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Blood Simple (1984)

Starring John Getz, Frances McDormand, Dan Hedaya, and M. Emmet Walsh.  Cinematography by Barry Sonnenfeld.  Edited by Roderick Jaynes and Don Wiegmann. Produced by Ethan Coen.  Written by Joel and Ethan Coen.  Directed by Joel Coen.

Set in the blistering heat of Texas, a series of poor decisions and assumptions sends four characters down a complicated and deadly path. Ray (played by John Getz) and Abby (played by Frances McDormand) are having an affair.  Abby’s husband, Julian (played by Dan Hedaya), finds out about it and hires Loren (played by M. Emmet Walsh) to kill them.

But instead of killing them, Loren doctors up some photos of the two in bed together to look like they have been murdered. He presents the photos to Julian and after being paid for his work he shoots him in the chest and leaves him for dead. Well he’s not quite dead, but any further details will ruin the fun.

Blood Simple is virtually the definition of independent filmmaking.  Joel and Ethan Coen wrote the film while living in New York in the early eighties, but with little to no film experience there was no way that a film production company would front the money for them to shoot it, regardless of how good it was.  So with script in hand they moved back to Minneapolis to live with their parents while they tried to find money.

Inspired by Sam Raimi’s method of raising of raising funds for his feature film debut, The Evil Dead, the Coen’s rented a camera and shot a three minute trailer of their script.  They presented their trailer to potential investors in Minnesota, New Jersey, and Texas with the offer of a limited partnership. With checks slowly coming in at ten to twenty thousand dollars at a time, it took about a year for the Coens to finally come up with the one and a half million it would take to shoot their film.

Blood Simple was heavily influenced by the writings of hard boiled crime novelists James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler.  The somewhat ambiguous title of the film is actually a reference to a line in Hammett’s Red Harvest.  Hammett says that after you kill someone you “…go soft in the head – blood simple. You can’t help it. Your brains turn to mush.”

The Coen brothers wanted to take that style of noir and put it in a modern context, something that was completely original in it’s time.  It didn’t spoof, feature, or reinvent the genre; it just fell right in line with noir classics like The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity.  Of course the Coens wanted to make a good film, but they are still surprised at the levels of appreciation for their project.  They have said that they never intended to make an art film; they were just shooting for an entertaining B-movie. But despite their humility, the film was an enormous critical success and was one of the major contributors in the independent film movement in the eighties.

Budget: $1,500,000

Total US Gross: $2,150,000

Genre: Film Noir

Runtime: 97 Minutes

US Release Date: 1/18/85

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Awards:

Sundance Film Festival:
Won the Grand Jury Prize. 

American Film Institute’s Top 100 Lists:
100 Years… 100 Thrills (#98).

Tagline: Dead In The Heart Of Texas.

Quote: “If you point a gun at someone, you'd better make sure you shoot him, and if you shoot him you'd better make sure he's dead, because if he isn't then he's gonna get up and try to kill you.””

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