Forty Guns

1957, Region B

TAGLINE:

''Notorious Jessica Drummond leading her 40 thieves to hit the west like a Texas Tornado''

SYNOPSIS:

One of the very best films by the uncompromising American director Samuel Fuller (also: one of the very best, and most iconoclastic, Westerns ever conceived) was also a mid-career triumph for the brilliant Barbara Stanwyck. Forty Guns finds Fuller at the height of his game.

Jessica Drummond (Stanwyck, with her iconic night-nurse babyface) is avatar of the consummate Brooklynite, transplanted here to the dusty crags of the West Cochise County, Arizona, to be precise where as a wealthy landowner she exerts a powerful influence over town affairs and commands a league of some ''forty guns'' to enact her will. The appearance of interloper Griff (a character name that recurs throughout all of Fuller s body of work, embodied this time by Barry Sullivan) precipitates Jessica s domain s slide into chaos...

Originally intended by Fuller to be titled The Woman with a Whip, Forty Guns represents an apex of Twentieth Century Fox s filmmaking while the studio era still shone. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Forty Guns on Blu-ray and DVD for the first time in the UK in a special Dual Format edition.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• Audio interview with Samuel Fuller from 1969 at the National Film Theatre in London
• Video interview with film critic Jean-Louis Leutrat
• Theatrical trailer
• A booklet featuring new writing by Stephane Joudet, an extract from Samuel Fuller's autobiography, and rare archival imagery