Quick and the Dead, The: 30th Anniversary Steelbook (4K UHD Review)

• Reviewed by: Stephen Bjork
• Review Date: Oct 07, 2025
• Format: 4K Ultra HD
• 

Director

Sam Raimi

Release Date(s)

1995 (October 7, 2025)

Studio(s)

TriStar Pictures/Sony Pictures Releasing (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment)

• Film/Program Grade: B
• Video Grade: A
• Audio Grade: A
• Extras Grade: C

Review

Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead probably would have been an oddity during any era, but it was particularly unusual for a film from 1995. The Western genre had fallen into disuse during the Eighties, and even the one-two punch of Pale Rider and Silverado in 1985 failed to breathe much life into it. It wasn’t until the early Nineties that box office successes like Dances With Wolves, Unforgiven, and Tombstone made Westerns viable again. Yet in one form or another, all of those were revisionist Westerns that questioned tradition more than they returned to it. Enter The Quick and the Dead, which is a lovingly faithful homage to what were once considered revisionist Westerns during the Sixties and Seventies: the spaghetti Westerns of directors like Sergio Leone. It took Italian filmmakers to break with the traditions of that time, but to break the mold of Nineties Westerns, it took a Michigan filmmaker previously known only for gonzo horror movies in order to craft a Western that respected the ways that Italian filmmakers had created traditions of their own. Only in America.

Simon Moore’s script for The Quick and the Dead opens like a proper spaghetti Western should: with a mysterious stranger riding out of the desert. The difference this time is that it’s a woman (Sharon Stone), and she’s on her way to the town of Redemption in order to participate in a quick draw competition held by the ruthless boss Herod (Gene Hackman). She’s soon dubbed The Lady, but just like the so-called Man with No Name in Leone’s Dollars trilogy, she really does have a name, as well as an ulterior motive for visiting Redemption. Herod has a knack for drawing attention from antagonists with something to prove, including his estranged son The Kid (Leonardo DiCaprio) and one of his former gang members turned preacher, Cort (Russell Crowe). One by one, the various gunslingers in the competition are eliminated, and when Herod decides to raise the stakes by making everyone duel to the death, only one man—or woman—will be left standing.

All of the other familiar elements from Leone Westerns are also present in The Quick and the Dead, not just the mysterious stranger on a mission of vengeance. The town is under the thumb of a greedy overlord a la A Fistful of Dollars, and it ends up being inadvertently freed from his grasp by the actions of The Lady. There are also flashbacks to show the evils that Herod has done in the past, including a hanging while a family member is forced to watch. There’s even an artifact that’s used to provide a visual connection to what happened years ago, although unlike For a Few Dollars More and Once Upon a Time in the West, it’s not a musical object. Yet it’s still something that Herod instantly recognizes, and it finally tells him what she’s after—but only at the point of dying. All that, plus the mandatory death and resurrection scene for the protagonist, as well as plenty of elaborately staged duels along the way. And that, of course, leads to the rest of the film’s memorable cast.

The Quick and the Dead collected an extraordinary group of actors for a Western produced in 1995, and not just because of the presence of Stone, Hackman, DiCaprio, and Crowe, either. Lest you have any doubts about that, here are the opening credits that follow immediately after Crowe’s name, in order: Tobin Bell, Roberts Blossom, Kevin Conway, Keith David, Lance Henricksen, and Pat Hingle. That would be an impressive enough collection of great character actors, but as the titles drill down farther into the cast, it also includes the likes of Sven-Ole Thorsen, Mark Boone Jr., Gary Sinise, Raynor Scheine, and the legendary Woody Strode. It was the final theatrical appearance of Blossom and Strode, and while Strode deserved a bit more screen time, it was still a worthy swan song for the both of them. Raimi’s lucky charm Bruce Campbell is also listed during the closing credits as a Wedding Shemp, but he’s not actually in the film. (According to Campbell, the scene that Raimi shot with him was just an excuse to torture him while placating Pat Hingle at the same time, and Raimi never had any intention of including it in the final cut.)

