William Lustig's MANIAC follow-up VIGILANTE gets a 4K revisit from Blue Underground.

New York blue collar worker Eddie Marino (Robert Forster, REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE) is spending so much time making a living that he has little time to actually spend with his wife Vicky (Rutanya Alda, AMITYVILLE: THE POSSESSION) and young son (Dante Joseph). He is wary of the involvement of his co-workers Nick (Fred Williamson, MEAN JOHNNY BARROWS), Burke (Richard Bright, CUT AND RUN), and Ramon (Joseph Carberry, PRESUMED INNOCENT) in a vigilante group meting out street justice to local scum; that is, until the justice system fails him after his son is murdered and his wife brutally assaulted and the assailant Prago (Don Blakely, BRUBAKER) gets a two-year suspended sentence while Eddie gets thirty days in jail for contempt of court. Even as he gives into his lust for vengeance, Eddie cannot accept Nick's bleak view of humanity until he comes face to face with his son's murderer again…

VIGILANTE is less of a "blue collar DEATH WISH" than a homage to the Italian crime films of the seventies by the likes of Umberto Lenzi, Sergio Martino, Enzo G. Castellari, and the like (the Franco Nero DEATH WISH retread STREET LAW would be reissued in the eighties as VIGILANTE II). Indeed, what keeps the film watchable in spite of its brutality – the killing of the child is shocking but does not have quite the same impact as a similar act in ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 – and vigilante rhetoric that feels nowadays closer to MAGA than Paul Kersey is its fragmented plot that hits the beats of the vigilante plot and relying on the actors to give the banal dialogue nuance: among them THE SHUTTERED ROOM's Carol Lynley as a compassionate but ineffectual D.A., MANIAC's Joe Spinell as an effortlessly slimy defense lawyer, THE BAMBOO SAUCER's Vincent Beck as the corrupt judge, THE FRENCH CONNECTION/CRUISING police consultant Randy Jurgenson as a cynical police detective who explains his reasoning to idealistic officer Gibbons (Steve James, AVENGING FORCE) for writing off the vigilante killings rather than making heroes of them with the public by going after them, and Woody Strode (ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST) as a tough and wise inmate who lends Eddie a hand. Likewise, Forster and Alda economically embody their characters' feelings of anger and anguish in a few short scenes – even Eddie's jail stay is presented as a couple highlights involving fist fighting and a rape attempt in the showers – and cutting away to the exploits of Williamson and his gang before things can get any grimmer. The targets of the vigilante group are irredeemable scum as essayed by Frank Pesce (KILLER FISH) peddling drugs to high school kids, Vincent Russo (SCREAMTIME) as a rapist, SUPERMAN's Bo Rucker as a pimp, and TAXI DRIVER's Peter Savage as a mobster with political aspirations.

The make-up effects are not as extensive as MANIAC but still grisly while the stuntwork and car chases are not as accomplished as what Lustig would achieve in MANIAC COP; indeed, VIGILANTE could be seen as the bridge between those two works, not only in style and technique but also with the latter film being the most successfully mainstream exploitation picture. MANIAC had been advertised as a Panavision and Dolby Stereo production, but ended up being shot in 16mm and blown-up (although it did manage a Dolby soundtrack). VIGILANTE was actually lensed in Panavision and has a slicker overall look, aided immensely by the Dolby Stereo's rendition of the Jay Chattaway (SILVER BULLET) score which feels like a fusion of Ennio Morricone and Goblin.

Released theatrically by Film Ventures offshoot Artists Releasing and on Vestron Video VHS, VIGILANTE like MANIAC has been a Lustig mainstay of the digital era starting with a 1995 Roan Group laserdisc which restored footage cut from the theatrical release, a non-anamorphic Anchor Bay DVD in 1997 followed by an anamorphic THX-approved upgrade in 2002, Blue Underground's direct port of that disc in 2007, a 2K-mastered 2010 Blu-ray, and finally this 2020 UHD/Blu-ray revisit from a new 4K restoration of the original camera negative. Although this is a 35mm Panavision production, it still has some rough edges – including an orange cast noticeable in skintones during a couple transitional opticals – but the new 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray and 2160p24 HEVC 2.35:1 widescreen UltraHD disc improve on the earlier transfers without erasing the hallmarks of the production. During the opening sequence – which was shot in pre-production on different film stock with different cameras – and many of the night sequences, areas where the blacks went flat before becoming diluted by underexposure noise now have greater depth and a finer gradation into near bottomless black while the underexposure grain is thankfully still present. Scenes lit with saturated gels like the attack on Rico's apartment are free of smearing and now seem to vault the film into the MTV eighties. The Dolby Stereo track is available in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 and has also been remixed in Dolby Atmos and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, and the French, Italian and German mono dubs have also been ported over in Dolby Digital 2.0. The score has always sounded forceful in stereo and surround on disc, and it is no different here, giving the film a more "modern" sound than some of its mainstream contemporaries (although it might have been tweaked during the original laserdisc remixes onwards), while dialogue is always clear. Stereo separation is not exactly state-of-the-art even for the period – some of the Foley effects like the body blows the vigilantes inflict on criminals are rather weak – but gunshots, shotgun blasts, and car crashes do goose the soundscape and have a visceral impact on the protagonist's revenge. Subtitles are available in English SDH, French, Portuguese, and Spanish.

The film is accompanied by three commentary tracks. The first with Lustig, Forster, Williamson, and Pesce was recorded in 1995 for the Roan laserdisc and has appeared on all of the subsequent DVD releases. The focus mainly on the production of the film itself, with mentions of Pesce as the film's unofficial West Coast casting director getting Lustig in touch with Forster and Williamson while the 2010 Blu-ray commentary with Lustig and co-producer Andrew W. Garroni fills in a lot of information about the origins of the project, how they naively believed having a hit in MANIAC would mean that their investors would want to give them more money, shooting the promo scene late repurposed for the prologue with rented camera equipment, film supplied for free by Agfa for camera tests (Lustig misremembers it was Fuji stock), and free processing and video transfer by TVC, and how difficult it was to deal with teamsters on a low budget as opposed to when they worked as crew on larger productions. They reveal that they initial wanted to cast Tony Musante (THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE) – being fans not only of THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE but also Enrico Maria Salerno's drama THE ANONYMOUS VENETIAN – in the Forster role before getting weirded out by him and his wife who had started rewriting the screenplay. Film historian
Troy Howarth and Mondo Digital's Nathaniel Thompson have recorded a new track for this release in which they distill information from both tracks, provide some new anecdotes, and also discuss the film's Italian, Eurocrime, and DEATH WISH borrowings.