Childhood ends for BEST FRIENDS on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome.

Jesse (BATTLESTAR GALLACTICA's Richard Hatch) is just out of the army and looking forward to marrying girlfriend Kathy (Susanne Benton, A BOY AND HIS DOG) and building a life in the suburbs. Best buddy Pat (Doug Chapin, LADYBUG LADYBUG), however, is not so ready to settle down despite Jesse and Kathy foisting old flame Jo Ella (Ann Noland, SATAN'S SCHOOL FOR GIRLS) on him for a motor home trip from Los Angeles to Stockton with the expectation that he will propose to her as well. There's something not quite right about Pat since Vietnam beyond his crippled hand, and it expresses itself gradually from pushiness to outright violence starting with his attack on a Native American local tough after a fistfight at a bar, and an increasing aggressiveness towards Kathy that seems as malevolent as it does sexual. Although Pat is initially successful at driving a wedge between Jesse and Kathy with the former's suppressed attraction to Jo Ella, Pat may have crossed the line beyond the point of return when he insists the only way things can be right between him and Jesse is for Jesse to let him have Kathy.

A bit of a low-key road movie and a dark take on the buddy movie, BEST FRIENDS never directly addresses wartime PTSD but it suggests that things are irrevocably changed between to close friends who have shared the experience. Although Jesse appears to care for Kathy, the ease with which he gives into Jo Ella – egged on but not entirely manipulated by Pat – suggests that he is as much trying to escape into normality and conventionality as Pat resists anything that might change their friendship; and it is quite telling that he turns his aggression on Kathy rather than Jesse for resisting the temptations of freedom promised by ditching the mobile home for motorcycles and hitting the open road. Distributor Crown International's advertising for the film was incredibly misleading with the tagline "she became the ravaged victim of a century of revenge!" suggesting more violence from the Native American locals after Jo Ella's striptease in an Indian bar and the resulting brawl, while the alternate tagline "Best Friends ... until they crossed the wrong border" was more suitably evocative of a not-quite thriller, not-quite character drama with a typically-seventies downbeat ending. Director Noel Nosseck would direct LAS VEGAS LADY for Crown and the WAR-scored Blaxploitation film YOUNGBLOOD before a short studio career followed by a string of TV movies in the late eighties and into the nineties.

Released theatrically by Crown International – indeed, they may have provided funds for post-production of the film since Mark Tenser's Marimark (THE HEARSE) is listed as the production company – BEST FRIENDS seems to have skipped home video before making the rounds in various BCI and Mill Creek sets when they had the Crown library. The first standalone release comes courtesy of Vinegar Syndrome from a 2K scan of the original 35mm camera negative. The 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray looks quite clean and colorful when one takes into account the budget and the run-and-gun nature of the location filming, with some night exteriors and mobile home interiors looking a bit grainier along with some of the harsh shadows in the sunny exteriors. Detail reveals itself in close-ups including facial features and textures in costumes and hair that suggest some of the softness of other scenes has as much to do with the location lighting as some stylistic choices. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track sports mostly clean dialogue for a location shoot and highlights the song-scoring of bluegrass musician Rick Cunha (no relation to the SHE DEMONS director). Optional English SDH subtitles are included for the feature as well as the extras.

In "Making Friends" (13:24), director Nosseck discusses the origins of the project as a road movie for budgetary reasons, how the more exploitative concept evolved into something else, concedes what worked and what did not, notes the success of Hatch and reveals that Chapin became a producer and agent (he does not know what became of the actresses), and not seeing a dime from Crown International despite the film's wide theatrical distribution in its first weeks. In "Movies and Travel" (32:47), cinematographer Stephen M. Katz recalls that he was he intended to move to New York and open a business as a stills photographer when his sister Gloria Katz – co-writer with husband of Willard Huyck of MESSIAH OF EVIL, AMERICAN GRAFFITI, and so on – convinced him to take a job working on THE PEACE KILLERS where he threatened to walk if he was not promoted to director of photography when the original one had to leave, and he discusses how his experiences on that film and BEST FRIENDS allowed him to experiment and develop techniques and style.