Vinegar Syndrome announced this past week that May 31 will be the street date for a newly-minted 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack edition of director Michael Winner’s 1982 vigilante thriller, Death Wish II, starring Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland.
This is a new 4K film restoration from the 35mm original camera negative, and included with this release is the alternate television broadcast version (a new 2K scan from the film’s interpositive).
Following the enormous success of Winner’s 1974 Death Wish, Bronson was in high demand and starred in a series theatrical hits, including Breakout (1975), Breakheart Pass (1976) and Telefon (1977), and then he hit something of a rough patch and so the time was right for a sequel to Death Wish.
What general audiences didn’t know is that Michael Winner’s film adaptation of Brian Garfield’s 1972 novel was not exactly what Garfield had envisioned. In his mind, Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) was not a hero, but once he went on his revenge killing-spree he became something of a mentally-deranged psychopath.
With the sequel in the works, Garfield’s follow-up script was rejected … no, no, no, Kersey is a hero, not a psychopath, so producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus bought the rights to the character and that was that!
The action shifts to Los Angeles, but even with the sunny landscape and things looking up for Kersey — a new love interest (played by Jill Ireland) — the horrors of New York City find their way west and once again he is on a revenge-filled mission to take out the trash!!
Bonus goodies include commentary with author and film historian Paul Talbot and a quartet of production featurettes — “Pass,” “Working with Bronson,” “Dark Parts” and “Fights in the Theater.”
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