THE WILD BUNCH Blu-Ray Review

Available to purchase at MovieZyng.com

2025 Blu-Ray Release

Review by Roy Frumkes

I crossed paths with Robert Culp around the turn of the century, and we instantly hit it off because of our love for the film THE WILD BUNCH. He was also pleased that I’d seen HICKEY AND BOGGS, his feature film directorial debut, and that I actually had questions about it.

Culp was so taken with THE WILD BUNCH, and with its dangerously unhinged director, Sam Peckinpah (with whom he clearly had an unresolved love/hate relationship), that he spoke to me in hushed tones whenever he invoked the film.

When, somewhat suicidally (though I didn’t see it coming), I questioned one scene—where Edmond O’Brien’s character does a little war dance out in the desert—by likening it to a similar moment in John Huston’s TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, Culp, feeling suddenly betrayed, immediately severed what little friendship we’d built up over the reverence we shared for the 1969 movie. I only spoke with him one more time, on the phone, about where his comp copies of the magazine should be sent.

It was just one more indicator that I had no place in Hollywood, where they eat you alive, then stab you a bunch of times with the toothpick.

Culp died in 2010, not terribly long after our brief friendship. I highly recommend the first few boxed sets of episodes from his TV series I SPY, not so much for their narrative content, but for his edifying commentary tracks about the show.

The new Blu-Ray of THE WILD BUNCH edges out the DVD occasionally, but if you’ve got the DVD, you can live with it quite easily until the 4K arrives. The copious supplements seem to be identical between the two releases, and both contain the Director’s Cut.