Everyone plays safely according to type, but with a Western like The Quick and the Dead, that’s a feature, not a bug. The narrative doesn’t offer any real opportunity to develop any of the supporting characters, with many of them serving as little more than cannon fodder to remind viewers of the stakes. Raimi needed actors who could define the nature of their characters quickly and efficiently, and they were all more than capable of doing just that. There are a few who seem like they may have been worth developing further, especially Sergeant Clay Cantrell (Keith David), who is an obvious nod to Lee Van Cleef’s Col. Mortimer in For a Few Dollars More (right down to his pipe). Yet the reality is that he’s nothing more than a red herring in the story, which remains focused on the four-way conflict between The Lady, Herod, The Kid, and Cort—all other priorities rescinded. It’s not so much The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as it is The Lady, the Bastard, the Resentful, and the Rueful.

Raimi does fine work holding together all of the disparate elements in Moore’s spaghetti Western pastiche, but it’s worth noting that he was little more than a director for hire on The Quick and the Dead. When Columbia TriStar picked up Moore’s script and Sharon Stone became attached to the project, she used the cachet she had earned from the success of Basic Instinct to wrangle a producer credit on the film, and she was actively involved from the ground up. Raimi was her choice as director, which was a leap of faith based solely on the Evil Dead films (it’s safe to guess that she probably hadn’t seen Crimewave). DiCaprio and Crowe were also her choices, and while that may seem obvious in hindsight, none of DiCaprio’s previous films had made much money, and Crowe was a complete unknown in the United States. When Columbia balked, she even paid DiCaprio’s salary out of her own cut.

As a result, The Quick and the Dead is as much of a filmmaking pastiche as it is a spaghetti Western pastiche, but that’s perfectly appropriate given the subject matter. Raimi still left his own unique visual stamp on the film, while Moore led its conception and Stone guided the production. From an above the line perspective, it’s not so much The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as it is the Big, the Bold, and the Beautiful. Go for broke or go home, and that’s exactly what the three of them did on The Quick and the Dead. While it may not be remembered as fondly as the likes of Dances With Wolves, Unforgiven, or Tombstone, in its own way, it’s just as significant to the evolution of the American Western during the Nineties. Sometimes, in order to move forward, you have to look backward first.

Cinematographer Dante Spinotti shot The Quick and the Dead on 35mm film using Panavision Panaflex cameras with spherical lenses, framed at 1.85:1 for its theatrical release. This version uses the same 4K master that Sony created for their 2018 UHD release, which was based on a 4K scan of the original camera negative, but this time they’ve added a Dolby Vision grade and encoded everything on a BD-100 instead of a BD-66. It’s still a gorgeous 4K presentation of the film, with every grain of sand, every worn thread on the costumes, every bead of sweat, and every pore on the craggy faces rendered perfectly. Everything is crystal-clear and sharp as a tack, even the grain, and the new encode manages it just as perfectly. There are plenty of old-school optical effects like titles, fades, dissolves, and multiple exposures that look relatively soft, but that’s just the nature of the original production.

The contrast remains strong, with deep black levels, and while some of the highlights may seem a little blown-out, that’s true to the stylistic choices that Spinotti made. The daylight exteriors are filled with warm amber, gold, and bronze hues that accentuate the feeling of desert heat, and the sunlight can be blazing at times (so are the specular highlights on the metal of the guns). When it rains, the tones turn much cooler and look borderline desaturated in comparison. That’s exactly how Spinotti photographed and color timed The Quick and the Dead in 1995, and it’s exactly how it should look on 4K Ultra HD. Sony already did yeoman’s work on the 2018 UHD, but they’ve still managed to take it up a notch for 2025.

Primary audio is offered in English Dolby Atmos and 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. The Quick and the Dead was released theatrically in 5.1 Dolby Digital and 8-channel SDDS (which utilized 5 screen channels instead of 3). For the 2018 UHD, Sony upgraded it to object-based Dolby Atmos, and they appear to have used the SDDS mix as a baseline. It doesn’t add any significant new sound effects, but it steers the original sound effects far more aggressively. That’s immediately obvious during the opening credits, where “Dog” Kelly’s voice can be heard coming out of the right rear surround speaker, and then as the camera pans towards him, his voice pans smoothly the other direction in an arc through the right front speaker until it finally lands in the center channel. In 5.1, his voice just starts out in the right front speaker and then moves to the center. Similarly, when The Lady rides away from him and exits screen right, the sound of her horse galloping continues in a line through the right surround and then right rear speaker. In 5.1, it just gallops off the right side of the screen.

