Natural Enemies (1979)

Today is a very special day for Paul Steward. Today he will murder all his…natural enemies.

What causes a man who seemingly has everything—a thriving business and family—to snap and throw it all away? It’s the question that this provocative and intelligent psychological drama investigates. Successful New York magazine publisher Paul Steward (Hal Holbrook, The Fog and All the President’s Men) has reached his breaking point and today is the day he has decided to kill himself, his wife and their children. His marriage to Miriam (Louise Fletcher, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Strange Behavior) has grown cold and distant. On this final day, he seeks the answers that might relieve him of his despair, through encounters with a psychiatrist (Viveca Lindfors, Creepshow and Dark City), an astronaut, a friend who survived the Holocaust (Jose Ferrer, Dune and Lawrence of Arabia), five prostitutes in a brothel and a lonely woman on the train ride home…

Writer, director and editor Jeff Kanew (Revenge of the Nerds and Troop Beverly Hills) established himself in Hollywood as one of the industry’s most sought-after trailer editors of the 1960s and ‘70s. Having become a leader in that field, he adapted Julius Horwitz’s controversial novel Natural Enemies for himself to direct. The result is a blistering and devastating work that recalls Taxi Driver, and which shocked audiences and critics when it was first released in 1979. Having been out of circulation for nearly four decades, this worldwide Blu-ray premiere has been sourced from the best-surviving element, a 35mm deposit print held by the Library of Congress.

directed by: Jeff Kanew
starring: Hal Holbrook, Louise Fletcher, Jose Ferrer, Viveca Lindfors
1979 / 100 min / 1.85:1 / English DTS-HD MA 2.0