands
an army that cannot be defeated. Hence, Adolph Hitler’s intense fascination to
possess it. Indy agrees to go in search of the ark. His first stop is a remote
snowbound Tibetan village, home to his old friend, retired archaeologist, Abner
Ravenwood. Unfortunately, Abner has died leaving Indy to grapple with his
daughter - embittered ex-lover, Marion, now the sole heir of Abner’s meager
estate. Indy’s primary interest is in an ancient medallion with curious
markings. He tries to get Marion to give him this artifact. But she refuses
him. She is next approached by Nazi Maj. Arnold Toht (Ronald Lacey) who will
not take 'no' for an answer. Mercifully, Indy has not gone very far. In the
resulting brawl, Marion’s inn is burned to the ground and she angrily declares Indy
has just acquired a new partner on his expedition. Toht attempts to retrieve
the medallion from the flames, but is scalded by the heat. He is forced to flee
with only half of its inscription burned into his flesh.
Indy and Marion travel to Cairo
where Belloq is presently excavating with information gleaned from Toht. As Indy
possesses the medallion, he can more accurately locate the ark from its ancient
map room. Belloq learns of Indy’s alternate excavation site and entombs him and
Marion in a snake-infested burial chamber, claiming the ark for Hitler. After
some perilous moments, Indy and Marion escape and are reunited with Sallah who arranges
passage for Indy and Marion aboard smuggler, Katanga's (George Harris) rusty
ship. But the Nazis have tailed them across the sea in a U-boat and take the
ark and Marion hostage to a remote island where Belloq is determined to unleash
its power. Aware that to open the ark means death to all who look upon it, Indy
instructs Marion to shut her eyes. Belloq, Toht and the Nazis are consumed in
an unearthly firestorm of demons and lightening, a searing white shaft of
ominous light parting the clouds before the ark seals itself shut. In
Washington, Indy tries to get the FBI to agree to let him study the ark. He is
told by one of its bureaucrats (Bill Reimbold) the FBI has their top men
working on it. As Indy storms out of their offices, accompanied by a
sympathetic Marion, we cut away to a vast warehouse in the National Archives.
The ark, sealed in an unmarked crate, is pushed on a dolly by a lonely
attendant into an unidentified stack, presumably doomed to become just another
forgotten relic expunged from the annals of history.
Raiders of the
Lost Ark is undeniably a grand entertainment. In 1981, there was decidedly
nothing like it. And even, when considering some of the more fanciful adventure
yarns of yore that Hollywood had produced throughout the 1950’s, Spielberg’s
effort had surpassed virtually all of them by a mile. Easy to see why. In
Harrison Ford, Spielberg and Lucas had an incredible ‘good luck’ charm; Ford’s
casual, yet careworn demeanor, coupled with his relative youth, creating an
amiable and iconic lone wolf, whose devil-may-care sexual proclivities while a
campus educator, became half-realized, despite his dashing demeanor as the
whip-toting alter ego known as Dr. Jones. Under Spielberg’s aegis, Raiders
weaves its rich and fantastic tapestry of the macabre and the sacred into
a sort of pseudo-'religious experience', albeit with Nazis, serpents and a
little sex feathered in for good measure. John Williams’ operatic orchestral
underpinnings and Douglas Slocombe’s breathtaking visuals achieve a sense of
the miraculous and terrifying. The picture moves like gangbusters, with the
ferocity of a jungle cat or careening pleasure of a carnival dark ride. In the
end, all the pieces come together to create move magic of the highest order.
I’ll just go on record to suggest
that a 4K reissue of all of the Indiana Jones’ movies sold separately some 5
years after Paramount already made the entire franchise available in a neatly packaged
box set (still readily available, and with bonus content not featured herein),
is a pretty silly marketing move on the studio’s part, and rather shamelessly
meant to merely capitalize on the upcoming 5th installment in the
franchise due out this year. Raiders of the Lost Ark in 4K here is the
same as it was 5 years ago. Is this a good thing? Yes – as Paramount’s data
transfer and remastering efforts then were – and remain – state-of-the-art. Image clarity and crispness are remarkable. The
UHD contributes much to these proceedings. Slocombe’s visuals have never looked
better. Dolby Vision advances color
saturation to the nth degree, while offering much to black level saturation. Fine
details pop. The Dolby Atmos mix here is incredible – bringing forth all of virtues
in the folie effects and score. Granted, Raiders hails from an epoch
when sound mixes were not so ‘in your face’. But the quiescent moments are
nicely folded into the set pieces where the sound field opens up to create an
exhilarating and immersive experience.
Extras are limited to
trailers only – a genuine shame. Bottom line: one of the finest adventure
movies of all time looks exquisite in UHD 4K. But it already did, 5 years ago.
If you already own the Indiana Jones franchise in 4K, you can pass here without
regrets.
FILM RATING (out
of 5 – 5 being the best)
5++
VIDEO/AUDIO
5++
EXTRAS
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