by Cecily Squier

Guest Writer

But what I know about is Texas, and down here... you're on your own. -- Private Detective in ``Blood Simple''

Film Arts! Saturday night! A movie that some of you have heard of (we hope)!

In the Coen Brothers' first film, ``Blood Simple,'' conventions of the film noir world of Sam Spade intersect with the interesting effects approach of the low-budget horror flick.

There's the two-timing wife, the private dick hired to track her and the cuckolded husband with less-than-pure motives. As far as the horror aspects, it's best not to ruin the surprises ahead of time. Suffice to say, there are things that will strike horror-film enthusiasts as familiar ground. Again though, it is not a straight-ahead scary movie.

Shot in and around Austin, TX, the film gains from the locale a little of the hick ambience of ``Texas Chainsaw Massacre'' (filmed there 12 years earlier). The Coens' fascination with places and the weirdoes who live there, a theme throughout all of their films, started with an admittedly easy target: Texas.

Later they would take on the Upper Midwest, Hollywood and the Deep South. The Coens had previously worked with the low-budget horrormeister Sam Raimi, of the ``Evil Dead'' series. ``A Simple Plan,'' his first mainstream effort, shows the mutual benefits of that early collaboration between them.

The film features Frances McDormand, Dan Hedaya and M. Emmet Walsh. Marty (Hedaya) owns a roadhouse bar that's turning a fair profit, but not through entirely legal avenues. His young wife, Abby (McDormand), is running around on him with one of Marty's employees, Ray. Marty hires Loren Visser (Walsh) to track Abby, and then to dispose of her and her lover. Twists, deceit, and luck, both good and bad, abound throughout the story. As a sort of preface to the some films of the nineties, none of the characters are good, or are trying to do good. Those that survive are not better people, or smarter or faster, nor do they possess any superlative human qualities. Some of them get your sympathy for one reason or another, but there's never a clear reason to root for any of them.

Most of the Coens' other films have some sort of workable socio-political commentary that can reflect a buried, frustrated idealism. ``O Brother Where Art Thou'' takes place within a gubernatorial race; ``Raising Arizona,'' easily their happiest film, abounds with images and dialogue intent on exposing some of the reasons `lower classes' do what they do. ``Barton Fink'' is a clear-cut religious allegory, differing from their other films, but the spiritual side of humanity does influence our existence as social beings. ``Blood Simple,'' by contrast, is just that: simple.

The version being shown on Saturday is the directors' cut that was released last year. Of all things, this is actually shorter than the original. Usually a director's cut is a sort of unnecessary, long-winded stepchild to the movie you saw in the theatre, useful only to the true believers.

This version of Blood Simple, however, is prefaced with a narrator explaining how after a while, the directors decided to step in and make it ``less boring.'' They also remastered the audio and got the whole thing in stereo, a luxury not afforded to them with the miniscule budget they originally had for the film.

Back to the main point: Film Arts Committee will be showing this film on Saturday night in the Commons Lecture Hall at 8:03. There will be free Fish House coffee, and a discussion afterwards as usual.