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The Postman Always Rings Twice [VHS] [1981]
 
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The Postman Always Rings Twice [VHS] [1981]

VHS ~ Jack Nicholson
3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Actors: Jack Nicholson, Jessica Lange, John Colicos, Michael Lerner, John P. Ryan
  • Directors: Bob Rafelson
  • Writers: David Mamet, James M. Cain
  • Producers: Bob Rafelson, Andrew Braunsberg, Charles Mulvehill, Michael Barlow
  • Format: PAL, Widescreen
  • Language English
  • Classification: 18
  • Studio: Warner Home Video
  • VHS Release Date: 18 May 1998
  • Run Time: 116 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B00004CWC2
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 11,491 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
In The Postman Always Rings Twice, Jack Nicholson teamed up again with his Five Easy Pieces and King of Marvin Gardens director Bob Rafelson for this 1981 version of James M. Cain's hardboiled novel of lust and murder. This version takes a much grittier (and sexually explicit) approach to the material than the slick 1946 MGM version starring John Garfield and Lana Turner. Nicholson plays Frank Chambers, a drifter who happens upon a roadside diner run by Cora Papadakis (Jessica Lange) and her swarthy Greek husband, Nick (John Colicos). Sparks fly, and before you can say l'amour fou, Frank and Cora are making the beast with two backs on the kitchen table. One thing leads to another and they conspire to murder Nick. The movie is still a little too cold and distant to fully convey a hot-blooded passion that leads to murder, but it is a strangely haunting and disturbing film nevertheless. The screenplay is by David Mamet, the photography is by the great Sven Nykvist (Ingmar Bergman's cinematographer), and watch for Anjelica Huston in a supporting role. --Jim Emerson

Synopsis
A drifter falls for a woman married to a Greek man. The couple plot his murder.

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Average Customer Review
3.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars You can't do a Film Noir in colour, 30 Jul 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: The Postman Always Rings Twice [VHS] [1981] (VHS Tape)
At the time of its release this film attracted considerable notoriety for its explicit sex-on-the-kitchen table scene. Apart from that, this is a pretty unmemorable film, although it's hard to fault the performances of either Jack Nicholson or Jessica Lange. You could put it down to a lack of 'chemistry' between the two stars, but in my opinion it's simply that a story such as this deserves to be told in moody black-and-white.

In the early 1980's there was a minor Hollywood craze for remaking classic 'film noir' movies from the late 1940's. This film (like 'Cat People', whch came out at about the same time) was not a bad film, but its main achievement was to remind everyone how good the original film was.

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6 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Underwhelming, 28 Feb 2004
By Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: The Postman Always Rings Twice [DVD] [1981] (DVD)
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1981) serves as a cautionary lesson to anyone who's considering renting or buying a film on the strength of its starring leads, and then proceeds to plunk down pounds after asking the rhetorical question, "With that cast, how bad can it be?"

Jack Nicholson is drifter Frank Chambers, who washes up in a rural roadhouse run by Nick Papadakis (John Colicos) and his too young (for him) wife, Cora (Jessica Lange). The time is the 1930s, and the place somewhere in the coastal mountains between Los Angeles and San Francisco. After Chambers is employed by Nick as a mechanic in the outpost's garage, Frank and Cora soon ignite a spark of mutual lust that eventually spreads into a conflagration of betrayal, attempted murder, murder, violent sex, insurance company venality, blackmail, and bad driving.

There's a good story here somewhere, so how did it go so badly wrong? Most damaging, there's no likable character for the audience to champion. Nicholson's character is as sleazy and vicious as any role he's ever done. Cora, married to an unsuitable older man for reasons we never learn, initially gains some audience compassion, perhaps. But then, after she demonstrates a cold-bloodedness worthy even of Frank, I ceased sympathizing with the character. Of the lot, only Nick is blameless, but he's such an old fool that it's hard to care.

The supporting cast is no better. The award for Worst Performance In A Negligible Role (Female) has to go to Anjelica Huston as Madge, a lion tamer and manager of a traveling wild cat show, who sports a goofy accent and hairdo worthy of Natasha (of "Boris and Natasha" on the old Bullwinkle TV series). The same award for a male actor is due William Traylor as Sackett, the Los Angeles DA out to nail our heroic couple.

There are only three reasons to view this film. First, if you're a diehard Nicholson fan. I'm not. Second, if you're a diehard Lange fan. I am. But, while she's undeniably gorgeous and indulges in tempestuous sex that would make my Mom blush and fuels my personal fantasies, prurient interest isn't enough to carry the day. Lastly, the scenery surrounding the roadhouse is beautifully pastoral.

I haven't seen the 1946 release of THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, nor do I intend to because Jessica isn't in it. This 1981 version is over-acted, over-scripted, under-edited, and implausible. It's just silly in a lurid sort of way.

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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars The more I watch this film the more I am compelled to admire it., 16 Aug 2008
By Basiledes (North Wales) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Postman Always Rings Twice [DVD] [1981] [Region 1] [NTSC] (DVD)
This is not the sort of film I like to watch and the first time I saw it it left a bad taste in my mouth and even made me bad-tempered. Except for the sex scene in the kitchen that is. That left me feeling awe and admiration. I was convinced from the start that here was one of the finest things ever seen on film - a ten minute work of art in itself, comparable, on different grounds, to anything that Manny Farber had ever singled out from it's context.
Since then I have been compelled to admire the sheer craftsmanship with which the film is put together - it's tone, texture, pace, editing, acting, everything.
Anyone reasonably versed in literature could hardly fail to recognise that this is a re-working of 'Macbeth' and 'Therese Raquin' with the new background for the Tragedy of 30's America. And this is a Tragedy but it is not so much a tragedy of particular individuals, we feel, as a tragedy, somehow, of humanity in general. Well actually I think I know a little of how that 'somehow' works: it's down to that sex scene in the kitchen and it's sheer human/godlike mixture of weakness/grandeur which achieves the sort of grand pathos that 'Gladiator' aims for in the early battle scene and it's 'musical conclusion'. That scene, I mean the one with Lange and Nicholson, lingers with us for the rest of the film as they go through the all too fallible and human consequences of that experience.
The film still leaves me with a bad taste in the mouth but I now accept that as part of the truth of this film. Now it leaves me slightly perplexed as to how to place this film in my personal scheme of things.

Perhaps I should mention that this DVD is an old release and not in a wide-screen ratio and so cannot be seen in it's full integrity. Resolution suffers of course when watched in wide screen zoom mode. Buy it anyway. Prove that your good taste needed to be at least partially satisfied with what is available for the time being. We can look forward to it's eventual presentation in it's full vividness and intensity on BluRay.
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