Koch Entertainment’s One-Eyed Jacks Bluray (out 11.8) will, of course, be some kind of high-def enhancement of a public-domain version, and all One-Eyed Jacks public domain versions are shit. There was a laser disc version that I owned in the early to mid ’90s that wasn’t too bad, so maybe Koch’s Bluray will be the equal of that. If it is I’m buying it…fool that I am.

This near-great 1961 psychological western has to be freed from public-doman jail and remastered and made into a eye-popping Bluray by its owner, Paramount Pictures. But of course Paramount Home Video has so far refused to even create a mint-condition Bluray of Shane, one of Hollywood’s all-time great westerns, so what are the odds of them doing the right thing by Marlon Brando‘s film?

It’s called bad (i.e., thoughtless, sociopathic) parenting. Shame on this and all the other corporate video divisions who care nothing…okay, very little for Hollywood history and heritage and want nothing more than to make money.

One-Eyed Jacks was the last Paramount film shot in VistaVision, a 35mm large-format system, and that’s why it’ll look close to breathtaking when and if it ever gets properly Blurayed.

Here’s the main title track from Hugo Friedhofer‘s score for One-Eyed Jacks. And here’s a guy selling CDs of the entire score.