THE WICKED DIE SLOW, and they aren't the only ones when Scorpion unearths this obscure "roughie western" on Blu-ray.

"The Kid" (Gary Allen, PANDEMONIUM) rides across the hilly terrain of New Jersey tracking down his brother Luke who got him in trouble and is carrying a piece of evidence that will clear his name. He comes across a young woman (Susannah Campbell) who lives on a farm by herself since her father molested her and then shot himself, after which Luke buried the body and then treated her even worse. The Kid nevertheless forms a bond with the damaged woman in between trips out into the territories searching for Luke with the help of Mexican sidekick Armadillo (writer Jeff Kanew). While The Kid and Armadillo are out searching, the woman is raped by four Indians and The Kid must exact retribution. In the meantime, they also blast away four cowboys in a saloon who hassle Armadillo and four more who torture a Mexican widower (Richard Palenske) and try to rape his daughter (Yolanda Signorelli). Unfortunately, the men belonged to the gang of Bart Lenoir (Steve Rivard) who, along with his psychotic second (Don McGovern, GOIN' SOUTH), brutally rape and murder anyone in their path on their own journey of retribution.

An odd New Jersey-lensed regional flick that is both "roughie western" – directed by William K. Hennigar, MR. MARI'S GIRLS – and spaghetti western homage, THE WICKED DIE SLOW at first seems to have a lot going for it with the sub-Sergio Leone animated title sequences, an opening sequence in which the anamorphic frame and telephoto lens focus on the anachronistic transparent blouse of a bra-less rider (Helen Stewart), and attempts at building suspense through cutting between close-ups of squinting eyes, but the pacing is leaden and the post-dubbed acting is nonexistent. The violence towards women is to be expected from a roughie – and co-writer Kanew makes it clear in the interview that the idea for the film was from seeing how easy it was to make the ones he edited – but they just seem disproportionate to the off-screen bullet hits and unconvincing beatings suffered by the male cast member (the climax even throws in a young Indian couple in order for the woman to be stripped and brutalized while The Kid and Armadillo wait for an opportunity to get the drop on the bad guys). Although the rape scenes show little – the gang rape of a barmaid is largely obscured by a Vaseline on the lens – the drawn-out nature of the editing to reach feature-length makes them as unpleasant as everything else is interminable (especially a "tense" poker game that is as boring as the average episode of "The World Series of Poker"). Attempts at spaghetti western machismo cool fall flat from the inexpressive The Kid to a preacher/bounty hunter who makes his victims pray before killing them (and might have already done away with The Kid's brother before we even meet our hero). McGovern's cackling villain is a very spaghetti western touch for a minute or two, but then he just becomes annoying while still possessing more depth than the leads. Editor-turned-director Kanew subsequently helmed EDDIE MACON'S RUN, REVENGE OF THE NERDS, TROOP BEVERLY HILLS, and V.I. WARSHAWSKI.

One of the earliest Cannon Films releases, THE WICKED DIE SLOW vanished soon after, not even garnering a VHS release from early Cannon distributor Paragon Video. The only way to see the film was through bootlegs of a British pre-cert VHS from Rank (although it did not make the Video Nasty list, it might surely have but it was probably dismissed as a spaghetti western from the cover). Although a lot of the pre-Golan-Globus Cannon titles either reverted or were liquidated before the company was acquired, THE WICKED DIE SLOW was not one of them, and the MGM-licensed 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen transfer from a 2K scan of "original film elements" is better than the film deserves and certainly better than suggested of the film's overall look based on the grainy stills on the back of the Blu-ray cover and its reputation as a roughie western hybrid. Colors are bold from the title sequence onwards and detail is almost nauseous with the saliva coating the cigar going in and out of the mouth of one of the villains in tight close-up glistening like the laminated poker playing cards later on. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track is clean, and the entirely post-dubbed soundtrack (as much homage as cheapness) is free of defects. There are no subtitles or captions.