Arrow Video, with domestic sales and distribution expertise provided by MVD Entertainment Group, has new double-disc Blu-ray edition of director Ridley Scott’s 1985 fantasy adventure, Legend, slated for release on Sept. 28.
Starring Tom Cruise, Tim Curry and Mia Sara, Arrow Video has assembled for this release both the theatrical cut and the director’s cut of Legend, which clocks in at 114 minutes.
This was a troubled period for filmmaker Ridley Scott. He had become a brand name with the 1979 release of Alien, but the Dune project blew-up (eventually taken over by David Lynch) and so he turned to Blade Runner and more or less got stuck for a couple of years.
Reports are that he had wanted to do a fairytale adventure and kept coming back to it, eventually hooking up with writer William Hjortsberg, whose books caught Scott’s attention and so he asked him to craft a screenplay based on Scott’s ideas.
Numerous revisions took place, but finally Ridley Scott was back in the director’s chair in March of 1984 at the Pinewood Studios just outside of London. It is here that elaborate sets had been constructed on several soundstages and by late June most of the filming had been completed. However, during a meal break, the “forest” set caught fire and was destroyed … sections had to be rebuilt at another studio to complete the sequences.
The troubles continued when then head of Universal Pictures, Sidney J. Sheinberg, ordered Scott’s version of the film trimmed to just 94 minutes and all of composer Jerry Goldsmith’s musical score was dumped in favor of more “commercial” material from, are you ready, Tangerine Dream.
Jerry Goldsmith, during his long and distinguished career, was nominated 18-times for Oscars, which is exactly 18 more than Edgar Froese and his Tangerine Dream.
When the film opened theatrically in April of 1986, roughly two years after production began, critics did not quite know what to make of it. Alien and Blade Runner and now this, a fairytale adventure with The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s Dr. Frank-N-Furter, Tim Curry, as the Lord of Darkness and a not-quite-established star, Tom Cruise, as Jack o’ the Green, an unlikely hero who must save Princess Lili (Mia Sara in her film debut) from the Lord of Darkness and his evil minions.
Rob Bottin, of The Howling and The Thing, did receive an Oscar-nomination for his Lord of Darkness makeup … and, ironically, Tom Cruise would become a Hollywood star the following month, May of 1986, with the opening of Top Gun, which was directed by Ridley Scott’s brother, Tony Scott.
As to bonus features, first, as mentioned, there are two cuts of the film. The theatrical cut and the Director’s Cut (which features the music of Jerry Goldsmith).
The theatrical cut on disc one has commentary from Paul M. Sammon, author of “Ridley Scott: The Making of His Movies,” the new featurette titled “A Fairytale in Pinewood,” the vintage featurette titled “Incarnations of a Legend” and the 2003 documentary, The Directors: Ridley Scott.
The director’s cut disc includes commentary from Ridley Scott, documentary filmmaker J.M. Kenny’s 2002 film, Creating A Myth: Memories of Legend, an alternate opening, a deleted scene and two drafts of William Hjortsberg's screenplay.
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