calling card for its director and a key entry in the hip crime wave of the late 1990s, this ferocious adaptation of the novel/comic 59 Degrees and Raining: The Story of Perdita Durango by Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart) went through countless distribution 
and legal transformations on its way to the U.S. three years later. As jittery and confrontational as director (and onetime comic book artist) Álex de la Iglesia's previous two films, Accion Mutante and Day of the Beast (long before he went on to projects like 30 Coins and Witching and Bitching), this gritty and very effective blend of brutal crime antics and dark comedy finds its creator honing his craft thanks to a sharp script partially written by Gifford himself. 
more sensitive roles in Jamón Jamón and Live Flesh. Aimee Graham (yes, Heather's sister) plays one of the hostages and is clearly game for whatever the script throws at her, while supporting roles include some surprising faces like British director 
and spaghetti western enthusiast Alex Cox. Incidentally, the characters of Perdita and Santos also appeared in both the novel and film of Wild at Heart, which means you can program this as a kind of odd semi-sequel to the David Lynch film. 
beautiful anamorphic transfer; the only debit is the English subtitles must be manually switched on and off during the Spanish language scenes or left on for the film’s entirety. The Dolby Digital mix 
for either version is a real room shaker, with the thunderous Latin-flavored score simmering from every speaker throughout the film. The U.S. disc features optional English subtitles which turn on by default for the Spanish language sequences, as well as a Spanish subtitle option. The original excellent European and Mexican trailers are included, as well as the less impressive video trailer (which "introduces" Bardem for some reason). The German disc also includes optional German subs, a photo gallery, cast bios, and the German and English language trailers, as well as a striking cover. A more stripped-down U.K. version eventually turned up complete from Metrodome after some BBFC wrangling during the original release, and an Italian DVD straggled along later as well. 
saturated, comic-style colors and frequently heavy contrast) with some extreme focus shifting and intentional softness in some parts of 
the frame, so that's not a debit of the transfer. The Blu-ray is no slouch either, sporting richer colors than the Spanish disc and also looking less processed by comparison. The framing shifts a bit throughout by comparison on the horizontal edges, but only to a very minimal degree. The standard English track is presented in a very robust DTS-HD MA 5.1 mix with English subtitles for the Spanish-language scenes, plus English SDH subtitles and an alternate Spanish track (also DTS-HD 5.1). Both the UHD and Blu-ray contain two trailers, with the Blu-ray housing the rest of the bonus features. In "On the Border" (28m12s), de la Iglesia looks back on the film from its inception (originally to be directed by Bigas Luna with a heavier political bent) through the process of scouting and then shooting, including some fun stories about the cast (with some choice bits about Gangolfini and Cox). "Writing Perdita Durango" (16m43s), Gifford explains the process of how the story came out of his "dark subconscious" after Wild at Heart with the Perdita character necessitating her own book, a process that led to his involvement in ushering it to the big screen with a friendship forming with Luna (who brought in 
Bardem, of course) and the interim also leading to a potential directing job for 
Pedro Almodóvar. Interestingly, he also notes how going back and adhering closely to the book may have been a mistake in the long run, and he shares an interesting peek in how the most memorable song in the film came about. In "Dancing with the Devil" (12m57s), Rebekah McKendry waxes enthusiastic about de la Iglesia's cinema and how this film fits in with his unusual, frequently violent genre-twisting approach. "Necrosatanicos: Perdita Durango and the Matamoros Cult" (18m14s) with Abraham Castillo Flores and Cauldron of Blood author Jim Schutze is quite illuminating as it examines how real religious practices were distorted into a real, notorious 1989 crime fueled by black magic and drug use that influenced the storyline. It's a wild, disturbing story complete with some video coverage of the actual incident. Longtime genre favorite composer Simon Boswell turns up in "Canciones de Amor Maldito" (21m13s) to relate how his early work for Dario Argento and Michele Soavi led to him getting the gig on this film, with a trip to Madrid leading to the creation of the effective score. His bit about the reasoning behind that very familiar Herb Alpert tune is great, too. Finally, "Shooting Perdita Durango" (4m54s) is a quick chat with director of photography Flavio Labiano about approaching the shooting conditions in Mexico versus the United States. Severin Films (Blu-ray)
Mercury Film (Blu-ray)
