The recent election had pundits and your pals on Facebook bringing up various books to describe the times ahead. One of the more popular references was Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale with it’s tale of the power elite and female enslavement. Instead of having to read the book, you can watch the film so you can be inside the conversation. Part of the film was shot on the Duke campus. This lead to a few people being upset when arriving for Easter services at Duke Chapel only to see gallows in front of the sacred building. Shout! Factory has the Blu-ray + DVD combo arriving April 18 as part of their Shout Select Line. Here’s the press release from Shout! Factory:
THE HANDMAID’S TALE
COMES TO BLU-RAY ON APRIL 18
FROM SHOUT! FACTORY
Los Angeles, CA – The Handmaid’s Tale, the spine-chilling 1990 film starring Natasha Richardson (Nell), Faye Dunaway (Network), Robert Duvall (Tender Mercies), Aidan Quinn (Elementary) and Elizabeth McGovern (Downton Abbey), will get its first Blu-ray release on April 18 when a new BD + DVD combo hits stores from Shout! Factory’s Shout Select line.
With a “cool eroticism, intelligence and intensity” (Playboy), this eerie futuristic thriller, based on Margaret Atwood’s controversial and critically acclaimed best-selling novel, is filled with “large themes and deep thoughts” (Roger Ebert).
In the not-so-distant future, the strong-willed and beautiful Kate (Richardson) possesses a precious commodity that most women have lost and most men want to control… fertility. Having committed a crime by trying to escape the country, she is sentenced to life as a Handmaid. Leaving a brain-washing bootcamp that turns fertile women into surrogate mothers for elite men and their infertile wives, Kate thinks she’s made out well when she’s assigned to an eminent party leader (Duvall). But when she learns that he’s sterile, she’s faced with the impossible choice: produce him an heir or die.