in 1960s British cinema thanks to his kitchen sink 
realism classic Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, director Karel Reisz wasn’t exactly the most prolific filmmaker around but was definitely worth checking out each time he released a new film. His brief transition to Hollywood in the 1970s only resulted in two films, starting with 1974’s The Gambler with James Caan and continuing with 1978’s Who’ll Stop the Rain, which lifts its title from one of the familiar Creedence Clearwater Revival songs on its soundtrack. Based on the award-winning novel Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone (who co-authored the screenplay with Judith Rascoe), a title retained on some prints, the film is part of a string of films in the second half of the '70s dealing with the fallout of Vietnam and was largely overshadowed by two big award-winning productions that same year, The Deer Hunter and Coming Home. Instead this one takes an action thriller approach to a certain extent, putting it closer to the company of films like Cutter's Way and Rolling Thunder that frame the experiences of vets damaged by the war within a pulpier context. What sets this film apart is the compelling cast with an unbeatable set of pros at its center, doing some of the most potent work from this era of their careers and giving the film a sense of gravity that helps it linger in the memory. 
and destruction around him. When an opportunity presents itself to smuggle a large cache of heroin to San Francisco 
into hands of his wife, Marge (Weld), who can broker its sale, Converse enlists the aid of merchant marine sailor Ray Hicks (Nolte). Upon returning from the war, Ray isn't sure who he can trust as he finds his possession of the heroin putting him in the cross-hairs of multiple interested parties including Antheil (Zerbe), a DEA agent who's far from an upstanding lawman. Suffering from an addiction of her own to Dilaudid, Marge ends up going on a journey with Ray as he tries to find a way out of a predicament that seems to be circling ever tighter around him. 
work in Play It As It Lays and had just gotten an Oscar nomination for Looking for Mr. Goodbar, both films 
still tragically MIA at the moment. Of course, the always colorful Moriarty is never less than compelling and definitely comes off less eccentric here than his later work in the '80s, perfectly cast as a onetime straight arrow bent by the circumstances around him into a totally jaded cynic.
as well as an analysis of how the film tackles the idea of America dealing with the moral rot that had set it over the preceding decade (at least). As with nearly all MGM-connected commentaries subjected to the studio's legal team, this appears to have suffered from some obvious trims in a few spots (an 
early mention of Apocalypse Now cuts off very abruptly into a bit of dead space, for example), and amusingly, a couple of references have already dated (such as the now former location of Amoeba Records in Hollywood and a mention of the "deceased" Wings Hauser, who turns up briefly here alongside a very young Jonathan Banks). Three new featurettes are included here starting off with actor Richard Masur (11m56s), who explains his own working relationship with Stone, the true meaning of the source novel's title, and his later reunion with Nolte on Under Fire. Speaking of which, that latter film's director, Roger Spottiswoode (who also went on to Terror Train and Tomorrow Never Dies), turns up next for an interview (13m55s) in which he recalls serving as an associate producer on this film and being taken under Reisz's wing at the time after working as an editor for Sam Peckinpah. He also shares plenty of stories from the shoot, including memories of Nolte's impassioned dedication to the project and his character. Last up in screenwriter Judith Rascoe (12m), who chats about her own connection to Stone and her familiarity with the real-life scene involving writer Ken Kesey that inspired a large portion of the book. She also goes quite a bit into the writing process, which involved compressing the book down as much as possible while retaining all the dialogue they could. The theatrical trailer is also included in SD along with bonus ones for Trackdown, 9/30/55, Rollerball, Hell Camp, The Dogs of War, and, uh, The Norseman.