Annal: 1985 Sundance Film Festival —Dramatic
Results of the Sundance Film Festival in the year 1985.
Blood Simple
- 1985 Sundance grand jury
- 1986 Edgar–Video nominee
- Score: 16.36
The debut film of director Joel Coen and his brother-producer Ethan Coen, 1983’s Blood Simple is grisly comic noir that marries the feverish toughness of pulp thrillers with the ghoulishness of even pulpier horror. (Imagine the novels of Jim Thompson somehow fused with the comic tabloid Weird Tales, and you get the idea.) The story concerns a Texas bar owner (Dan Hedaya) who hires a seedy private detective (M. Emmett Walsh) to follow his cheating wife (Frances McDormand in her first film appearance), and then kill her and her lover (John Getz). The…