If a better debut feature exists, I’d like you to tell me what it is. From its opening monologue by the great M. Emmet Walsh, to its shockingly savage climax, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen set the stage for not only this fantastically grim critique of crime and capitalism, but for the entirety of their prolific filmmaking careers. With what would become their signature combination of dark humor and extreme violence, Blood Simple strikes hard and true right out of the gate, leaving a bloody trail of bodies and shallow graves across Texas.
The film begins with Ray (played with a near toxic level of male indifference by John Getz) and Abby (the always spectacular Frances McDormand, in her feature-film debut), two half-bored lovers carrying on an affair behind the back of Abby’s husband (Dan Hedaya, giving his best performance in a career full of great performances), who also happens to be Ray’s boss. True to its noir roots, Julian (Hedaya), suspicious of his wife’s activities, hires a private investigator (M. Emmet Walsh, in one of the sleaziest and truly menacing roles of the ‘80s) to follow the much younger woman and take pictures of anything untoward. With the affair uncovered, a series of miscommunications and compounding bad decisions set in motion a tightly-packed thrill ride into the depths of human greed and depravity. And of course, nothing goes according to plan for anyone.
To accomplish this, the brothers lean heavily on innovative independent filmmaking methods (notice the nods to then fellow upstart Sam Raimi’s camera technique, made famous in 1981’s Evil Dead) while maintaining a deep reverence for cinema history. By combining elements of film noir and horror, the Coens manage a level of real-world terror not typically found in either. Mixing and matching genre tropes in this way is nothing new (Charles Laughton’s 1955 classic The Night of the Hunter comes to mind), but where violence would otherwise be watered-down or only alluded to, the Coens have a field day with its graphic depiction. In this way, Blood Simple manages to subtly and inventively surpass, and maybe even exemplify both genres, all the while remaining a wholly original piece of arthouse filmmaking.
In addition, despite the layered nature of its narrative, Blood Simple never feels esoteric or complicated. In fact, it’s one of the most digestible and easy-to-follow crime thrillers I can recall. The Coens waste nothing in this gritty world of dust and death. The scant runtime is packed to the gills with motives and moving parts, but because every element is so well-developed, nothing is lost in the shuffle. Everything is laid bare for us to see, even if the characters are continuously in the weeds and hopelessly lost. This, above all, may be what sets Blood Simple so far apart from its contemporaries, and how it’s able to resonate so well nearly four decades later.
James is a writer, skateboarder, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.