The Criterion Collection just announced their July lineup of titles coming to Blu-ray, and of particular interest to horror fans is their release of The Devil’s Backbone. According to Blu-ray.com, Criterion will release a Blu-ray collection of Guillermo del Toro’s 2001 atmospheric ghost story, The Devil’s Backbone on July 30th, 2013!
The most personal film by Guillermo del Toro is also among his most frightening and emotionally layered. Set during the final week of the Spanish Civil War, The Devil’s Backbone tells the tale of a ten-year-old boy who, after his freedom-fighting father is killed, is sent to a haunted rural orphanage full of terrible secrets. Del Toro effectively combines gothic ghost story, murder mystery, and historical melodrama in a stylish concoction that reminds us—as would his later Pan’s Labyrinth—that the scariest monsters are often the human ones.
The Devil’s Backbone is directed by Guillermo del Toro and stars Marisa Paredes, Eduardo Noriega, Federico Luppi, Fernando Tielve, Íñigo Garcés, and Irene Visedo.
Plot Synopsis
It is 1939, the end of three years of bloody civil war in Spain, and General Franco’s right-wing Nationalists are poised to defeat the left-wing Republican forces. A ten-year-old boy named Carlos, the son of a fallen Republican war hero, is left by his tutor in an orphanage in the middle of nowhere. The orphanage is run by a curt but considerate headmistress named Carmen and a kindly Professor Casares, both of whom are sympathetic to the doomed Republican cause. Despite their concern for him, and his gradual triumph over the usual schoolhouse bully, Carlos never feels completely comfortable in his new environment. First of all, there was that initial encounter with the orphanage’s nasty caretaker, Jacinto, who reacts even more violently when anyone is caught looking around a particular storage room the one with the deep well.
Special Features:
- New 2K digital film restoration, approved by director Guillermo del Toro and cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- Audio commentary featuring Del Toro
- Video introduction by Del Toro from 2010
- New interviews with Del Toro about the process of creating the ghost Santi and the drawings and designs made in preparation for the film
- ¿Que es un fantasma?, a 2004 making-of documentary
- Spanish Gothic, a 2010 interview with Del Toro about the genre and its influence on his work
- Interactive director’s notebook, with Del Toro’s drawings and handwritten notes, along with interviews with the filmmaker
- Four deleted scenes, with optional commentary
- New featurette about the Spanish Civil War as evoked in the film
- Program comparing Del Toro’s thumbnail sketches and Carlos Giménez’s storyboards with the final film
- Selected on-screen presentation of Del Toro’s thumbnail sketches alongside the sections of the final film they represent (Blu-ray edition only)
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Mark Kermode
