Ruthless

Fine movie with a terrible transfer
This very good film is given shabby treatment by Terra Entertainment. Perhaps the worst transfer of anything I have ever seen, it is watchable only by persons who are either inhumanly patient or so drunk that they no longer care about anything. To charge $15.00 for this worthless piece of plastic is outrageous; it's not worth a plugged nickel.

Torso of what might have been a great picture.
RUTHLESS (1948) was a product of Eagle-Lion Films, an Anglo-American joint venture that was the child of British magnate J Arthur Rank. Along with THE STRANGE WOMAN (1946) starring Hedy Lamarr, a Hunt Stromberg production that was released by United Artists, it marks the only opportunity filmmaker Edgar G Ulmer ever had to direct a picture with a real budget (He made good on both). The product description above lists a run time of 104 minutes. That is incorrect. What we have in this Terra home video release is the 86 minute version that was trimmed to make the picture more marketable - a sad concession to the realities of a Hollywood distribution system in which Eagle-Lion was an outsider.

With the loss of 18 minutes, problems in continuity abound. In one scene, the youthful Horace Vendig has just been taken in by the kindly Burnside family after he has lost his home. In the very next, Vendig (Zachary Scott) has come of age, started a career in the banking industry, and is...

A Cult Classic, Ripe for Rediscovery
Cult director Edgar G. Ulmer's magnificently perverse "Ruthless" finally arrives on DVD and blu-ray, courtesy of Olive Films. It's been a long time coming. For years, the only prints available for home viewing were bootleg copies, most of them missing several minutes of footage, apparently spliced together from broadcast showings that had been taped on VHS cassettes. Olive Films has rectified that situation with a satisfactory (but hardly spectacular) transfer of a complete print.

An independent production released in 1948 through Eagle-Lion, "Ruthless" tells the story of young man from a hardscrabble background whose lack of parental love and affection creates a fatal emotional flaw in his character. We watch him climb his way up the financial ladder, callously ruining every life he touches - betraying the people who have helped him along the way and destroying every woman who is unfortunate enough to fall in love with him. The movie, in some ways evocative of...

Click to Editorial Reviews