The overhead channels aren’t used quite as aggressively, but they still make an occasional appearance like when Herod’s goons are throwing nooses over rafters and branches. It’s a far more immersive experience than 5.1, and all of the original dynamics and bass have been preserved—when The Lady makes her explosive reappearance, it really has a kick. Alan Silvestri’s score (which is just as affectionate toward spaghetti Westerns as everything else in the film) also hasn’t lost anything in the transition to Atmos. By all means, stick with the original 5.1 track if that’s your bag, but it would be a shame not to give this Atmos version an audition first. It offers the same general experience, just dialed up to 11.

Additional audio options include French, Italian, and Spanish (Castilian) 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio; German 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio; and Spanish (Latin American) 5.1 Dolby Digital. Subtitle options include English, English SDH, Arabic, Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish (Castilian), Spanish (Latin American), Swedish, Thai, and Turkish.

Sony’s 4K Ultra HD 30th Anniversary Steelbook release of The Quick and the Dead is a two-disc set that includes a Blu-ray with an unremastered 1080p copy of the film. It also includes a J-card slipcover and a Digital code on a paper insert tucked inside. Note that this is the North American theatrical cut, which doesn’t include a brief sex scene between The Lady and Cort that was in the international cut. But Raimi and Stone agreed that the scene wasn’t necessary, so while the international cut may be longer, the shorter version is the real director’s (and producer’s) cut. Everyone’s mileage may vary, but the film plays better while leaving The Lady’s sexuality more ambiguous. In any event, the following extras are included:

DISC ONE: UHD

• The Reckoning: Writing The Quick and the Dead (19:22)
• Deleted Scenes:
  • Dog Kelly Extended (1:02)
  • The Wedding (:51)
  • Glass of Water (1:05)
  • You Shouldn’t Drink (1:12)
  • Get out Here (:34)
  • Where’s Cort (:20)
  • We’re Different (:31)
• Theatrical Trailer (2:11)

DISC TWO: BD

• Previews:
  • The Da Vinci Code Extended Cut (1:06)
  • Casino Royale (1:34)
  • Ghostbusters (1:23)
  • A River Runs Through It (2:36)
  • Damages: Season 1 (1:37)
  • The Sky Crawlers (1:08)
  • Tyson (2:10)
  • Rudo Y Cursi (1:52)
  • Sugar (2:04)

Sony hasn’t just added a new Dolby Vision grade for this release; they’ve also added one new extra, The Reckoning: Writing The Quick and the Dead. Well, it’s not really new, since it was produced by Daniel Griffith’s Ballyhoo Motion Pictures for the 2022 French UHD from L’atelier d’images, but it’s still new to any domestic Sony version. It’s an interview with Simon Moore, although in practice it’s more of a visual essay by Griffith accompanied by audio-only narration from Moore. He discusses the process of coming up with a story that was influenced by Sergio Leone’s Westerns, describing himself a “British boy” writing an American Western inspired by Italian ones. He intended to direct it as a low-budget production, but once Columbia TriStar and big-name actors got involved, things ballooned beyond his original intentions (although it’s still ultimately faithful to what he wrote). Moore also addresses subjects like the biblical motifs in the film and Sam Raimi’s visual style.

The Deleted Scenes are ported over from Sony’s 2018 UHD. They’re mostly scene extensions that offer a few more character beats, like how Dog Kelly got his name and how the young boy (Jerry Swindall) was blinded. There is one full scene that was omitted: the wedding between The Kid and his girlfriend Mattie (Faye Masterson). Feel free to go looking for the Wedding Shemp, but he’s still not there—and yes, the deleted sex scene from the international cut also isn’t included here. (Note that a few of the scenes have incomplete audio.)

While it’s nice that Sony added The Reckoning for this release, the rest of the L’atelier d’images extras aren’t included: an interview with Stéphane Moïssakis and Julien Dupuy; an analysis of the duel between Herod and The Kid; and a vintage making-of featurette. That’s about it, though, and Sony has upped the ante with their new encode and the Dolby Vision grade, making this the best home video version of The Quick and the Dead to date. Is it worth the upgrade over their 2018 UHD? Depending on your circumstances, yes. The Dolby Vision grade alone will be enough for some people, let alone the new encode. But if you haven’t upgraded from Blu-ray yet (or God forbid, DVD), then Sony’s new Steelbook version is the only way to fly.

-Stephen Bjork

(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).